Lost Art Press

Kiss the Devil on the Tongue

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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In 1990, I was fresh out of college, working my first job at The Greenville News and terrified of being fired.

During my first year on the job as reporter I hit a patch where I made a string of minor errors in my stories that required the newspaper to print corrections or clarifications the next day. And it seemed the harder I worked to get things right, the worse things got.

After a couple weeks of this it got to the point where I couldn’t open the second-floor door to the newsroom. I just froze at the top of the beige-painted stairwell and stared at the fire door.

I had no idea what to do next. So I opened the door and resolved to ride it into the dirt.

At this point in the tale, I’m supposed to tell you that things took a turn for better. That I became a stronger person and a better journalist. But that would be bull#$&@. It got worse.

I made an error in a story about a huge oil spill at a golf course. I misspelled the name of the oil pipeline company at least a dozen times in my story. I should have been fired that day. But I suppose my editor took pity on me.

But even that wasn’t the bottom of the well. Hitting bottom was so painful I can’t really talk about the event except with close friends and my wife. And that wretched weekend is where things started to turn around for me as a writer and a journalist.

What does this have to do with woodworking? For me, everything. When I hit a rough patch in a project or a design, I have found that the only way out for me is to drive the car off the cliff and into the sea. I have to find bottom so I can push off that and find air.

I’ve tried other strategies – walking away from a project and then coming back to it with a fresh attitude and new ideas. For me that’s like pressing “pause” on the Betamax. It only prolongs the inevitable.

Today I am looking for the bottom with this design for a backstool. It has to be around here somewhere.

— Christopher Schwarz

48 thoughts on “Kiss the Devil on the Tongue”

  1. Lamination, perhaps? I wonder if you were trying to bend the oak (?) and it failed due to being too thick. Just a wild ash guess, Chris.

    Al

  3. Know what you are talking about. Spent my working life in Wall St. Oct 1987 my trading group lost
    a bunch of money. Next day we came back and said since we are going to be fired lets try to get some back.
    Made 80% of it back in one day only to have the firm go out of biz by December of that year.
    Spent another 22 years in the biz.

  4. Funny, I felt the same way the other day, I’m newish to woodworking and I was making dovetails in oak and they were to tight and the oak split ,
    I wanted to drive off a cliff , I told the wife I was going to sell all my woodworking tools and find something else to do that I could do that I wouldn’t be a complete and utter failure at.
    I was in a sulk for a whole day. But I got back on the horse and tried again, still not perfect dovetails but no major disaster.
    It is good you shared this with us as we mere woodworking mortals believe that experts never have issues and everything is perfect and pristine straight off the saw as that’s all we see/hear.
    So drive off that cliff and dust yourself off and try again.
    Keep up the good and bad work !!!
    Owain

  7. lamentation or lamination – bet the crest rail was not riven from a billet. A wise woodworker once said (and I’m paraphrasing) “exploit the weaknesses in the wood to harness the strength in the grain”

    Nice looking design!
    .

  10. I know what you mean. My wife always tells me to walk away and come back later. But that never helps me either. I have to keep going but I am not sure if it is to hit bottom and push off or if I am just that stubborn and hard headed. Good luck.

  14. Looks like a tension side failure to me. Have you tried a compression strap, to protect the tension side and move the neutral point closer to the compression side.?

  15. Well Done Chris !
    Knowing we all screw up is good for all of us. Are you using KD oak? if so look out for air dry very straight grained component and still expect 2 in 5 to fail in some way. Steaming is a number game
    very best
    david

  18. As Thomas said above, a compression strap would help, as would steaming them (I assume you are [1hr per 1inch thick]). You need to support the wood as you been it so a clamping jig is the way to go. I’ve bent thicker pieces round more difficult double curves putting timbers into boats, you always get a few failures though. Support the piece at the back and ease into the curve from one end to the other, don’t try to force it around an apex. How are you carrying out the procedure at the moment?

    1. Hey all.

      Thank you for the assistance, but I’m not looking for advice on steam-bending (or cold-lam or compwood) – I’ve been doing all of these successfully for 11 years now. You are looking at part of a long experiment on pushing some boundaries for “Furniture of Necessity.”

