Month: January 2016

Details on my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine here.

We dug up a few boxes of sweatshirts and T-shirts and are offering them in the Lost Art Press store at a significant discount.

Last year we started using a fulfillment service to print our shirts and sweatshirts, which is why you can offer them in a wide variety of sizes and colors. Before that change, we stocked all our own stuff, and this is the excess inventory that was caught in the middle of that change.

So you can pick up a Lost Art Press hooded sweatshirt for $25 (shipping included in the price), or an H.O. Studley T-shirt or Campaign Furniture shirt for $15 (shipping included in the price).

All items are made in the United States.

Don’t dawdle. Quantities are limited.

— Christopher Schwarz

Perhaps one of the most testing times of furniture-making was that of war time and the immediately following years, when utility furniture came into being. Certain restrictions had to be placed on the methods of construction and the weight of timber used. It was realised that the items had to be reasonably durable, but the stringent requirements of the times made it necessary to keep timber sizes to the minimum. At the same time, although all unnecessary weight was avoided, there was a limit below which furniture would be unsound.

Compared with furniture of the Victorian and earlier periods, utility furniture was lightly built, but most people today have come to realise that much early furniture was unnecessarily heavy, and that in some ways lightness is a virtue providing that strength is adequate.
A problem that confronts the man in the home workshop is that of the thickness and width he should make the various parts. To the furniture designer or craftsman the decision is largely one of appearance only, because over the years a tradition has grown up in which the sections are more or less settled within certain limits.

If this sounds like blindly doing a thing for no better reason than repeating what was done before, it should be remembered that trade practice is generally founded on what experience has shown to be sound. Sometimes you can get away with slighter material, but it is often because you have to, either because the cost is too great otherwise, or because larger stuff is not available.

In any case we have to realise that, except for first-quality things, furniture today is not built for posterity as it used to be. The day when furniture was intended to be handed down to later generations has largely gone. Ask any young couple of today whether they want to start their home with things from the home of their parents, and you will invariably be told that such old-fashioned stuff does not interest them. Perhaps they are right. If the true craftsman dislikes the idea of making a thing that is not intended to last, at least the younger generation is entitled to its view of what it wants.

— Charles Hayward, from The Woodworker, February 1961

It’s now been a year since I closed my public email address, which is probably the biggest life change for me since Lucy and I had kids or I quit my job. As a result of the extra time granted me, I finally finished “The Anarchist’s Design Book” and we have two more books about to go to the printer.

Sometimes I get asked: Do you miss anything? The contact with other woodworkers? The intellectual stimulation that comes from defending your ideas and opinions with others? Insight into new areas to research?

The answer is no, and that’s because we have a discussion forum. If you have a question about woodworking techniques, tools or projects shown in our books, you can get quick answers by posting it on our forum. John and I are on there everyday to check in and are pretty darn prompt.

I quite like it because you’ll also get thoughtful viewpoints from other woodworkers. And we learn stuff, too. Check out this thread on soft wax – John Corey alerted us all to a domestic source for turpentine and rosin. I placed an order about five minutes after reading it.

You might be asking yourself: How is this different from answering emails?

Oh, it’s way different. For your amusement, here is a sample of typical email topics that made me pull the plug on public email. These are not exaggerations:

1. Begging or bullying me to write a positive review of a product. “Hey we noticed we have a bunch of extra O1 dinglehoffers, could you blog about these so we can sell them off?”
2. Ten-page questionnaires (not exaggerating) seeking business advice for a woodworking, tool-making or publishing business.
3. Requests to publish a spouse’s romance novel.
4. Detailed requests to compare, for example, five different workbench designs and their suitability for their particular work. After I answer, they come back six months later saying: “I decided to build a totally different design and now I hate it. Could you help me fix the problem?”
5. Asking to come spend a day in my shop to hang out and have me teach them. For free, of course.
6. Endless requests from people wanting me to assign a value to a relative’s tool collection, tool chest or workbench.
7. Requests from woodworking clubs for me to speak. I’d be expected to pay my own travel and hotel expenses. “It will be great for your publishing company!” Oh and could you give us a whole set of all your books for our club’s library?
8. Requests to publish a spouse’s book on the genealogy of their family.
9. Books on weaving, knitting, miniature horses and spelunking.

I’d list more examples, but my fingers are already shaking a bit just recalling the nine items above.

So there’s no junk on the forum. Have a question (not about underpants gnomes)? We’ll answer.

— Christopher Schwarz