We will kick off the Anarchist Gift Guide on Thursday, Oct. 21 (tomorrow!). That’s a little earlier than usual, but the world is off its axis, and we want to give you plenty of time to get your gifts sorted for the holidays. Plus, this will be our biggest gift guide yet.
If you aren’t familiar with the gift guide, it has been a yearly tradition here for about a decade. It’s mostly little things that we find useful in the shop. It’s not sponsored and not affiliated. It doesn’t plug or promote our products. We do it because we love you (even you, John Cashman).
Hey – That Feels… Almost Normal
It was a relief to receive Nancy R. Hiller’s “Shop Tails: The Animals Who Help Us Make Things Work” from the printing plant in Tennessee. It took only 10 weeks to get it printed. That turnaround time is not like the old days when five weeks was the norm. But it’s way better than some other recent titles. (“The Stick Chair Book” is coming up on 17 weeks in gestation.)
So if you are looking for Lost Art Press books as gifts, here are four quick updates.
- “The Stick Chair Book” should be shipping the second week of November. Fingers crossed.
- “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke” is also scheduled to ship about that same time.
- We are running dangerously low on stock of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” The cotton cloth we need for the cover is in limbo. If you need this book for a gift, don’t hem. And don’t haw.
- “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” is out of stock, and we hope to receive books by Dec. 1.
So What the Heck Have Y’all Been Doing?
With publishing mostly on the ropes, Megan and I have been full-time furniture makers and tool designers during the last few months. We’ve been sending a lot of furniture out the door lately, but that doesn’t help you with Christmas (unless you ordered a chair or a tool chest from us).
The good news is that we should have Crucible Planing Stops in stock before Christmas. These ductile iron bench accessories should be less than $50 and will be super easy to install (drill a 5/8” hole in the movable block; drive the stop in; done).
We have also been working on two new tools that are now in the prototype stage. One is a sliding bevel that holds its setting better than any tool I’ve ever used. And the second is a handy waist apron that is great for woodworking (and will feature a cool vintage-y screen print). Both of these new tools will launch in early 2022.
And by then I hope things will get back to normal, and we’ll have some new titles to announce.
— Christopher Schwarz