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>
While other magazines, books and television shows promise you the “ultimate” router table, it’s only Lost Art Press that dares to show you the “Death Row Router Table.”
Before you watch the video, please endure the following story. And before you comment on this article, read every word of this article.
For the April 2000 issue of Popular Woodworking I wrote a story about the woodworking that is done by death-row inmates. It was a topic that took me more than a year to research and write.
For the most part, death-row inmates aren’t permitted to use machines or many power tools, and yet despite their isolation and the limitations put upon them, they build some amazing things. Imagine if you had limited materials, limited tools but (nearly) unlimited time.
That is why the story really interested me – it was a story about woodworking that occurs in some of the most unlikely places.
But you can’t write about anything dealing with the death penalty and avoid controversy. My story never took a stand on the death penalty and didn’t make the subjects out to be particularly sympathetic – I made sure to mention their crimes in the story. Yet, several readers cancelled their subscriptions – one reader even taped the pages of that story together so that he would never encounter it again.
And my boss at the time has said several times in public that we shouldn’t have published that story. I disagree with him. But that’s not why I’m telling you this story.
During my reporting I went down to visit Kentucky’s death row at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Ky., and take some photos of the woodwork of the inmates. It was my first visit to a death row and as you can imagine, it was pretty spooky. The Eddyville facility is on Lake Barkley and looks like a foreboding castle overlooking a gorgeous river.
The warden of the prison, like all corrections officials I’ve dealt with in my career, was as open and as hospitable as possible. He gave us a lengthy tour of the facility, let us take as many photos as I liked and showed us an amazing display of prisoner-made weapons they had confiscated.
The most incredible thing about the weapons was how often little bits of woodworking equipment were used in making shanks – red clamp handles were a common handle. Jigsaw blades were a common blade.
During our tour, the Eddyville officers showed us the woodworking shop, where the prisoners made furniture for state offices and to learn a skill. And that’s where I saw this “router table.”
Note that the death row inmates weren’t allowed into the woodworking shop, so calling this a “death row” router table is completely disingenuous – just like every other router table story ever published. But this router table was the only thing the prisoners used – both for pattern-routing and for edge-forming.
I thought it was quite ingenious.
Note that I’m not advocating you do this in your shop. The safety police will come to your house and de-louse you and then take your router away forever. And if the safety nannies post comments here on this router table, I’m going to delete them – so be forewarned.
I am presenting this video as a nearly lost art and a document of how woodworking is done behind bars because it is interesting. I am not glorifying criminals. I’m not telling you to do something unsafe – no more than stories about airplane crashes encourage more airplane crashes.
This is going to sound like marketing garbage. It really isn’t.
Several readers have requested that we extend the deadline for taking pre-publication orders of the forthcoming deluxe edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.”
These readers have requested the extension because they have lots of bills due from the holiday season – and an extra 30 days would help them shore up their finances before placing the $100 deposit on the book.
Because we haven’t placed our order with the printer yet, we can extend the deadline. And so we will.
That means you now have until Jan. 31, 2013, to place a $100 deposit on the luxe edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” and have your name listed in the book as a “Subscriber.”
For more details on this version of the book, read our description in the store here.
This week I’ll post an update on the Roubo project and include an FAQ on all the Roubo-related books in the pipeline.
Between bouts of loading 6,000 pounds of books, several holiday dinners and shoveling snow, I managed to make some progress on the Dutch tool chest.
I added two coats of General Finishes Milk Paint – lamp black color. I have serious doubts how much “milk” is in this paint, but the stuff is easy to brush or spray when wet, and it is tough as heck when dry. Plus it has that chalky look in the end.
I added one tool rack in the top area of the chest (with another to come) and made some handles. I wanted to use oak for the handles, but I have so many mahogany scraps left from building Roorkhee chairs this year that I couldn’t imagine going out and buying a plank of 8/4 oak for this.
The handles aren’t really Dutch. I made mine to look like old bearing blocks or maybe a mantle clock. The ends were laid out using basic geometry and a compass. The round bits are scraps from Roorkhee chair stretchers that I turned down to size and added a couple details.
I’ll make the saw till for the lid tonight. Then I’ll set the project aside to wait for the hinges and hasp.
Next up: A portable workbench.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. The casters are NOS (new old stock) stuff from the 1940s that I found on eBay. They are made in America, move as smoothly as a goose on ex-lax and cost me less than $20.
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.
