Lost Art Press

To Make as Perfectly as Time Allows

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After seven hours we have completed reviewing the galley proofs (the mock-up of the book pages as they will appear in print) for the first chapter of “To Make As Perfectly As Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.” To put it simply, the layout design is sumptuous. Book designer Wesley Tanner is brilliant at making our efforts look beautiful.

Much like making sausage or enacting legislation, there is much to cause you to avert your eyes when gazing on the business of book making. To give you a peek at what is going on just now, let me recount our current labors.

In most instances for most books, the author(s) only have to review the galleys to make sure 1) it says what they want it to say and submitted in the first place, and 2) catch any typos or editorial mistakes. When translating and annotating a historic volume, it is a bit more complicated. Sometimes when working our way through the stack of pages we come to the conclusion that we were using a wrong word or phrase, and it has to be changed throughout to make it the best book possible. At the least, this causes editors and designers to gnash their teeth. In a worst-case scenario they might start poking little rag dolls with long straight pins.

We settled on what we believe to be an excellent procedure. Because we have to compare the galleys to both our annotated text manuscript and the original volume of 240 years ago, it is a long slog. In order to pull all the pieces together I read each line aloud slowly and clearly while Michele followed along by reading the original French text simultaneously. In the hour-upon-hour of reading this aloud, the full import of the project became apparent.

Through this multi-sensory experience of reading, hearing and speaking, the grandeur of Roubo’s monumental effort becomes clear. Honestly, for the first time – after silently reading the text (10, 15, 20 times?) I understood more fully several passages I already thought I knew, but I was wrong. As the old-time evangelists used to say, “Knowing something in your head and knowing something in your heart are not the same things.” The rhythm of reading it out loud at a steady but deliberate pace caused many descriptions to become a real practice, not simply an articulate description.

This delight of new understanding keeps the task of reviewing from being tedious. I am not used to reading out loud for several hours.

In the end the book will be one with which we will be pleased, yet know also that there will be changes we could envision to make it better. To tell you the truth, if we had the fulfill a deadline of 10 years from Tuesday, we would be working until 10 years from Monday to make it better, and still it would not be perfect.

Unfortunately that’s just the way it is, and we recognize that some readers will find typos or homonyms that no one else found, and others will not like the way we phrased a particular translation or will object to some sections we chose not to include. We will have to reconcile with ourselves that in a world of limited resources, we did the best we could.

Onto the next chapter.

— Don Williams

New DVD ‘Shaker Side Table’ Now Available

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ShakerSIdeLie-Nielsen Toolworks has just received stock of my latest DVD on building a Shaker Side Table entirely by hand.

If that’s all you need to hear, go here to order it from Lie-Nielsen.

Here are more details. This is a long-form DVD – 269 minutes of video footage covering the entire range of operations necessary to build this maple table, which is a variant on a design from Thomas Moser and Christian Becksvoort.

Why is the DVD so long? Well the political answer is that we wanted to show every operation at a level of detail that is typically missing from many DVD presentations. The truth? I just didn’t shut up. When I work – at home or in front of a class – I talk nearly non-stop. I do this at home as a way to check my own work. I do it during classes to keep the poor sods from falling asleep (this happens).

Anyway, the DVD covers a lot of ground, from processing stock with handplanes to….

• Tapering legs with handplanes
• Mortise and tenon by hand
• Half-blind socket dovetails for the drawer rails
• Making drawers by hand – grooves, layout, dovetails all around
• Installing drawer runners
• Fitting drawers
• Beveling with a jack plane
• Getting a final surface finish
• Finishing with a homemade varnish and oil

This is the sort of project DVD I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m pleased that Thomas Lie-Nielsen and the crew at Lie-Nielsen Toolworks let my freak flag fly.

And yes, that is me on the cover. I got a haircut right before that photo shoot in July. Since then, I’ve gone back to seed – to the dismay of my spouse.

The DVD is $40 and is available now from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks.

— Christopher Schwarz

Off to Australia – Spots Still Open in my Classes

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By the time you read this, I will be on my way to Melbourne, Australia, for three weeks of teaching and building at the Melbourne Guild of Fine Woodworking, which is run by Alastair Boell, a graduate of Boston’s North Bennet Street School.

I’ll be teaching four classes there, including a full-size tool chest from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” a Schoolbox from “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” and an authentic Shaker wall cabinet.

Curiously, there are still six openings in the class for the Shaker cabinet March 25-26. That class almost always fills up pronto when I teach it in the States and Germany. Perhaps some Australians are leery of building a piece of furniture from an odd religious sect. So let me make the following very clear:

During this two-day class, we will not be practicing sexual abstinence. No one will be abstaining from intercourse during the entire two days.

The Shaker cabinet class is a great introduction to the principles of hand joinery. We’ll process stock by hand, cut dados and rabbets by hand and learn a lot about nail technology and fitting doors.

If you have those days free, you can sign up for the class here.

There also is one opening in the tool chest class. Details here.

