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Good Eye
by George Walker & Jim Tolpin
''Good Eye'' – the fifth and newest book in the authors’ ''artisan geometry'' series – explores furniture design by delving into simple proportions in a new and deep way.
Here, Jim Tolpin and George Walker take a close look at iconic pieces of furniture from different periods, and show you the proportional systems...
Dutch Tool Chests
by Megan Fitzpatrick, with a foreword by Roy Underhill
''Dutch Tool Chests'' gives you the in depth instruction you need to build your own slant lid tool chest – from choosing materials, to the joinery, the hardware, the interior parts that hold your tools and the paint.
At the same time, the book offers you detailed instructions on how to grow as a hand tool woodworker....
Principles of Design: Furniture, Pottery & Metalwork
By William H. Varnum
A friend recently took a furniture design course taught by a guy I'll call Mr. Famous Furniture Maker. During the class there were lectures, field trips to find inspiration, drawing lessons, scale model-making and critiques.
''Well,'' I asked my friend, ''how was the class?''
''Great,'' he replied. ''Now I know...
The Stick Chair Journal - Issue No 2
The Stick Chair Journal is an annual publication that expands the universe of all things stick chair. More history. More plans. More techniques. Plus reviews of tools. The Journal is a supplement to the content of "The Stick Chair Book" (which is free to download or can be bought as a book here).
Each issue of the Journal contains a complete plan for a stick chair.
The Stick Chair...
Set & File: A Practical Guide to Saw Sharpening
by Matt Cianci
In "Set & File," Matt Cianci (aka The Saw Wright) teaches you the fundamentals of maintaining backsaws and handsaws: how to file and joint your saws with the correct rake, fleam and pitch to keep them cutting sharp. You'll also learn how to deal with saw teeth that are in good shape but dull, plus how to successfully doctor teeth that have been abused.
Plus, Matt...
American Peasant
by Christopher Schwarz
''American Peasant'' is an introduction to a style of furniture and decoration that is almost unheard of in the Americas. Built primarily with tongues, grooves and pegs, the furniture is frequently engraved with geometric symbols that beautify the piece and protect its owner.
With this book, you will learn to build 10 simple pieces using common tools and...
Backwoods Chairmakers
In Search of the Appalachian Ladderback Chairmaker
By Andrew D. Glenn
For more than 200 years, chairmakers in Appalachia built ladderbacks to sell to neighbors and the occasional tourist. It was a tradition that was handed down through generations. But with the rise of furniture factories and mechanisation, woodworker Andy D. Glenn wondered if there were any traditional chairmakers left.
So...
Crucible Centre Square
The steel centre square from Crucible Tool.
3-1/4'' (82mm) long x 1-5/8'' (16mm) wide x almost 3/8'' (9.5mm) thick overall. The working area of the blade is 2-7/16'' (62mm) long and includes a 1/8'' (3mm) hang hole. It is ideal for chairmakers or turners who need to mark the centers of spindles or sticks for turning or shaving.
Using the tool is simple....
Crucible Dividers - Type 2
The Crucible Dividers, Type 2, allow you to quickly adjust the tips with one hand and easily lock in an important setting with a common No. 8 screwdriver. Made from alloy steel in the United States, these dividers are designed especially for woodworking - chairs, dovetails, shelving and other furniture-scale tasks.
Why are they called Type 2 dividers? The first-generation dividers were excellent,...
Crucible Dovetail 1:4 Dovetail Template
The Crucible 1:4 Dovetail Template marks out dovetail joints – both the tails and the pins – and allows you to easily and accurately lay out the angled and straight parts of the joint. This template marks out Christopher Schwarz's favorite dovetail slope: 1:4 (about 14°). The square end of the tool allows you to also use it as a saddle square (and to not get turned around by two...
Crucible GoDrilla
The Crucible GoDrilla extends the reach of your drill bits (and other tooling) without introducing any run out or wobble. This precision-machined tool (made in Tennessee) allows you to perform many unusual boring and fastening operations with immense ease and accuracy.
DIY store bit extenders are cheap, poorly made and are designed for operations where run out is OK. An oversized hole will be hidden...
