Sorry it’s been awhile since my last library post – I’ll try to finish up the not-yet-covered cubbies in the next month to six weeks (I believe there are still three or four to go). This week, I had to get out the stepladder and stand on my tippy toes to reach the top left... | Continue reading
I’m writing this on Friday night. There’s a small chance Megan and I will not survive to see a new day. We ate dinner at Purple Poulet, and the food there is so rich and delicious that our hearts might simply stop. But if we do live, we are happy to answer your woodworking questi … | Continue reading
Please forward this to any budding author in your life. It’s the last week of December, so our inbox is filling up with queries – people who want to write a book and would like us to publish it. We don’t accept unsolicited queries (it’s right here on our “About Us” page where it … | Continue reading
I love using Cold-Bend Hardwood for the bent parts of my stick chairs. During the last 10 years I have basically a 0 percent failure rate with the stuff (the only failure was my fault – more on that in a bit). When I steam-bend arms, I typically lose about one-third of my bends. … | Continue reading
Lost Art Press Editor Megan Fitzpatrick has been featured on The Queue – the American Craft Council’s column on noteworthy artisans and artists. Check out the feature here. Congrats Megan on some long-overdue recognition. — Christopher Schwarz | Continue reading
I keep telling myself that modern spade bits are not great, but they’re OK. But I am lying to myself. Anytime I use a NOS (New Old Stock) Irwin spade I am shocked by how good the old ones are compared to the modern stuff. During the last few chairmaking classes I taught, the mode … | Continue reading
The following is Excerpted from “Honest Labour,” a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while the legendary Charles H. Hayward was editor (1936-1966). This book is be the fifth and final volume in our series from The Woodworker. And here’s hoping that, if you want to … | Continue reading
Andy Glenn’s long-awaited book, “Backwoods Chairmakers,” is just about complete at the press in Tennessee. We should get the books sometime between Thursday and Jan. 4 (barring weather or other delays). If you order the book before midnight on Sunday, Dec. 31, you will receive fr … | Continue reading
Good tidings and joy! Today begins the Twelve Days of Tooltide and a new song for all woodworkers. This song will lift you from post-holiday doldrums and carry you, all bright and shining, into the first week of the new year. As with the making of dovetails, dowels for a stick c … | Continue reading
Between 1995 and 2001, chairmaker John Brown and Drew Langsner carried on extensive correspondence about JB’s classes at Country Workshops. In addition to discussing flights and fees, the two men wrote a lot about how they viewed the craft and the world today. During our research … | Continue reading
If this were corporate America, I would have been fired either today or on the Tuesday after Christmas (let him have a nice holiday with his family before we can him). Lost Art Press shrank about 6 percent in 2023 across the board – that’s sales, revenue, numbers of orders and vi … | Continue reading
With family things happening here this weekend, the storefront doors will not be open until around 11:30 a.m., and we will close at 4 p.m. – just in case anyone is planning a visit for a last-minute woodworking gift (and you might instead consider a Lost Art Press gift certificat … | Continue reading
The hardest thing we do here is apparel. No matter what we offer, people want it in a different color, style, size range or material. About 90 percent of items returned by customers are apparel, typically when a garment doesn’t fit like the buyer hoped. Rather than just dump our … | Continue reading
Right after breakfast, Amelia helped Amos, her grandfather, bring in enough firewood to last for several days. Snow was expected in a day or two and he wanted to be prepared. Amelia loaded baskets into her grandfather’s old garden wagon and helped him unload and stack the wood in … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from Jögge Sundqvist’s “Karvsnitt: Carving, Pattern & Color in the Slöjd Tradition.” This gorgeous book (we can say that without being braggadocious because we replicated the design from the Swedish original) teaches you techniques for cutting triangle … | Continue reading
Katherine managed to make another batch of wax this week. I’m guessing she has some vet bills to pay because Bean now has a younger brother. Meet Billy! He has a bobtail, and he pretty much purrs with happiness every moment he’s awake. He also likes to wrestle – and so does Bean … | Continue reading
