Lost Art Press

The ‘Traitor’s Tool Chest’ DVD Only $12 (Hurry)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

ToolChestDVDWhen I make a DVD, the producers always give me a certain number of free copies to give to my mom or (in the case of some really dull DVDs) to use as drink coasters.

As a result, I have 19 copies of “A Traditional Tool Chest in Two Days” sitting on my desk right now that I would rather be somewhere else. I have enough drink coasters.

So we are going to sell these DVDs at half price to our loyal blog readers. Instead of $24.99, you’ll pay $12 plus domestic shipping.

Why did I call it the “traitor’s” tool chest in the title? Read here.

We only have 19 of these. So if you want one, click now or forever hold your mouse.

— Christopher Schwarz

Mental Training in the Shops

Posted on by fitz

large_caliperThere are considerations other than merely technical ones which have weight in determining the quality and quantity of a man’s work in the shop. For instance, what is distinctly and, pre-eminently the mark of the superior workman? I would unhesitatingly put it as self-respect. The good workman justly appreciates his abilities; and this self appreciation is as far as can be from unwarranted and inordinate self-conceit.

A man in a machine shop, like a man anywhere else in life, who knows how to do good work, knows well enough when he does good work, knows as well as anyone the value of it, and cannot be got to willingly waste it. Work that is wasted is never good work nor done by a good workman. Work may be like choice butter upon good bread, or it may be like the same butter daubed upon the sleeve of your best coat, and then it is not good work.

Troy is the great laundry city—put tight fits upon work that is to encounter the rust of a wash-room, and it will bring you profanity instead of praise. The most worthless man in the shop is he who is willing to swing his axe all day and see no chips fly. The man who is in earnest makes every motion tell to the accomplishment of his purpose. He is the man whom I may always safely tell when anything about his work is wrong. He will know that he is precisely the one who should know about it, that he may correct it and avoid a like mistake in future.
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A Trestle Festival

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The author Titus Livius (or the translator Pierre Bersuire) at work, Ab urbe condita (BNF Fr. 273, fol. 7), c. 1475

Leave it to Jeff Burks to turn up a bunch of images of early trestle tables that I haven’t seen before.

As you’ll see from the gallery below, these trestle tables are of the old variety – two independent horses that are topped by a large board, suitable for carving up your meal (or your unliked saint).

Most of the horses have three legs, though there are some that have interesting feet that are flat on the floor. Also interesting is how many trestles have decorative panels between the legs.

One warning before you start browsing these images: A few are a bit on the graphic side. If you ever wondered about why these tables were covered by tablecloths when people ate at them, this set of images should help you answer that question.

As always, thanks to Jeff Burks for the original source material here. His research and publishing here speeds our efforts at Lost Art Press.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sawyers

Posted on by fitz

gruubenvorst den beijer

He is employed by the Carpenter, the Cabinet-maker, and the Cooper, to cut wood into the required boards, planks, and battens, for their respective operations. This he performs by placing the tree or timber, on strong tressels, usually laid across the sawpit; and being assisted by the Pitman, whilst the Top Sawyer, or chief, stands upon the work, they conjointly work a long coarse saw along the line marked out for the cut.

Their earnings vary extremely, unless constantly employed, in a covered yard during winter, by the Cooper, at a weekly salary, usually amounting to 35s. Oftener, however, they choose to depend upon jobbing about for different masters “upon the call;” at which sort of game, they either find “nothing stirring,” and literally starve awhile, or make such astonishing sums at piece work, as to set their heads a madding with the fumes of the stomach; they become broilsome, drink unaccountably, fight any body or thing, pawn their tools by scores, and, when Tuesday comes round, find themselves under the necessity of kicking the master, for an advance.

On these occasions, the masters who have work in hand, supplicate the men to resume the job, and thus become the beggars; which they may do in vain, if they have suffered the ungrateful wretches to run in debt, or the publican is importunate for payment of his scores.

Who would be a Sawyer? Or, being one, would not work out his own reformation in time?

Nathaniel Whittock, John Badcock, John Bennett, Cyrus Newton, and Others

The Complete Book of Trades – 1837

— Jeff Burks

Awaiting You Behind Curtain No. 2

Posted on by Lost Art Press

roubo_threadbox

Now that “To Make As Perfectly As Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” has been birthed, or put to bed, or sent to press, or whatever cliché is appropriate (I only know that my part is done), we now draw your attention to the curtain marked “To Make As Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Furniture Making,” behind which the work has continued unabated even through the seemingly endless tribulations of Roubo on Marquetry.”

See, I am learning from Roubo: one paragraph, one sentence, no problem.

Much of “Roubo on Furniture Making” is fairly straightforward, seeming all the more so after six years of our interpreting and expressing Roubo’s voice.  Some days I find I can get through as many as a dozen pages of Michele’s raw transliteration, mostly to clarify the idiosyncratic jargon and syntax A-J employs.  This process can be a bit humorous as Michele does not even begin to know what particular tools are (or do), while Philippe – though superbly skilled in their uses – identifies them only in his native French.  He never needed to converse in English about the arcane details of 18th-century French woodworking tools, so he is relying on me to phrase things properly in the language of a 21st-century Anglophone.

It is excellent that “Roubo on Furniture Making” is going well because in sheer scale it renders “Roubo on Marquetry” a mere warm-up act: This one is almost TWICE as large as our first volume.

For example, this week I am working my way through (again!) Volume 1 Section 1 Chapter 5:  “Some Tools Belonging to Woodworkers, Their Different Types, Forms and Uses,” which contains the much-heralded Plate 11 “Interior View of the Furniture Maker’s Studio” and its ballyhooed image of the French Workbench, the source of much of Schwarzophinia.

Many hands have given at least part of the text for this plate the old college try.  I am unashamed to suggest that our 17-page treatment of this plate’s text is as accurate, nuanced, understandable and downright elegant as any thus far.

That text and the remaining passages of the chapter delve excruciatingly DEEP into the esoterica of the 18th-century tool box and workshop.  Really, Andy, did you need to give us five pages on the moving fillister plane?

At more than 100 pages of working manuscript, this chapter would make a fine little book all by itself (still, it is barely half the length of Vol. III Section 3 Chapter 13: “Tools and Machines for Furniture Making”), but the thrill of this chapter is a near-perfect analog to my new status of “retirement.”  I am busier and working harder than ever, yet I simply cannot wipe the smile from my face.

— Don Williams