Lost Art Press

2 Reviews of ‘By Hand & Eye’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Our latest book, “By Hand & Eye,” is sometimes difficult to describe. It’s not simple step-by-step guidance to designing better furniture. It is, for lack of a better metaphor, a can opener designed to pry open a part of your brain that has been dormant for too long.

Remember the first time you got a fantastic edge? The first time you planed a perfect surface? Cut a perfect dovetail? That’s the idea. It takes some work, but the results are important to your advancement as a woodworker.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are two new reviews of the book. (Reminder: We do not solicit reviews from anyone, friend or foe. These copies were fully paid for.)

The first review is from James Watriss, a professional woodworker and graduate of North Bennett Street. Here’s a taste:

“This is a book about learning to see, and about learning to think. And it’s written for people who want to learn to see, and to think for themselves. It’s not a spoon-feeding of theory and techniques, it’s a guide to finding thought-provoking projects that will lead you to an understanding that you won’t get by flipping through (and ignoring) the latest issue of any given woodworking rag. I’m in the second round of drawing the Doric column. And it’s already sent me back to my library at the shop to dig out The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director to look up the other columns.”

Read the full review here.

The second review is from the blog Baroque Pearls written by WN “Vels” Lucas. Lucas specializes in researching and building pre-17th century furniture.

“I’ve been noodling with whole-number proportioning for some time, and dividers and basic geometry have been part of my “toolbox” for quite a while. This book has excited several interesting projects to continue along that path – I can only imagine the impact it may have on those wholly uninitiated to the concepts… I imagine those things will be grand. If you think you might someday want to go to the next level with woodworking, or just enjoy geeking about design, this book is a must.”

The full review is here.

“By Hand & Eye” is available from our select retailers and directly through our store here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Two notes on other future editions of this book:

1. The digital version will be up for sale in our store this week. Because of the extreme graphic nature of the book (no, it’s not gory), the file will be a pdf instead of an ePub.

2. The leather edition should have been done by now. But it’s not. And it’s my fault. The bindery could not get the leather we wanted and called me while I was in Germany to ask me to look at some other swatches. I forgot to do that. I am fixing that problem today.

We Interrupt this Bench Build…

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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…for another bench build.

Yup. With my massive French oak Roubo workbench squatting unfinished on sawbenches, I’m prepping stock for a second workbench I’m building on Monday and Tuesday for a DVD for Popular Woodworking Magazine.

The “high concept” for this bench is it’s “Pretty Woman” meets “Starship Troopers.” Wait, wrong blog. No, it’s figuring out how to build the maximum bench in the minimum time using easy-to-find materials.

This is a bench design that has been brewing in the back of my head for some time. I hear from a lot of fellow woodworkers that they would love to build a traditional workbench but don’t have a month of Sundays to do it.

So here are the design characteristics of this bench. It…

• weighs more than 300 pounds.
• has an 8’-long top made from clear European beech that is 3” thick.
• has a massive French-style undercarriage where the legs are flush to the outside of the benchtop.
• uses a single quick-release vise to handle most workholding chores (a second vise is optional).
• Knocks down for moving with a ratchet.
• costs less than any commercial bench that is worth buying
• takes only two days of shop time to build
• requires only a few simple machines and tools.

The trick to the bench is using beech kitchen countertops to make the benchtop. For this bench, I had to go deep into enemy territory. No, not Sawmill Creek. Worse. Ikea.

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You don’t have to go to Ikea to make the benchtop – I have a second benchtop I made from a mahogany kitchen countertop I got from an architectural salvage place for $30. But I wanted to show the process with stuff that can be purchased easily.

Using the Ikea countertop, six 8’-long 4x4s from Home Depot and a bag of bolts from the local hardware store, the basic bench (without a vise) costs about $440 in materials.

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The other thing I like about this bench is it requires a minimal toolkit to build. We’ll be building this with a benchtop table saw, a cordless drill and a few hand tools. Oh, and you won’t need any clamps. Really.

I’ll be posting photos and video on my blog at Popular Woodworking during the week so you can see how the thing comes together.

