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.
Starting immediately, all of our packages will be shipped out of our Fishers, Ind., warehouse – aka my partner John Hoffman’s garage. This change has some good points and bad points for you, which is why I’m writing this blog entry.
First the good stuff.
Shipping and customer service will be much faster. During the last 18 months, my family has been shipping all of the orders from our Kentucky home. It worked OK, but it required me to juggle packing boxes, editing books, building furniture, blogging, writing freelance magazine articles and a somewhat crazy travel and teaching schedule.
So we would sometimes get behind. And when we made a mistake or a book was damaged in transit, it took us a few days to fix the problem.
Hoffman and his family have more space to warehouse the books and more time to deal with shipping and customer service.
So not only will your books ship faster, I’ll have more time to write and edit, which means more new books from Lost Art Press.
The bad news is that – for now – I won’t be able to directly autograph all of my books that we sell. Instead, each book will have a bookplate (the publishing world’s name for a sticker) affixed to the inside that I’ve signed. Yeah, I know it’s not ideal. But it’s the best solution we have right now. My 2013 travel schedule is the most brutal one yet, and adding monthly trips to Indiana to sign books just simply isn’t going to work.
These changes – good and bad – are the result of the growth of Lost Art Press. When we started five years ago, we mailed out three or four books a day on average. Now we’re shipping out more than 12,000 books a year to customers and our handful of retailers. And that’s a really low estimate – I am a bit afraid to do the math.
During the next few years, we plan to purchase a building and consolidate all of our operations – building, publishing and shipping – under one roof. We’re actively looking for an old building with a storefront, warehouse and living quarters. (The photo shown here is one we looked at last week.) But we are taking our time, and we refuse to borrow money and saddle the company with debt. Our accountant thinks we are nuts not to get a mortgage, by the way, but I’ve seen too many publishing companies drown in debt service.
So thanks for your support – that’s why we are growing. And apologies in advance for the temporary and poopy bookplate solution.
From WANDERING WOOD BUTCHER, Alexandria, La. In looking over the issue for December last, I noticed a plan of a tool chest furnished by “R. S. M.” of Dover,
Mass., which is only one of many plans that have appeared in the paper during the past 20 years. These have greatly interested me, but I observe that in nearly all cases one thing, which in my opinion leaves the chest incomplete, has been omitted, and that is an ample shoulder box or tray for carrying the tools to and from the place of work – a box 10 inches deep by 12 inches wide, which can be dropped into a chest as a tray or till when the day’s work is over, the key turned and the carpenter can go away at peace with himself and his fellow men. I dislike to see a carpenter come on a job in the morning with a hand full of tools and then make 10 to 15 trips during the day to the chest for more. Then when noon or night comes he is running all over the building, fussing with the other men about his tools being lost, stolen, or mislaid. If he is lucky enough to find them in the dark, or even the light, be has to drag them to his chest, possibly necessitating two trips in the operation. Such a chest is a poor excuse, no matter how nicely made and trimmed. In the box as above described a carpenter can take such tools as he usually requires, or the nature of the particular work demands, to any part of the building and have them always ready at hand. When the words “pick up” are given, he can do so in an instant and go home rejoicing, instead of feeling annoyed at the necessity of having been obliged to grope around in the rubbish for his tools. Another thing I might suggest in connection with tool chests is not to put such panel tops on them, but cover with galvanized iron so far as to make the chest sun proof and water proof, and baggage smasher proof, if good comer irons of the same material are put on with clout nails and clinched.
If one cannot have his chest arranged as above described, I would suggest at least having one of which he will not be ashamed to take it to a job or among strangers as an example of workmanship, skill and taste. Of late years it is not an uncommon sight to see men calling
themselves carpenters coming on a job with a gunny sack for a tool chest, or an old box picked up in the backyard of some store with the name of the manufacturer of snuff, tobacco, boots and shoes, or some other commodity printed all over it until it looks like a bill board or traveling advertisement. If for the latter purpose it is a great hit and a success, for it announces to every beholder that the owner is a hobo, tramp or fraud who travels for notoriety as a wandering wood butcher. Another thing I would suggest to the young chips is that if they cannot have many tools, make sure to have good ones and keep them in good order and looking clean. Do not be like two of those wandering wood butchers who by letter applied to me a few years ago for a job and described themselves “carpenters by profession.” I brought them 150 miles to work and found they had pieces of limbs of trees with the bark on for hammer handles and as soon as they landed took a saw in one hand and a file in another and went to nearly every man in the town, from the Section Boss to the Town Marshal, saying “Please, Mister, will you file me a saw?” Now the reader may not be able to understand the sort of an impression they made on the foreman, or what remarks the rest of the crew made about the foreman’s new hands, but I do. I did not hear the last of them for a year and even now I meet some one who refers to my “imported carpenters.” I would say to the young chip, though be he not a full-fledged carpenter, do not be ashamed or afraid to own up. Tell the boss the truth and nine times out of ten he will help you through, for he himself had to learn by having others show him. If you lie to him he will catch you in the course of time and then one may expect to hear some hard remarks. Right here is the reason some foremen are considered hard to work for and why they get a hard name. When you hear a man speaking hard of a foreman, you may safely assume there is something wrong with himself.
— Carpentry and Building, April 1903. Thanks to Jeff Burks for unearthing this gem.
I received the greatest gift today – I was freed from the obligation to see “Les Miserables.” So while all the fallopian-tubed individuals left the house for three hours, I beavered away on this Dutch tool chest.
I got the removable front panel complete and filled the house with the luxurious smell of turpentine after I cut into my special stash of old-growth yellow pine.
Usually when I build a tool chest, I use a white pine for the carcase and white oak for the parts that see abrasive wear (drawer runners etc.). But for this chest I decided to use some old yellow pine I scored this year. The pine was old growth – at least 30 rings to the inch – that had been reclaimed for a house job. I got the scraps.
This stuff is nothing like the yellow pine at the home centers. It is heavier than most maples, incredibly stable and tough. If I could find enough of it, I’d build another workbench out of it – it’s that good.
For this tool chest, I used yellow pine for the battens on the front and the locking mechanism that secures the front tight. I also used yellow pine for the two strips on the bottom of the chest.
And now to cook dinner.
If I don’t drink too much Maudite, I might have time to dress the chest lid (it’s still in the rough) and add the thumbnail profile to its edges.