The Stick Chair Book: Revised Edition
By Christopher Schwarz
From the outside, it seems like you need to harvest special wood from the forest, buy a bunch of exotic tools, master a lot of crazy angles, and learn high-tolerance joinery to make a chair that is comfortable, strong and approaches sculpture.
The truth is that everyday woodworkers – farmers, amateurs and people in other trades – made wonderful chairs using...
Warrington Pattern Hammer
Words from Christopher Schwarz......
''Small cross-peen hammers are incredibly useful in furniture making. We've used them in our work for more than 20 years.
Americans don’t have much of a history with this form of hammer. It’s a British thing, just like the lump hammer we make. We don’t know why that is the case because Warringtons are quite useful.
This small...
''Family Tree of Chairs'' Letterpress Poster
The "Family Tree of Chairs" is an original piece of art made by Lee John Phillips of Wales that was first printed as the endpapers for "The Stick Chair Book" by Christopher Schwarz. The "Family Tree" shows the development of chair forms through the centuries – from a tree stump all the way to the more complex types, such as the high-style Chippendale chairs and a...
Cadi & the Cursed Oak
You can download an excerpt of this book here. An audio pronunciation guide to the Welsh words in the book is here.
By Kara Gebhart Uhl, illustrations by Elin Manon
"Cadi brought the cup’s silver rim to her lips. What she didn’t know was that buried deep in the cup’s oak sleeve were spirits’ stories, long forgotten tales of hobgoblins and demons and death and sorrow,...
Cricket Tables
by Derek Jones
We will be sending out signed copies of this book until they are out of stock. If you did not want a signed copy then please contact us.
Simplicity, necessity and ingenuity are the three key principles for making cricket tables. This traditional three legged table exists in a variety of forms and woods – no two are the same. So making them follows an organic process –...
Crucible Dovetail Template for 1:6 & 1:8
The Crucible Dovetail Template marks out dovetail joints – both the tails and the pins – and allows you to easily and accurately lay out the angled and straight parts of the joint. This template marks out the two most common dovetail slopes, 1:6 and 1:8 (9.5° and 7.1° respectively).
This solid steel template is based on a discontinued version from Woodjoy Tools. We contacted...
Crucible Iron Holdfast
The Crucible holdfast. Made from ductile iron in an Illinois family foundry that’s been in business for more than a century. Based on a French design salvaged from a barn. The last holdfast you are likely to need.
Since Roman times, the iron holdfast has been an essential piece of workbench equipment for carpenters, joiners and cabinetmakers. Yet many of us struggle with holdfasts that work...
Crucible Planing Stop
We have always loved blacksmith-made planing stops, which are embedded in the end of a block of wood that is about 3” x 3” x 12”. The block is friction-fit into a mortice in the benchtop and moves up and down with mallet taps.
In our experience, the planing stop is as important as the workbench’s face vice and has almost-endless uses.
The main problem with a blacksmith...
Crucible Sliding Bevel
For some woodworkers – particularly chairmakers – a small sliding bevel that locks tightly is an essential tool. Most inexpensive sliding bevels can be knocked off their settings with little effort, and the results can be a disaster. Because sliding bevels guide most of the joinery in a chair, being off by 1° or 2° can ruin a workpiece.
The Crucible Sliding Bevel is designed...
Euclid's Door: Building the Tools of 'By Hand & Eye'
By Geo. R Walker & Jim Tolpin
Illustrations by R. Keith Mitchell & Barb Walker
“Euclid's Door: Building the Tools of ‘By Hand & Eye’” is an illustrated how to journey through building the ancient tools that still help us to build, well, everything today.
You’ll learn how to use basic, easy-to-follow artisan geometry to make eight indispensable...
Henry Boyd's Freedom Bed
A children’s book written and illustrated by Whitney L.B. Miller
“Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” is the true story of an enslaved Kentucky man who purchases his freedom and becomes one of the most innovative and important furniture makers in 19th-century Cincinnati.
In this children’s picture book, appropriate for ages 3-8, you can follow young Boyd as he learns to farm...