      Chris

      1. Fair does, be very interested in what method you’re experimenting with. Remember an article about cold forming frames for ships in the 19th Century, it utilised slow pressure forming over a period of weeks on massive timbers with rams.

        Keep going I’m very intrigued now.

  19. My suggestion is to drink some beer. Ok, drink quite a few beers. If my situation is really dire I’ll go talk to my neighbor who works for the city zoning department. After about 30 mins of mind numbing platting ordinance banter I usually retreat to my shop with a renewed resolve to never leave there again. Plus that’s where the fridge with the beer is. Anyway, not sure that’s of any help.

  21. Chris,

    I studied Steam Bending many moons ago with a group for a Dept of Ag Grant. Learned an awful lot. I see many different approaches to this process. I find some of the steps we learned are not always used. Here is the condensed list.

    1) AIR DRIED WOOD 2) SOAK IT IN WATER TO PUT SOME MOISTURE BACK IN (add 4% extra when milling so you can remove tannin coloring from soaked wood after bending) 3) STEAM AN APPROPRIATE LENGTH OF TIME. (practice will tell you) 4) USE SOME TYPE OF REINFORCEMENT STRAPPING ON OUTSIDE OF BENDS. 5) LEAVE IT ON THE MOLD LONG ENOUGH 6)PLAN, PLAN ,PLAN FOR PULLING PART OUT STEAMER. I FIND IT REALLY EXCITING ALMOST AS GOOD AS _ _ X!

    Padraig

  23. Thanks for this post. It’s rare in our Humblebrag social media world for folks to talk about their failures, setbacks, and difficulties. This kind of honesty is what makes you the exceptional writer that folks enjoy so much.

  24. The Wheel Wrights would look for these bends that nature created in the tree. Instead of forcing a curve in a straight piece of wood, might you just look for a curved piece of wood?

  28. I think we all go through this. If we don’t we aren’t trying hard enough. I think this quote from Randy Pausch is fitting:
    “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

  29. Self flagelation with a compression strap along with a soaking in beer should help. Your stuff looks a bit brash to me, I would look there first.

  30. What are the six short pieces next to the seat? In light of the nine pieces of the original design and the thickness of the seat, they can’t be a necessity.

  32. What I gleaned from this post:

    Do not invite Chuck Norris over for dinner if you build this chair.

    If you do, and he sits in this chair, he’ll first assume it is unbalanced because of the three legs and try to compensate for it when he sits. Immediately upon placing his derriere on the seat, however, he will realize the innate stability of the design and become actively aggressive with the chair for making such a fool of him. His roundhouse kick, strengthened by years of working out on the Total Gym Platinum (TM) will knock the back of the chair completely off, whirling it in your direction at subsonic speeds. The flying wood will hit you in the throat, crushing your larynx, making you unable to breathe.

    Fortunately, you had decided to bake a favourite wedding casserole for dinner that night. Chuck improvised a tracheotomy tube with a piece of cooked penne, which was sufficient enough to allow you to breathe until he could run you to the hospital using a fireman carry, which was only slightly embarrassing because your lack of a protruding behind meant your pants kept slipping down and Chuck saw your crack.

    If only you’d asked me, first, Chris. I had that exact same thing happen to me once… even got the scar to prove it.

      1. If you’re referring to the ‘favourite wedding casserole’ bit, don’t even pretend you don’t like “moskacholi”. I know from where you came.

        I wish I could blame it on drugs; that would be quite convenient! But I do not have that luxury…

  33. The Greenville News building is about to be torn down. Not sure what is going to be built there. I like the fact that you used to live here. It also helps to reinforce my man-crush.
    Respectfully,
    Russ in Greenville

    1. Russ,

      I miss Henry’s Barbecue something fierce. Glad that brutalist structure is being taken down. It was never a beautiful building – even the day it was completed.

      I do hope they save the Line-o-type machine in the lobby. That was my favorite thing in the whole place.

  34. I once read something along these lines….

    Don’t agonize over design. Be committed to your idea, and be okay with burning the mistakes. But build it.

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