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'So darn well'
The last woodworking books you'll ever buy because they make them so darn well!
– Peter Fravel
'Highest quality'
I have a couple videos and several books from LAP and every single one of them is the highest quality and special to me.
– Mike
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The Lost Art Press blog is a near daily source of inspiration.
– Jim Micciulla
A Cheat Sheet for ‘Principles of Design’
Our latest book, “Principles of Design” by William H. Varnum, offers a systematic method to design furniture, plus a series of rules that guide you in the process. Perhaps even more importantly, “Principles of Design” shows you how ...
Jaws
Every chair class Chris teaches seems to develop its own gravitational pull. It’s inevitable – if you orbit within 50 feet of a class taught by Chris Schwarz you will get sucked in. Now getting sucked into a class can mean many different things: Perhaps it means assisting students ...
The Lost Art Press Food Tour
Megan and I often joke that next year we’re going to flip the script on our classes at the storefront. We’ll hold a week of great restaurant meals, and we’ll also build a little stool (just to say we did some woodworking). We are obsessed with good food ...
Flick That Switch
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 – your tools and materials dictate ...
New Kits for the Hobbit-y Chair
You can now order the carefully chosen wooden parts needed for the Hobbit-y Chair from The Stick Chair Journal No. 2. The kits are $295 and are in red elm, my favorite chairmaking wood. You can order a kit ...
Spindle Turning for Furniture with Peter Galbert (Streaming & Download only)
Turning spindles for chairs, settees or staircases requires a small set of tools and a focused group of techniques. Most furniture makers have little need for the tools and techniques of turners who make bowls, platters and art pieces.
That’s why chairmaker Peter Galbert designed the special video “Spindle Turning for Furniture,” which focuses entirely on the needs the furniture maker. Peter has taught hundreds of people to make chairs and has honed his turning instructions for people who have had little or no experience on the lathe.
Much like his landmark book, “Chairmaker’s Notebook,” Peter has managed to distill a seemingly complex endeavor – learning to turn from scratch – into a series of easy-to-understand skills and simple shapes that you create on the lathe.
Once you understand how to make these shapes – coves, beads and flats – Peter shows you how to combine these shapes. You’ll be shocked at how these simple shapes can be combined into beautiful and complex finished piece.
One of the unique aspects of this video is that Peter spends a significant amount of time showing you how things can go wrong during a cut and how to get out a trouble spot with minimum damage. He demonstrates these troublesome cuts, shows you the warning signs then offers an escape route.
The video clocks in at almost four hours and covers everything you need to start turning spindles. Customers who buy “Spindle Turning for Furniture” will be able to stream the video on demand with an internet connection at any time, and can download the entire video to watch it on virtually any device (the video is 4 gb). The video is free of Digital Rights Management (DRM).
Here are the major chapters covered in this video:
Materials
How to select stock for straight grain, how air-dried and kiln-dried woods behave differently, how wet wood and dry wood turn differently, what you need to know about moisture content.
The Lathe and Tool Rest
How to set up your lathe for spindle turning, choose the right centers, reduce vibration, select the correct speed.
Cutting Tools
How to select the tools for spindle turning: parting tool, large roughing gouge, 1” roughing gouge, skew, fingernail spindle gouge, bedan tool.
Tuning and Sharpening
How to get the proper shape on a grinder then hone with diamonds.
The Concepts in Cutting
Scraping vs. shearing, understanding relief angles.
The Major Skills
Cutting long grain vs. end grain, learning to combine these two skills to cut coves and beads.
Tool and Body Movement
Learn to move the tool and body to end up in a place of stability.
Putting it all Together
How to combine these basic skills to make a baluster leg, armpost stretcher and stile.
Design
How to combine shapes of different sizes to produce a pleasing result.