Karvsnitt: Carving, Pattern & Color in the Slojd Tradition
by Jögge Sundqvist
You can download an excerpt from this book here.
Cutting patterns and symbols in wood, and enhancing them with vibrant colour, are folk traditions kept alive in the slöjd craft. Through decorations imbued with meaning, chip carving has given soul to slöjd woodcraft throughout history. Even today, chip carving offers a natural complement to an artfully crafted...
Mechanick Exercises
Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works,” is the first English-language book on woodworking (and other trades) – but it was written by a man who wasn’t a woodworker. Instead, Moxon (1627-1691) was a printer, a maker of mathematical instruments and (for a time) hydrographer to King Charles II.
Oh, and the engravings of woodworking tools in...
Sharpen This
by Christopher Schwarz
Sharpening is not a sport.
If you want to be a better woodworker, you need to learn to sharpen. If you want to be a better sharpener, you need to stop paying so much attention to tertiary bevels and carbide formations in steel and start paying attention to the wood. If the wood is cut cleanly, then your tools are sufficiently sharp. If the wood is torn out and covered in...
The Belligerent Finisher
By John Porritt
One aspect of furniture finishing that has not been fully explained is how to achieve the gently worn, warm and human surfaces that you find on antiques. "The Belligerent Finisher" changes that. Furniture restorer and chairmaker John Porritt explains all the steps in taking a new chair and transforming it into something that looks like it’s 200 years old. The goal...
The Stick Chair Book - Full-size Plans
To remove one more barrier to making a stick chair, we have created this set of full-size paper patterns of all the important components for the five chairs in "The Stick Chair Book".
The five 22" x 34" sheets contain full-scale drawings of all the seats, arms, backrests, shoes and combs for the chairs. The drawings also include all the mortise locations, drilling sightlines...
The Stick Chair Journal - Issue No 1
By Christopher Schwarz
This is issue No. 1 of The Stick Chair Journal, which Lost Art Press planned as an annual publication to expand the universe of all things stick chair: More history. More plans. More techniques. Reviews of tools. And Big Thoughts. It is a supplement to "The Stick Chair Book."
In this issue, you'll find:
• A Lousy Way to Run a Railroad: An explanation...
Workshop Waist Apron from Lost Art Press
Shop aprons that cover the torso are great in cold climes, but they are impractical during the summer or in heated shops. For years, we tried using tool belts for carpentry, but those are designed for a ridiculous amount of equipment and a 50’ tape measure.
The solution that we love is a waist apron. It is compact and won’t leave a giant sweat stain behind like some shop aprons. And...
Workshop Wound Care
by Dr. Jeffery Hill
“Workshop Wound Care” – part of the Lost Art Press pocket book series – delves right to the heart of what you need to know when faced with common workshop injuries, from lacerations, to puncture wounds to material in the eye.
The author, Dr. Jeffery Hill, is an emergency room physician and an active woodworker. So he knows exactly the information a...
The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke
by Monroe Robinson
Millions of North American TV viewers first met Dick Proenneke through the programme “Alone in the Wilderness,” which documents Dick’s 30 year adventure in the Alaskan wilderness. On the shores of Twin Lakes, Dick built his cabin and nearly all of the household objects he required to survive, from the ingenious wooden hinges on his front door to the metal ice...
Shop Tails: The Animals Who Help Us Make Things Work
By Nancy R. Hiller
In this singular collection of essays, Nancy Hiller relates the ways in which non-human animals – some companions, others wild or raised on farms – have provided warmth and comfort, prompted laughter and offered examples of courage or composure in the face of distressing events.
“Shop Tails” is a loving tribute to the animals whose lives have been intertwined...
Make a Chair from a Tree: Third Edition
By Jennie Alexander
In 2014, Jennie Alexander somewhat reluctantly agreed to a third edition of her 1978 seminal book on green woodworking, “Make a Chair From a Tree” – a book that launched the careers of thousands of woodworkers and helped ignite a green woodworking movement in this country.
Her reluctance wasn’t due to a lack of passion for the book’s subject –...