During the last two weeks, I’ve received a lot of advice on making the 16-hour flight across the Pacific. Here are three perspectives:

1. Slow down a couple of days ahead of the flight. Eat lighter foods, avoid a lot of salt and fat.  Hydrate (not just beer). Do your normal exercise. Once on the aircraft, use anti-bac wipes and clean your tray table, etc. If anyone hands you a bottle, wipe it. Keep drinking water and avoid alcohol (if you can). Move around as much as you can. If you can’t walk around then do whatever you can to stretch/move your body as much as you can. About halfway through the long haul go to the restroom and do a quick wash (I take a small wash cloth & towel along in a plastic bag), change underclothes (that would be your drawers), socks, brush teeth, put in moisturizing eye drops, etc. and you will feel much better.

2. Take some fried baloney sandwiches with you, about six to eight will do. Swill as much beer as they will give you. Take your shoes off, put on some fuzzy slippers, put the seat back as far back as possible and pass out with your mouth wide open. But don’t ask the flight attendant which channel has “the porn.”

3. Drugs. Lots of drugs.

I am planning on using all three strategies.

I hope to post a few blog entries while down there, so be sure to check back during the next three weeks.

— Christopher Schwarz

Update: ‘By Hand and Eye’

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Jim Tolpin and I dove into the writing of “By Hand and Eye” with a shared excitement. As we combed through historic pattern books and design literature we asked each other the question: “Would this be valuable to the modern woodworker?” Ninety percent of what we uncovered was at the point of a tool. The secrets simply would not pry loose by reading alone. Each gold nugget broke free under the points of a compass, or shined brightly at the workbench as a body of knowledge emerged. Time and again Jim and I found delight as one discovery lead to another and our modern assumptions crumbled.

Myth: Traditional Design is Formulaic
Truth be told, early on we did scour for a formula that might open a door to a secret passage. We found no silver bullet, but over time new horizons opened before us, which assured us that we were on a good path. Even the things that seemed like rote memorization, such as the admonitions to draw the classic orders or dozens of geometric exercises, were in the end anything but rote. We both marveled when we realized that drawing a classic order has little (or nothing) to do with drafting a historical form and everything to do with reshuffling the way the brain sees objects in space. Same goes for all the simple geometry exercises. Learning to construct an ellipse is much more than a quaint bit of compass calisthenics. It’s about imprinting an ellipse on the inner blackboard and gaining a sense of perfect visual pitch. You might have brushed up against this in high school geometry (before they killed all the fun with a boatload of theorems), but it’s at the workbench where this ancient knowledge slides into the groove and you find yourself uttering, “Shazaam!”

Make no mistake, “By Hand and Eye” is not a book about making period reproductions. Yet it is about equipping you with the same core design skills that inspired much of our most revered furniture. This is an entryway into a living design tradition that is still capable of propelling the modern woodworker to new heights.

Here’s an added bonus. We decided early on to use technology to assist the learning curve on some of the geometrical drawing exercises. Using text alone, generating a simple polygon requires a stampeding herd of confusing words, i.e. draw line AB and erect a perpendicular bisecting points Q, W, & F….etc. Jim enlisted a tech-savvy helper, Nico Prins, to make animations of 29 geometric exercises. These visuals let you grasp the concepts quickly and immediately try your own drawing. These animations will be available as a free download for anyone who purchases the book. You can click on the links below to view a sample. You may find this alone is worth the price of the book.

Draw a Volute.

Construct an Ellipse.

— George R. Walker & Jim Tolpin

Editor’s note: “By Hand and Eye” is in the final stages of production. The book is designed (thank you Linda Watts) and edited (thank you Megan Fitzpatrick). All that remains is for the completion of the index and my final edit. Thanks to both everyone who has worked on this massive project and to everyone who has waited patiently for it. The end is near.

For the Love of ‘Rippers’

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It’s not often that I’m thrilled to paw through another man’s garbage, but when that man is Frank David….

Teak is expensive stuff – upwards of $50/board foot at times. So every cut counts. And when it came time to buy stuff for the interior guts of this campaign chest, I was thinking of using walnut, pine or oak. But then I saw a magnificent pile of narrow teak offcuts while hunting through the stacks of lumber at Midwest Woodworking.

These pieces of 2-1/2”-wide, 4/4 rough stock were the leftovers from rip cuts made decades ago. Frank stashed them in the attic of his shop in Norwood, Ohio. Some of his employees asked if they could have these teak “rippers” to burn for firewood in their homes.

Frank merely raised an eyebrow at their request.

These rippers are perfect for web frames. So I purchased a few of these (at about $15/board foot) and built the two web frames for my latest campaign chest with them today.

Like all the other old pieces of teak from Midwest, this stuff is like a buttery dream (which is better than a wet dream but not as good as a lard dream) to work with. And I saved enough teak from my wide boards to scrounge just enough teak to make a copy of Napoleon’s desk for my book on campaign furniture.

Viva la refuse!

— Christopher Schwarz