Sometime in the late 1990s I had three full sets of chisels – Marples Blue Chips, Ashley Iles and some fine blue-steel Japanese chisels. But instead of enjoying the fact that I had more chisels than my father, grandfather or uncle, I was grumpy.
I was pissed (with myself) that I had three sets of chisels to maintain. Three sets to store. Three sets that would set me back in my efforts to master one set of chisels. All this was made worse by the fact that we had a water-cooled grinder in the shop. So every time I had a chip in a Blue Chip, I had to cool my jets for a half hour with the water-cooled hummer.
But it wasn’t just chisels.
No one needs five smoothing planes, two jointer planes, three jack planes and six shoulder planes to build ordinary furniture. That’s not a working set of tools, that’s a never-ending obligation to sharpen, tune and learn an overly large set of tools.
As one of my female friends put it: “Why are men always fantasizing about sleeping with two or three women? They can barely handle one.”
The same is true with tools. For the last several years I’ve been selling or giving away all of the excess tools that accumulated on my shelves as editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine. I had bought those tools with my own money, and so I felt responsible for them. They had to be protected from rust and dust. They had to be lubricated occasionally. They had to be used, or I would feel guilt.
At first it was easy to sell the tools that I didn’t want to review in the magazine in the first place. Then came the tools I used on occasion. Then the tools that were made by people I really liked. And the tools that I was inexplicably attached to. Every time I thought I had gotten to the bare bones set of tools, I found I was wrong. I could get rid of more.
What proved me wrong? My tool chest.
When I defined my working set of tools as only the tools in my chest, I found myself becoming less of a zookeeper and more of a woodworker. I now know exactly how much backlash is in every metallic plane I own. When I pick up each of my planes, I can tell if someone else has been using them – I don’t know how. Because I have one jointer, one jack and two smoothing planes, I spend less time sharpening and cleaning and lubricating, and I spend more time building.
Some of this drivel above might sound like a rehash of themes from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” – and perhaps it is. But I can tell you that after two years of working with a small set of tools, these ideas have become even more entrenched in my day-to-day life.
And here’s the important part: As I have become more skilled with the basic set of tools, I see no need (for me) to buy specialty tools.
It’s the specialty tools that can get you. The Stanley 98/99 planes sure look handy to widen dados. But instead I just make the mating shelf thinner with my jack. A bullnose plane looks good for cleaning up stopped rabbets, but chisels are just as fast. Dado planes look like a quick way to knock a carcase together. A sash saw and chisel, however, are almost as fast and are already sharp and set up.
I could go on like this for pages and pages when it comes to specialty tools.
I’m not saying that specialty tools shouldn’t exist – if you do repair work most of the day, you probably are going to need a chisel plane. But if your work isn’t specialized (note that I didn’t say “special”), I think that specialty tools should be way low on your list of things to acquire, down next to “gut punch” and “recreational colonoscopy.”
Caveat: OK, if you like to collect tools and that makes you happy, then by all means collect tools. Collect thousands of them. Take care of them, preserve them for future generations and learn all you can about them. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that you need all of them if you really just want to build chests, cabinets, tables and chairs.
If construction (not collecting) is your goal, find some way to limit yourself – a tool chest is one way – so you can be a better builder than you are a consumer.
I have worn out, torn out and discarded more shop aprons than I can count. Most aprons are made poorly from crap materials. Many are too heavy and hot, or they are too flimsy and like a peek-a-boo shop teddy.
But I have high hopes for my new shop apron. Made by Chris Hughes of Artifact Bag Co, my latest shop apron is made from 14 oz. waxed cotton and is riveted and tacked in all the right places (all these Roorkhee chairs this year have given me a new appreciation for the sewing arts).
My wife, Lucy, bought this apron for me in December. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’d just about worn out my shop apron from Duluth Trading, and I was already weary of its knee length. I’m a modest guy, but the Duluth apron was positively Victorian – all it needed was a hoop skirt and bustle to complete the effect.