Crucible Bench Square
The Crucible Bench Square is a handy, lightweight and accurate tool that's useful for many woodworking operations. Based on an 18th-century square in A.J. Roubo's masterpiece, "l'Art du menuisier", this version uses modern technology to ensure it is accurate and stays that way.
The Bench Square is great for checking a board's edge when planing joints for a panel glue-up....
Lost Art Press - 5 Woodworking Pencils
Traditional school pencils aren't ideal for woodworking. The pencils and lead snap too easily in use. And the eraser is a joke (Lost Art Press have a recommendation below).
After Lost Art Press tested many different combinations of lead (called the “core”) and diameters, this pencil became their shop favourite. It is robust because of its diameter and the fact that it is round....
Making Things Work: Tales From a Cabinetmaker's Life
By Nancy R. Hiller
Furniture making, once a basic way to earn a living through an arrangement between makers and clients, has been discovered, like a rosy-cheeked girl plucked from a dairy farm in Devon and made over into a London model
For many of us, making furniture and cabinetry is still a way to earn a living, however marginal. We may do what we love every day, to paraphrase the marketing...
Mechanic's Companion
by Peter Nicholson
“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 the tools of the time, along with a straightforward chapter on the geometry...
The Workshop Book
By Scott Landis; foreword by Roy Underhill
First published in 1991, "The Workshop Book" by Scott Landis remains the most complete book about every woodworker's favourite place: the workshop.
“The Workshop Book” is a richly illustrated guided tour of some of the world’s most inspiring workshops — from garage to basement shops, from mobile to purpose-built...
The Woodworker's Pocket Book
Edited by Charles H. Hayward
“The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” is small – just 4” x 6-1/2” – but it contains 112 pages of critical woodworking information for the hand tool woodworker.
Edited by the great Charles H. Hayward and published in 1949, “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” is a guide to everything from finishing recipes to drawing ellipses...
The Workbench Book
by Scott Landis
First published in 1987, "The Workbench Book" by Scott Landis remains the most complete book on the most important tool in the woodworker’s shop.
"The Workbench Book" is a richly illustrated guided tour of the world’s best workbenches — from a traditional Shaker bench to the mass-produced Workmate. Author and workbench builder Scott Landis...
Country Woodcraft: Then & Now
By Drew Langsner
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 shape into anything you might need, from a spoon to a bowl, from...
James Krenov: Leave Fingerprints
By Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney
James Krenov (1920-2009) was one of the most influential woodworking writers, instructors and designers of the 20th century. His best-selling books – starting with “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook” – inspired tens of thousands of people to pick up the tools and build things to the highest standard.
Yet, little is known about his life, except...
The Anarchist's Workbench
By Christopher Schwarz
The Anarchist’s Workbench” is – on the one hand – a detailed plan for a simple workbench that can be built using construction lumber and basic woodworking tools. But it’s also the story of Christopher Schwarz’s 20 year journey researching, building and refining historical workbenches until there was nothing left to improve.
Along the...
Kitchen Think
A guide to design and construction, from refurbishing to renovation
Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years
“Honest Labour” is a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while the legendary Charles H. Hayward was editor (1936-1966). This book will be the fifth and final volume in the Lost Art Press series from The Woodworker.
When Lost art Press started on The Woodworker project more than a decade ago they didn’t intend to publish “Honest Labour.” The series was...
By Hand & Eye
By Geo. R Walker & Jim Tolpin
"By Hand & Eye" is a deep dive into the world of history, architecture and design.
Instead of serving up a list of formulas with magical names (i.e. the Golden Section, the Rule of Thirds) that will transform the mundane into perfection, George R. Walker and Jim Tolpin show how much of the world is governed by simple proportions, noting how ratios...
By Hound & Eye
By Geo. R Walker & Jim Tolpin, Illustrated by Andrea Love
"By Hound & Eye: A Plain & Easy Guide to Designing Furniture with no Further Trouble" is an illustrated cartoon journey through the world of pre-industrial design geometry. It stars Journeyman and his pizza-loving dog, Snidely, as they untangle the world of points, segments, arcs and the three-dimensional world using...