With the release of our 1:4 Dovetail Template, which is now in the shop alongside our slightly older 1:6 & 1:8 combo Dovetail Template, I’ve received a few emails from folks lamenting there’s no way on our site to tell the difference both in how they look and how the resulting do … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker,” by Anonymous, Christopher Schwarz and Joel Moskowitz. It begins in 1839. In that year, an English publisher issued a small book on woodworking that has – until now – escaped detection by scholars, historians and wood … | Continue reading
If you have a question about one of our books or tools, or something that has been bugging you about what we do here in the shop, this is the place to get an answer. Every Saturday, I’ll post a new blog entry that calls for your questions. You can write them in the comments... | Continue reading
I haven’t had a public email address for many years, and that has been good for my productivity and sanity. But readers do have legitimate questions about my work, and so they usually try to get to me through Megan or our customer service account. And so Megan and everyone else h … | Continue reading
It will come as no surprise to those who know me that I got distracted by other work…and that I forgot it takes me five times longer (at least) to do things with a camera pointed at me than when no one is watching. And that is why the video I promised a few weeks... | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from “Woodworking in Estonia,” by Ants Viires; translation by Mart Aru. It’s one of Roy Underhill’s three favorite woodworking books, but you can’t buy a copy of it for love or money. Translated into English without the author’s permission in the late 1 … | Continue reading
We have our first batch of 1:4 Dovetail Templates available for immediate shipment. They are $51 plus shipping. Made in Nicholasville, Ky., by Machine Time. The 1:4 slope is my favorite. I use it for all my dovetail joints, both in hardwood and softwood. It’s bolder than the 1:6 … | Continue reading
This lowback stick chair is made using a stash of old Honduras mahogany I have been sitting on since writing “Campaign Furniture.” The mahogany had been sitting for decades at Midwest Woodworking until they closed a few years back. This chair is made from one single board, so the … | Continue reading
I am delighted to report that, late on Monday, I sent Jögge Sundqvist’s latest book, “Karvsnitt: Carving, Pattern & Color in the Slöjd Tradition,” off for pre-press and proofing. (It should be available in around 7-8 weeks, and will likely be less than $50.) Below is a sneak peek … | Continue reading
Registration has opened for Handworks 2023, which will be held Sept. 1-2 in Amana, Iowa. The event is free – registration helps the organizers determine the approximate attendance. Handworks is – hands down – the best woodworking show I have ever attended, and I have attended hun … | Continue reading
My daughter Katherine has posted a small batch of Soft Wax 2.0 in her store. (The lipstick maker’s switch crapped out, so she had to use a nacho cheese maker, which mixes smaller amounts…for reasons we fail to understand. Who doesn’t want to make 8 gallons of nacho cheese at a ti … | Continue reading
When I came to “A Vampire Chair,” while copy editing Issue No. 1 of The Stick Chair Journal, I side-eyed my own stick chair in my house. Without even reading the first sentence, I thought, There’s more than one? Turns out the story in The Stick Chair Journal is about a fabled cha … | Continue reading
I’m working on a future money-losing project in my spare time: a nice letterpress card that helps readers convert fractions to both decimals and metric measurements. Sure, you can make these conversions on your phone, but I prefer to see all the data at once, especially when tryi … | Continue reading
I have just finished this seven-stick comb-back chair, in 2,000-year-old bog oak, that is set up for dining or use as in an office. I’m offering it for sale here via silent auction. Details are below. First, some specifics on the chair. This seven-stick chair is made from bog oak … | Continue reading
One of the best things we make, our Workshop Waist Apron, is back in stock. We have 500, so I hope they will last us a while. The aprons are $50, which might seem like a lot of money for something you can buy at the home center for $5. I assure you that our... | Continue reading
We now have a dedicated page at our store for our popular pocket book series. You can reach it anytime under the Books menu in the store. You’ll also find other helpful collections of books there. Want to know what are our best selling books? It’s there. (We don’t control what is … | Continue reading