I have no clue when the DVD will come out – but they are very quick at F+W Media Inc.

This will (I hope) be my last DVD for at least a year. I’ve greatly reduced my teaching schedule for 2014 and am setting aside all these side projects (as fun as they are) to focus on writing.

— Christopher Schwarz

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Where’s A.-J.?

Posted on by Lost Art Press

LAP-Roubo-PressmarkA quick status update on “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.”

• The deluxe edition is supposed to go on press at the end of August. We were hoping for an earlier press date, but we didn’t get our wish. Then the book has to go to the bindery. And get its slipcase. We are now shooting for an early September delivery.

• Thanks to an error in our store, we mistakenly thought we were sold out of the deluxe edition. We have not quite sold out. We have about 50 copies allocated to the store. After those sell out, we are going to wait until we have all of the copies in hand. We will fulfill all the outstanding orders. Then we will count how many are left and sell those.

• If you have paid your $100 deposit but haven’t paid the balance, please contact John Hoffman at john@lostartpress.com to complete your order. We cannot ship your book until we have the full amount.

• Wesley Tanner is now laying out the trade edition of the book. We hope to have this in time for Woodworking in America.

• We are trying to plan a book-release party for Woodworking in America. If you bought a book, you will be invited.

— Christopher Schwarz

Now, to Find that Angle

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I dragged the finished teak campaign chest out of the shop this afternoon to get it out of harm’s way down there. Some heavy stuff is about to go down.

I am fairly pleased with the color of the finish and the surface quality of the chest. I went for an old-school texture. You can feel the scallops left by the smoothing plane on the exterior.

But aside from my mild non-displeasure with the piece, the most important comment about the piece was uttered today by my wife.

Lucy looked it over and said: “We get keep this one?”

“Yes.”

“For real this time?”

“Yes.”

That’s the highest compliment from a woman who has seen a lot of furniture go out the door this year.

The only disappointment? My photography. I snapped the quick photo above, which is plagued by parallax and a thousand other words. Perhaps I’ll find the right angle when I shoot some photos of it for my upcoming book on campaign furniture.

On that matter, I finished writing the two chapters on these chests. But I have to set the manuscript aside (briefly) to build another workbench. No, not the massive one from the Barnesville, Ga., French oak project. A different one.

More details tomorrow.

— Christopher Schwarz

Here Comes the Creepy Janitor

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Here you can see the sample board on top of a drawer front that has two coats of shellac on it. The wax makes a difference.
Here you can see the sample board on top of a drawer front that has two coats of shellac on it. The wax makes a difference.

Even when I’ve applied a certain finish 100 times, I still make a sample board. There are just too many variables.

The wood might have some interesting chemicals and colors in it. A finish manufacturer might have changed its formula (looking at you Lily/Valspar). Or you are dealing with shellac, which can be old or have some unexpected hues.

Yesterday I made a sample board using teak that was left over from building the chest. I planed it using the same tools I used on the chest – then lightly scuffed it with #220-grit sandpaper. Then I applied one coat of Liberon Bison Wax, the Tudor Brown color. I call this wax: Creepy Janitor.

I love this wax on open-grained woods. The wax gets into the pores and adds brown tones to the garnet shellac. It is easy to apply and buffs to a low lustre that never looks like someone fingered your project after eating a large basket of greasy Freedom Fries.

But the smell – until it dissipates – gives me the creeps.

It’s a very odd perfumy smell that is mixed with cleaning fluids. I have some more descriptive words for it that involve armpits, a greasy rubbing compound for sore joints and glass kittens, but I know it would get me in trouble with the readers.

The sample board looked great, so this morning I removed all the hardware from the chest. (This takes more than an hour. It’s like undressing a Victorian woman.) I applied the two coats of garnet shellac, sanding between the coats with a #320-grit sanding sponge.

Now I’m just waiting for the shellac to harden up a bit more before I apply the wax. And I’m going to first make dinner so I don’t have that brown goo in my nostrils when chewing.

Really, I love the wax. It’s worth the smell.

— Christopher Schwarz