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'Beautifully made'
Their books are beautifully made and full of the kind of insights that only accrue from a lifetime of dedication to one's craft.
– Jared Moore
'Enthusiastic accolades'
Whenever I mention Lost Art Press to other craftspersons and professionals it always elicits enthusiastic accolades!
– Richard Mahler
'Inspiration'
Lost Art Press is hands down the best resource for those looking to get into the immensely rewarding world of hand-tool woodworking.
– Dan Crow
John Porritt Sermon on Stick Chairs
On a bracing day this past Sunday – cold enough to move the event from a large unheated barn in Austerlitz, New York, to a little body-heated church – John Porritt gave a talk on his masterful stick chairs. He brought two Welsh antiques he’d found ...
2025 World Tour! (It’s Only 2 Places)
I’m teaching four stick chair classes in Germany and Australia in 2025. Yes, it’s an American teaching a Welsh/Scottish/Irish form in places that are truly exotic for this humble chair form. Here are details and links. First stop, Germany. ...
Dutch Tool Chests Back in Rotation
As I got ready to teach my Dutch tool chest class last weekend, I realized I was incredibly rusty as far as succinct instruction for this project. I checked my calendar, and I’m pretty sure the last time I taught this class in our shop was the weekend ...
The GoDrilla Saga (With a Happy Ending)
Good news: We now have 500 pristine-perfect GoDrillas in our warehouse, and we’re shipping them out as fast as you can order them. Today ends our six-month saga with manufacturing difficulties ...
Now Shipping: Exeter Hammers
We have a large batch of our new Exeter furniture-maker’s hammersfor sale in our store now. These hammers are perfectly sized for people who build casework and chairs. They are the ideal weight for driving in 4d and 6d nails, smacking wedges ...
Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker! – by Roy Underhill
Download an excerpt from this book here.
Roy Underhill of PBS’s “The Woodwright’s Shop” has written what could be the world’s first-ever woodworking novel: “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!” It’s a screwball comedy set in 1937 about a woodworker who heads the U.S. government’s agricultural “Broadcast Research” division.
Along with his staff of four women (all severely injured WWI volunteers), Calvin studies “broadcast seed, nutrient and amendment distribution technology and practice” – that is, what happens when the poop actually hits the fan.
But the four women are more interested in developing the world’s first supercomputer (using abandoned punch-card machines), and Calvin is more interested in woodworking…and in one particular woman: Kathryn Dale Harper, host of the radio program “Homemaker Chats.”
How best to woo her? Why, a radio show: “Grandpa Sam’s Woodshop of the Air!”
It’s an almost-overnight sensation (for measured drawings, write to “Grandpa Sam’s” and be sure to include a 3-cent stamp to cover the cost of duplication). But – as Calvin discovers – success breeds jealousy… a dangerous thing when one’s enemy has friends in high places.
Can Calvin and his friends save the world through woodworking, one listener at a time? Perhaps – but first, they’ll have to save themselves from Nazis, the clutches of the FBI, bureaucracy and wooden legs that break at inopportune times.
Like all Lost Art Press books, “Calvin Cobb” is produced entirely in the United States. The 6" x 9" hardbound book is casebound with sewn signatures. It is wrapped in a beautiful full-color dust jacket designed by Canadian artist Jode Thompson.
And yes! It includes measured drawings for four projects that are essential to the plot of the book!