We were simply overwhelmed by your generosity of so many donations in Nancy Hiller’s name to support The Ranch Cat Rescue – a rescue in Nancy’s adopted hometown of Bloomington, Ind. (and that Nancy continues to support in perpetuity with 10 percent of net sales of her book “Shop … | Continue reading
Chris Williams is visiting from Wales this summer to teach two Welsh comb-back chair classes in our shop. Session 1 is June 5-9; Session 2 is June 12-16. Registration opens for both today (March 15, 2023) at 9 a.m. eastern on our ticketing site. – Fitz | Continue reading
“Mechanic’s Companion” is one of the foundational English-language texts in woodworking and the building trades. First published in 1812, “Mechanic’s Companion” is an invaluable and thorough treatment of techniques, with 40 plates that provide an excellent and detailed look at th … | Continue reading
Next week I teach a class here in building the lowback stick chair from “The Stick Chair Book” to a class of six students. Our lumberyard was low on straight-grained 8/4 red oak that was ideal for chairmaking, and I barely squeaked out enough material for six chairs. I always bui … | Continue reading
Read “Meet the Author: John Porritt (Part 1)” here. Early on John Porritt (author of “The Belligerent Finisher“) enjoyed playing around with bits of wood in his spare time. In the early 1970s, he carved a face into a piece of hazel and strung it onto leather as a necklace. He use … | Continue reading
There are but three days remaining to donate to the Nancy Hiller Ranch Cat Rescue Memorial Fund, and be entered in our raffle to win a gorgeous cover carving from Nancy’s last book, “Shop Tails,” and a copy of the book. Ten percent of net profits from “Shop Tails” – a tribute to … | Continue reading
Four years ago today, the parent company of Popular Woodworking Magazine, F+W Media, filed for bankruptcy. And in short order the company was chopped up and sold at auction to other publishing companies and venture/vulture capitalists. Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky are filled … | Continue reading
We are thrilled to welcome Welsh chairmaker Chris Williams back to Lost Art Press this summer to teach two week-long chairmaking classes in our storefront. Chris worked with John Brown making chairs for almost a decade, and Chris has continued making chairs in this Welsh traditio … | Continue reading
The Veritas Power Tenon Cutters are incredible tools. They are based on the old hollow auger tools, but they are easier to set, maintain and use. They make perfect round tenons, and you don’t have to use a drill to power them. I have used a brace, and my right hand at times, to m … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from “James Krenov: Leave Fingerprints,” by Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney. After years of research and more than 150 interviews, Gaffney produced the first and definitive biography of Krenov, featuring historical documents, press clippings and hundreds of h … | Continue reading
We’ve reprinted “Ingenious Mechanicks,” Christopher Schwarz’s tour de force on workbenches of yore, with a new cover – and this new printing is now in stock (we’ve been out of the previous one for a few weeks now). The cover’s new die stamp is shown above…but I’ll need you to ima … | Continue reading
Sometimes students ask what they can do to prepare for a class in handwork at our storefront. In the past, I’ve told students to sharpen their tools and try to read up on the project or the topic we’re covering in the class. But I don’t think that’s enough. I’ve been teaching woo … | Continue reading
John Porritt, author of “The Belligerent Finisher,” has been designing and building furniture, restoring furniture and tools, as well as making chairs inspired by older Welsh stick chairs and English country Windsor chairs for more than four decades. Born in 1953 in a military h … | Continue reading
Megan is teaching a Dutch tool chest class during the next three days, so today is all about dovetails in the bench room. It’s also all about dovetails at our warehouse – we have just restocked with Crucible Dovetail Templates. They are ready to ship. These handy little tools mar … | Continue reading
For the last year I’ve been building chairs using slabs of bog oak that are 2,000 years old (according to a carbon dating test) and was harvested in Poland. Furniture maker Andy Brownell is responsible for starting me down this path. He offered me some scraps of bog oak from one … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from “Chairmaker’s Notebook,” by Peter Galbert, from the section on tools for seat carving. Whether you are an aspiring professional chairmaker, an experienced green woodworker or a home woodworker curious about the craft, “Chairmaker’s Notebook” is an … | Continue reading
