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Shipping Update: ‘To Make as Perfectly as Possible’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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John Hoffman says that – except for a few international orders – all of the pre-ordered copies of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” are in the hands of the U.S. Postal Service.

That means if you ordered a deluxe or standard copy of the book before the book was released at Woodworking in America, your book is on its way.

We apologize for the time-consuming process. John and his son, Jacob, have been personally packing every box since the minute John returned from Woodworking in America. For the deluxe editions, we had to use a special box and packing materials that required some custom cardboard fabrication (thanks, band saw).

John and Jacob are now shipping out all the other orders that have come in since WIA, including T-shirts.

If you have had a problem with your shipment and have not reported it to us, please let John know at john@lostartpress.com. If you have reported it, we ask for a little patience during this busy time of year.

Speaking of busy, “The Art of Joinery: Revised Edition” is on its way to John’s garage as I type this.

I should probably send them a case of Red Bull and vodka.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you want to make the publisher happy, rip the plastic condom off your deluxe edition and start reading it. The book is tough enough to withstand even the sharpest gaze.

And…cut!

Posted on by fitz

The core “Virtuoso” team is currently returning to a normal orbit after the fourth (and ostensibly last) pilgrimage to the Studley tool chest. As Chris has described elsewhere, after this visit I can finally check off a nagging item on my “Virtuoso” to-do list: getting the tool chest off the wall.

Writing up a list of to-dos has preceded every single trip to the tool chest, (which, if you’re wondering, is located on floor 7–1/2 of the ACME Corporation headquarters in West Alahampshiresippi). For our first visit, the tasks were largely centered on achieving as much breadth as possible with a brute-force documentary survey of the chest and every single item in it. Subsequent trips focused on specifics such as joinery or inlay, the bench and its vises, specific tool groupings and “non-documentary” photography.

The list for this last trip may have featured the fewest number of things to get done, but the list was perhaps the most logistically ambitious. The to-dos for this trip included getting the chest off the wall, photographing the closed chest at 45° rotations, staging various “ensemble” shots of the chest and its accompanying bench and shooting a video. I also brought a new, higher-resolution camera this time and wanted to redo a select number of shots from earlier trips just to have a few more pixels to work with.

In 2.5 days we set up four or five distinct “sets” for still photography and video, captured views of the chest that very few people have ever seen, and then packed everything up. As with every trip to North Texassourington, we left exhausted, exhilarated and inspired.

Don opening the chest

While we’ve posted many informal videos since we began this project, the video footage we shot this time will be released in concert with the book (details TBD). The video will feature the wealth of knowledge and some of the stories that Don has accumulated in his research on Henry O. Studley, his tool chest and his bench. I also spent some time in front of the camera droning on and on about the approach I took to the project and my perspective on the chest as a designer, woodworker, and photographer.

Studley Video Set

My favorite parts of the video footage, however, involve Don and I ’fessing up about which single Studley tool we would “keep” were we not the fine, upstanding individuals that we are. We had different answers that won’t be revealed until the video is released, but feel free to guess. There are only a few hundred to choose from.

— Narayan Nayar

Fleischmann’s Deluxe Type Design and A.-J. Roubo

Posted on by Lost Art Press

fleischmann_sampleWhen Chris gave me the design brief to work on the Lost Art Press edition of “L’art du menuisier,” I realized that I had the opportunity to design two editions for two distinct groups of readers. One for the hands-on user in the workshop, and the other would be for readers who might enjoy a book evocative of the time of its creation. These two designs, within the parlance of the Roubo translators group, became known as the Standard and Deluxe editions. As different readers, and different printing techniques, would bring different demands, separate typographic treatments would be used for each edition.

The design of the deluxe edition takes the ambiance of the 18th-century book for its design cues; early 20th-century book designers, most notably Bruce Rogers, termed this “allusive typography.” Hallmarks of the Rococo book include the substitution of type ornament for woodcuts, a rationalized system of titling (breaking the chapters into discrete parts, and giving them subheadings), and the use of Baroque typefaces. Each of these changes marks the progress toward the industrialized production techniques of the 19th-century: the change from hand-press platen to the cylinder press; rationalization of scientific inquiry; a narrowing of the letterforms, together with shorter descenders and a tendency towards a more brilliant style of cutting. This Baroque style in type design marks its beginning with Hungarian Miklós Kis in the 1690s, continues with the French founder Pierre Simon Fournier in the 1740s, and finds its nadir with Johann Michael Fleischmann’s work in the 1760s for the Enschédé Foundry. Furniture makers can find a similar stylistic transition from William & Mary through Federal.

Fleischmann types, finding themselves eclipsed by the modern styles, fell out of fashion and disappeared from use; but for an edition like “To Make as Perfectly as Possible,” his types are perfect. Happily in the early 1990s, the Dutch Type Library was able to find Erhard Kaiser in Leipzig to create the digital drawings using the original copy of Enschédé’s 1768 specimen book.

Fleischmann (1701 – 1768)
Fleischmann (1701 – 1768)

Types created during the 400 years of printing were entirely cut by hand, letter by letter, and each size was adjusted for its optical size. After the invention of the pantograph, most types were created using only one master set of drawings. This has continued to be largely the case with the current group of digital fonts. A few fonts have been designed with optical scaling in mind: a set of drawings for sizes 12 point and below, known as Text; a Display set for 14 point and above. DTL Fleischmann is one of these. In the deluxe edition of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible,” the footnotes, sidenotes and the editor’s comments on process have were set in the Text version; Roubo’s text and most of the headings were set using the Display set.

As part of the international support for the Roubo project we are grateful to Frank E. Blokland at Dutch Type Library in Amsterdam for loaning us a copy of DTL Fleischmann to use in the design of the Roubo volumes.

— Wesley Tanner

Next: Tending the Typographic Garden.

Loading the Studley Tool Chest (And Settling Old Scores)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

The first time I helped load up the H.O. Studley tool chest with all its tools, I thought the task would be easy. I thought it would take less than an hour.

More than four hours later, we were still trying to thread all the little drill bits into all the little holes. And somewhere, H.O. Studley was laughing.

This year, during our fourth visit to this iconic tool chest, we had a plan. Plus, I have been doing finger exercises for months (mostly picking the noses of our five cats) in order to be able to thread my sausages through the latticework of mahogany, ebony and mother-of-pearl.

Today we loaded the chest in less than 45 minutes.

We shot this video, which has been sped up to 20x normal speed, to demonstrate our extreme dexterity.

I know you will watch this in awe.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Tool I’ve Always Wanted: A Take-down Square

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Because I travel a lot with my tools, every ounce and inch (centimeter and kilogram) is critical.

I usually push the weight limit for luggage, so compact tools can mean the difference between bringing my own underwear and having to purchase some foreign undies that might just lift and separate things that should be neither lifted nor separated on a man (see also: my trip to Italy this June).

So I’ve always wanted a take-down framing square – it’s a standard carpentry tool that separates into two pieces for travel. It’s brilliant for travel. But I’d never buy one online – they have a reputation for being abused and out of square.

While I was teaching this weekend at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School, I sneaked up to Ed Lebetkin’s tool-porn-a-go-go store and examined three of the take-down squares he had for sale. All three were out of whack. But Roy thought he could fix one of them with a little metalwork.

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It took a couple hours of filing, cleaning and peening, but he transformed this Pexto SR-100 into a factory-perfect jewel. The parts click when they slide together. And the cam lock snugs up everything tight.

I can now get rid of the old framing square I’ve had since college. Anyone want it? Come and get it. The only catch is you also have to take two pairs of pink and gray Italian undies.

And thanks Roy.

— Christopher Schwarz

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