The Artifact apron is like a second skin, and it ends right below the crotch. It slips easily over your head and the ties remain restrained by the grommets until you pull them out behind your back. The pockets are snug, which means they won’t fill with shavings and other debris while you work.
My apron is the one in rust canvas with white tape. There are other colors and models available to suit your style or your budget. My apron cost $98, which seems expensive until you try to make any high-quality cloth or leather goods yourself (thank you Roorkhee chairs for that lesson).
Looking around at contemporary furniture, one is more and more conscious of how little there is of really pleasant, comfortable attractive design for the ordinary men and women who want just that in their home and can feel no enthusiasm for freakishness or oddity or the bleakness of peg-legs and the like in the furniture they have to live with.
And how utterly bleak those peg-legs will look when the novelty and newness have worn off and only the barren, unimaginative ugliness remains.
Woodcraft Supply LLC caught a rash of criticism in recent years for introducing tools that were Chinese-made copies of current American-made tools. First Woodcraft started carrying hammers that were obvious copies of the Glen-Drake hammers. Then the company introduced its line of WoodRiver handplanes that were – in my opinion – merely imported copies of Lie-Nielsen planes.
This copying lead to some hand-tool makers severing their ties with Woodcraft – most notably Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. And there have been some hard feelings and behind-the-scenes grumbling about Woodcraft, which for years carried the hand-tool banner when few other companies would.
Now I don’t have inside information on Woodcraft. I’m just a hand-tool customer and observer – I’m no longer a woodworking journalist. But recently I’ve noticed that Woodcraft has been coming out with hand tool products that aren’t just copies of other tools that are in production by competitors. It’s refreshing to see this. So I want to encourage the behavior and tip my hat to them.
Earlier this year I saw two new spokeshaves from Woodcraft under the Pinnacle name that showed real spirit. The shaves are based on the venerable Stanley 151 platform, but the company has made them out of stainless. That’s a new thing. And they look like they are based on original patterns – not just cast copies of someone else’s tool.
I have yet to try the shaves (I have two spokeshaves already), but I definitely will test drive them next time I’m in my local Woodcraft.
Also notable: Woodcraft has recently released its new No. 92 shoulder plane under the WoodRiver name. While this shoulder plane shares DNA with the fantastic and extinct Preston shoulder plane line, Woodcraft made the tool its own by improving the design a bit by adding an adjustable toe. The company also added some stylistic details marking it as its own.
It’s a 3/4”-wide plane, which wouldn’t be my first choice for a shoulder plane, but it still looks pretty good and is definitely not a copy.
Perhaps this is a trend or the work of Jody Garrett, who was named the new president of the company in May 2012. Or perhaps I’m just grasping at straws. In either case, I hope Woodcraft continues on this course by adding diversity to the hand-tool market instead of just copying the successful designs of others.
The upcoming publication of two books of the translated works of A.J. Roubo (1739-1791) has been the most time-consuming, complex and expensive publishing project I have ever been involved in. It has confused some of our customers – what will be in each book? What won’t? Should I buy the deluxe version? Are these books even worth reading?
I hope that this blog entry will answer those questions.
First, a bit about the original books. A.J. Roubo was an 18th-century “menuisier” – a highly trained third-generation craftsman who served a formal apprenticeship. Between 1769 and 1774 he published five volumes that cover the following woodworking topics:
1. Tools and Architectural Woodwork
2. Carriage Making
3. Furniture Making
4. Marquetry and Finishing
5. Garden Woodwork
These five volumes were assembled into three books that measure 12” x 18-1/8” each. The first book contains volumes one and two. The second book contains volume three. The third book has volumes four and five.
Through determination and dumb luck, I own a full set of these original 18th-century books in mint condition. That’s not a boast – we had to possess the originals to ensure the reproduction quality was perfect for our books. I had all the plates in the books scanned by a company that does museum-quality work for our books.