After many months of study and research, John and I have decided to take a big and overdue step with Lost Art Press. We are now planning to bring fulfillment in-house and do it here in Covington, Kentucky. For the first six years of Lost Art Press, our families fulfilled every or … | Continue reading
If I lived and worked alone, music would play almost 24 hours a day. (In fact, on the rare occasion when Lucy leaves town, that is exactly what happens.) Many times it’s the radio (WMOT-FM is a favorite). Or an album or playlist based on my mood. We play music in the bench room d … | Continue reading
We are all but out of chair badges. The very few left are for those letters/pictures/SASEs already on their way to us in the mail stream (and I’m fervently hoping we have enough for those…I’ll fulfill them on a first-come, first-served basis if I don’t have enough). So I’m afraid … | Continue reading
On Friday, I knocked together a cupboard inspired by Romanian peasant furniture for my next book, “The American Peasant.” The piece was made entirely by hand, but using Western tools instead of Eastern European ones. All the joints are drawbored and glued (with gelatin glue I mad … | Continue reading
If you don’t want to mix up your own soap finish – or if you just want to give it a try – the Pure Soap Flake Co. offers it pre-mixed in jars for as little as $10. The product is called Pure Castile Cream Soap, and it is available in 8 oz. to 64... | Continue reading
The following is from “Hands Employed Aright: The Furniture Making of Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847),” by Joshua Klein. Fisher was the first settled minister of the frontier town of Blue Hill, Maine. Harvard-educated and handy with an axe, Fisher spent his adult life building furnit … | Continue reading
For the last 20 years I’ve used mostly milk paints and acrylics on my furniture. I have reservations about both kinds of paint. On milk paint, I find it inconsistent and a lot of work. When it works, it’s great. But it takes significant effort and time (for me) to get good result … | Continue reading
Over the last 18 months, I’ve taken two different classes at the LAP storefront— Chris’ stick chair class and Megan’s Dutch tool chest class. As a repeat customer, I had a much better sense of what to expect from my second class than my first, and Megan encouraged me to share so … | Continue reading
We’ve just received another load of brass engraved center squares, which are now in our store. Whenever I’m building a chair or working with curved surfaces, this tool is always on my bench or in my apron pocket. Yes, the tool is useful for marking the centers on a piece before p … | Continue reading
After 20 years of studying vernacular chairs in Western cultures, I am happy to state – again and again – something that some people refuse to believe. Chairs do not need stretchers to be strong or to last hundreds of years. The furniture record is clear. Chairs without stretcher … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from George Walker and Jim Tolpin’s first book collaboration, “By Hand & Eye.” (The projects in the book, including this one, are by Tolpin.) It’s the book that kicked off their “Artisan Geometry” work, which now includes four books: “By Hand & Eye,” “B … | Continue reading
Next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Eastern, registration will be open on our ticketing site for classes in the second half of this year – including two from visiting instructors. (Note that if you click through to read more about each class, you’ll see a “buy tickets” button – but you can’t … | Continue reading
One of Nancy Hiller’s last “jobs” (which she insisted on doing herself) was recording the audio version of her final book, “Shop Tails” (an often grueling job on a book that clocked in, after final editing, at almost 12 hours). We posted it on the LAP store just hours after we go … | Continue reading
My daughter Katherie has posted about 40 jars of Soft Wax 2.0 in her store, and I have bought the first one (we are out of it, and I asked her to make some). We love this finish I use on my chairs and casework. I adore it. Katherine cooks it up here in the... | Continue reading
The following short story was passed to me by a guy at the John C. Campbell Folk School, and it is well worth reading, especially if you are a vernacular chair nerd. Published in the Christian Science Monitor in 1986 (the year I graduated high school), the short story “I’d Like t … | Continue reading
When you encounter a person who is an incredibly talented woodworker, designer and teacher, it’s natural to wonder, “Why hasn’t this person written a book and become a famous author?” I’ve met a lot of these people. I’ve attempted to get some of them to write a book. I’ve succeed … | Continue reading