Eleanor Rose has a tasty batch of cast brass apron hooks available – or at least she did 30 seconds ago! If you’re interested, send her a DM via her Instagram. | Continue reading
Concurrent with making more Piggly No Wiggly glue and packing Anarchist Square Kits, I’ll be hosting Open Wire this week all by my lonesome – at least that’s the plan. But because Chris just can’t help himself, he’ll probably chime in from time to time, even though he’s supposed … | Continue reading
We’re done tinkering with the LostArtPress.com website, and we still don’t have annoying pop-up and vibrating windows that urge you to join a newsletter or to save 10 percent on your first order or whatever. Merchants use those irritating windows because they work. But we decided … | Continue reading
More than 10 years ago, Chris wrote about his visit to the Sampson-White Joiner Shop in Duxbury, Mass. Yesterday, the Secretary of the Interior designated the site as a National Historic Landmark (NHL) (hat tip to Timothy Babalis for this news). This historic shop, which, accordi … | Continue reading
In 1978, Drew Langsner released his book “Country Woodcraft” to the world, and it sparked a movement – still expanding today – of hand-tool woodworkers who make things with mostly green wood. The 304 pages of “Country Woodcraft” showed you how to split wood from the forest and sh … | Continue reading
For those of you who got the super-pointy cutters with your Crucible Engraving Tool (and a few who didn’t…really – we’re talking an almost-zero-radius-intersection V is the problem) who requested new cutters: They are now on the way. I had to await delivery of padded envelopes, t … | Continue reading
I’m a long-time fan of the Mississippi-made Delta 14” cast-iron band saw – and its better clones. But not everyone has the space for one of these saws. Or they don’t have the eggs to buy a used one that will surely need some restoration. For the last couple months, I have been us … | Continue reading
We just added our latest batch of 250 Anarchist Square Kits to the store. We have been boxing these suckers up for days now, and we will be boxing them up tomorrow and Monday to meet the USPS deadline for getting stuff in the mail so it arrives before Dec. 25th. The kits are grea … | Continue reading
It’s time for our weekly(ish) Open Wire, hosted this week by me and Chris (mostly Chris…he’s faster at answering and gets up earlier than do I, plus he knows a lot more than do I about what seem to be the favorite topics: chairs and chair-shaped objects – but do ask him about his … | Continue reading
Monday is the last day that items ordered from Lost Art Press will be certain to arrive before Christmas. After Monday, the chance that the package will make it in time will decrease day by day. So now is the time to order that Letterpress “By Hammer & Hand” Poster (we have only … | Continue reading
We just listed 140 more Anarchist Square Kits in our store this evening. This is a fun afternoon project for a budding or experienced woodworker. The joinery and decorative details are all cut – you just have to tidy it up and assemble it. We published a 14-minute video on how we … | Continue reading
Order “Cricket Tables” by 11:59 p.m. tonight EDT (Dec. 4, 2023) to get the free pdf of the book at checkout. Derek Jones’s book is about the three-legged cricket table, where it came from, what the different variants are and construction details. And the search for the history of … | Continue reading
Last week, Jerome Bias led a woodworking class of six black woodworkers as they built a six-board chest by hand in our workshop. It was one of the more memorable and enjoyable classes here at our storefront. In addition to woodworking, every day of class was filled with explorati … | Continue reading
We’ve had have about 100 people at our storefront so far today for our Open Day. So we aren’t physically or mentally able to answer Open Wire questions. Sorry! We’ll be back next Saturday with Open Wire. — Christopher Schwarz | Continue reading
Today is the last day you can purchase any of our Lost Art Press videos for 50 percent off. The sale ends at midnight Dec. 2. You can see all our videos here. All our videos were made by working woodworkers. We’ve been making these videos for years with basic equipment. This sale … | Continue reading
First, if you are in the area tomorrow (Saturday, Dec. 2), I hope you can stop by our shop at 837 Willard St. for our Open Day. We do this only twice a year, and it’s a great way to catch up with other woodworkers and snag some bargains on blemished or discontinued products (basi … | Continue reading