The 18th-century editions are not the only ones out there. In 1977, Leonce Laget published a reproduction of the original five volumes (again bound into three books). These books are slightly smaller than the originals – 11-1/2” x 17. The print quality is good, but I think we can do better.
This 1977 edition was limited to 500 copies. Yes, we own a complete set here at Lost Art Press, which we use for day-to-day reference. There also is a 1982 version of the books published by Laget that I have not seen.
There also is a third version of the books published by La Bibliothèque de l’image in 2002. These are softcover and are in an even smaller format. I once had a set of these but gave them to a French-speaking friend to enjoy.
About the Translation Process
Enter Don Williams and his team of translators, who have been taking the 18th-century French and putting it into 21st-century English.
Several people have said the following to me during the last four years: “What is taking so dang long? Just type the text into Google Translate and be done with it.”
Try that for yourself. I promise that within a couple sentences you will be lost.
The French of the 18th century is not the French from my high school. Add the fact that you are dealing with an idiomatic trade language, and you will overwhelm any online translation program within a few words.
Roubo’s work is something that has to be translated word-by-word, trench-warfare style. It has to be matched up with the plates, with the idioms of the time, with the trade language and – here’s the hard part – it has to make sense in the end.
Before I got involved with this project I translated several parts of Roubo’s writings on my own with the help of my French skills, my wife’s formidable in-country French skills and all the reference material you could want.
It took us about two hours to translate a single paragraph.
Translating this stuff has been a long process. Every word, every comma and every footnote has to be analyzed and carefully massaged into English. Otherwise it’s just gibberish that isn’t worth reading.
The translation started with Michele Pietryka-Pagán, who made a fairly literal translation of the text, and passed it to Don Williams. Don – using the plates plus his knowledge of woodworking, marquetry and finishing – adjusted the wording to ensure it was technically correct. Then it went to Philippe LaFargue, a native French speaker and craftsman who has read the original text. He checked the translation against the original work to ensure the translation was (again) technically correct and captured the essence – and flow – of Roubo’s original words.
Meanwhile, Don has been preparing a set of 10 additional essays that will amplify certain parts of the text. There is an essay on sawing veneer where Don builds a sawing frame – called a “standing saw” – plus the bench for it and makes veneer à la Roubo. There are several marquetry essays where Don executes exercises shown in Roubo, using the tools and jigs shown in the plates.
These 10 short essays will appear in our book, along with photographs of the processes that Don explains. And that brings us to what we will be publishing in 2013 and 2014.
About the Two Lost Art Press Books
Lost Art Press is publishing two books. The first is “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.” It will be released in the first quarter of 2013. The second book is “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Furniture.” It should be out in 2014.
You can read the table of contents for each book in this blog entry. As you can see from the contents, each book covers a broad spectrum of woodworking processes. The marquetry book, for example, includes Roubo’s writing on wood as a raw material, how to dye or color it, general finishing operations, many tool descriptions and the section on Roubo’s German workbench, which has not been published in English as far as I know.
Personally, I would purchase both books, even though I do not have a burning interest in marquetry. I have been riveted to this first volume for months and have soaked in so much new information it’s like being a beginning woodworker again. Don, who has been in the trade for 40 years, had the same experience. Don has called the author “Roubo the transformer.” I couldn’t agree more.
On top of all that, W. Patrick Edwards of the American School of French Marquetry has agreed to write the introduction to “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.”
Two Versions of the Two Books Now here is where things get a little complicated. We are going to publish two versions of each of the above two books. For each book – marquetry and furniture – there will be a fancy limited-edition version and a standard hardbound version.
All of these books will be designed by Wesley Tanner, a woodworker and life-long book designer. You can see some his work at Passim Editions.