I just received our shipment of replacement engraving cutters, and we are ready to ship them out. Please read the following carefully so that you get your cutters as quickly as possible. Apologies for this glitch. And thank you for your patience with us. — Christopher Schwarz | Continue reading
The Lost Art Press 2023 Holiday Open House is this Saturday (December 2) from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at the storefront: 837 Willard St., Covington, Kentucky, 41011. Sure, we’ll have our full line of books, tools, apparel etc. available, but most exciting is that we’ll have a special gues … | Continue reading
One of the many benefits of bringing our order-fulfillment operations back to Kentucky is that we can again offer pre-publication orders of our books, with a free pdf and free shipping. So I am happy to tell you that we are now taking pre-publication orders for Andy Glenn’s first … | Continue reading
When saw sharpener Tom Law died in 2012, he left behind more than a thousand vintage saws that he had fixed up and filed – ready for use. Some of the rare saws went to collectors. But many of these saws would not interest a collector. They were vintage but common working saws – l … | Continue reading
The following is excerpted from Derek Jones’ new book “Cricket Tables.” Edge jointing narrow boards to make up a wider panel is the most common way to achieve large components. The technique is a constant theme among woodworkers working with solid timber because it forms the basi … | Continue reading
All our videos are 50 percent off until midnight on Saturday, Dec. 2. Get into chairmaking, learn to turn or build a massive Roubo workbench. We do everything to keep our videos tightly edited, entertaining and shot from a woodworker’s perspective (no romantic pans of tool walls … | Continue reading
While visiting the Rochester Guildhall to see the Benjamin Seaton Tool Chest, I had to pass through some other exhibits (the tool chest is way at the back). The Rochester area was known for its prison “hulks” in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The hulks were decommission … | Continue reading
This is the final installment of the Anarchist’s Gift Guide 2023 – tomorrow, it’s back to our regular programming. Buffing Kit for WaxFrom the automotive world comes this incredibly useful buffing kit. I put the pads on my random-orbit sander to buff out wax on tabletops and the … | Continue reading
I am back from a fruitful trip to the U.K. where I got to see (finally) the Benjamin Seaton Tool Chest at the Guildhall Museum in Rochester. (More on this tomorrow on the blog). As you can imagine, things are bonkers here this time of year. Megan, John and I have all been pitchin … | Continue reading
Knipex Mini-PliersUntil this year I resisted the call of the Knipex. But after talking to Jason Thigpen of Texas Heritage at Handworks about his mini-pliers, his tone of voice was enough to convince me to give them a try. The Knipex set of Mini-Pliers is not cheap, but the tools … | Continue reading
This is last call for free shipping. Last chance to get a letterpress poster of “By Hammer & Hand,” a bottle of our Piggly No Wiggly Glue or our new book “Cricket Tables,” with zero shipping. We’re trying not to nag anyone. But this post is to remind that guy who will whine to us … | Continue reading
Dearborn Denim Carpenters JeansI’m always looking for USA-made jeans that aren’t for the mustache-and-too-tall-bicycle set. This year I tried a pair of Chicago-made Dearborn Denim jeans. The denim is 10 ounce, so it’s not terribly heavy. The cut is roomy so you can move. And the … | Continue reading
Klein Zippered Canvas Tool PouchesKeeping small tools organized is a big deal for this woodworker. My mind has always been calmer when I have everything put away and easy to find. One of my favorite crutches are the Klein zippered pouches. These are inexpensive, widely available … | Continue reading
My oldest daughter, Madeline, is now out on her own, living and working and thriving in Pittsburgh. But she still has a taste for the sticker business…. I’m not certain I have a lot of new sticker ideas in my head (but I’ll try). In the meantime, we have designed and made these n … | Continue reading
The second batch of engraving tools have blades that are too pointy for my liking. And so we are switching to a round cutter. This appears to be a recent problem with the manufacturer of the blades, so not everyone’s tools have been affected. Take a look at the photo above. The c … | Continue reading
The copy editing changes are done, the interior design is locked down and we’re almost done with the dust jacket (the front of its current incarnation is shown above). We have a few last questions to sort, then “Backwoods Chairmakers: In Search of the Appalachian Ladderback Chair … | Continue reading