The fancy limited-edition version of the book will have the following qualities:
1. It will be printed in 12” x 17” format, very similar to the 18th-century size.
2. It will be in full color. That means the plates will be the same color as they are in the original – the ink isn’t exactly black. And all of the photos for Don’s essays will be in color.
3. The plates will be published in their full and original size.
4. The paper and binding will be of the highest quality.
5. Customers who order before the end of January 2013 will have their name listed in the book as a “subscriber.”
6. The book will be printed and bound entirely in the United States, like all Lost Art Press books.
7. There will be a limited number of these books – probably 500. Once these copies are sold, there will be no more.
8. The cost for this book will be about $400 (I hope it will be a little less). We are now taking $100 deposits for this book here. Everyone who makes a deposit before Jan. 31, 2013, will receive one of these books.
9. We are taking international orders for this special edition. Contact John Hoffman at john@lostartpress.com for details on placing a deposit via PayPal.
10. When we publish the Roubo book on furniture, we will make the same pre-publication offer as we did for marquetry. So everyone who wants a special version of that book will be guaranteed one if they make a deposit.
11. We hope to have this book available in March 2013. If you make a deposit on the book we will contact you personally to complete the transaction when the book is ready to ship.
The standard hardbound version of this book will have the following qualities:
1. It will be printed in a smaller format, something closer to 8-1/2” x 11”.
2. It will be in black and white.
3. The plates will be published in reduced size to fit the smaller format.
4. The paper and binding will be similar to other Lost Art Press books – acid-free paper and Smythe-sewn binding.
5. We will have a pre-publication offer for this book when we get closer to the release date.
6. The book will be printed and bound entirely in the United States, like all Lost Art Press books.
7. This books will stay in print as long as we are in business.
8. The cost for this book will be about $60.
9. This book will be sold internationally through our retailers overseas. See our international retailers here.
10. We hope to have this book available in March 2013.
Frequently asked questions about the Roubo translation books:
Will there be Kindle and ePub versions of these books?
Yes, but I don’t know when they will be released. We want to ensure that the plates are extremely high in resolution so you can zoom as close as possible. As a result, we will have to electronically rebuild the books for Kindle and ePub. But I am confident this will happen.
Will you publish a CD or book of just the plates?
This is a common question, and the answer is: I don’t know. I’ve been staring at the plates alone for years. And while there is good information presented in them, things really come alive when you add the text. So my gut is to focus our efforts on ePub and Kindle versions of the book. That will make the plates portable, explorable and still understandable. I’m not saying we won’t offer the plates by themselves at some point, but it is not a high priority.
Will you publish translated books on architecture, carriage-making or garden woodwork?
If we do this it won’t be in the near future. These two books have consumed so much energy from so many people during the last four years that some of us need a break to pursue other projects that we have set aside in the name of Roubo. We are open to the idea of doing the other volumes, but we have a long list of things that have to be done prior.
Can my woodworking club/hospital/orphanage receive a free copy?
Sad to say, no. We don’t take free tools, books or wood. We don’t carpet-bomb the media with free Lost Art Press books in the hope of a kind word. And we don’t discount our products or give them out for free.
Will you sell boxed sets of both books?
I don’t know. Maybe.
Can I buy the book and electronic edition at a discount?
We don’t bundle our products much. In general, our philosophy is to offer our products at the best price possible. We don’t jack up the price of our products so we can give you a discount on a bundle of several products. We prefer to have a price, stick to it and charge everyone the same price. We don’t want to spend our time (or yours) playing games with the numbers. We’d rather be woodworking or making books.
No one is going to get a big paycheck for this book. Don and his team should have spent their time in law school instead of translating Roubo (if they wanted to get rich, that is). All woodworking books and magazines are works of love. They are the most difficult thing to publish (except for peer-reviewed medical literature). You do this because you love it. I can look anyone in the eye and ask $400 for this book.
And if you don’t like the price, wait a few years. I’m sure it will go down and you can score it on AbeBooks for $20. </sarcasm>