Bad news: The entire press run of the “The Anarchist’s Workbench” has to be recycled and reprinted. The inking problem was throughout the entire run and was unacceptable to all parties.
The printer will redo the run and hopes to have it done by mid-September.
At this point, no one knows why it happened. The plant is conducting an investigation and will share the results when it’s complete.
Apologies for the delay. I am disappointed by the setback, but I’m glad the problem was caught at the plant.
If you’re really into photography, this might be the last blog entry you ever voluntarily read with my name on it.
I’ve always been into taking pictures. When I was in junior high I took classes at Westark, our local community college, about darkroom processes. I built several pinhole cameras. And I was a lab technician with T.P. Davis Studios. All that happened before I entered high school.
Since the beginning I’ve always eschewed fancy equipment. At first that was because I couldn’t afford anything but basic, used gear. My first camera was my dad’s Vietnam-era Yashika. The first SLR I bought was a Pentax K1000, a completely manual and bulletproof camera.
I haven’t progressed much past that. I still shoot in full manual. I dislike using auto-anything – auto-focus, auto-exposure. Hell, I didn’t even want auto film advance. It’s not because I don’t like technology; this stuff just gets in my way and can break in the field. It’s the same way I feel about dovetail jigs for routers. I have a saw, so I don’t need that headache.
My camera skills have always helped me get jobs as a writer. So I’ve pretty much shot hundreds (sometimes thousands) of frames a month since I was 13. But my photography skills are admittedly down-and-dirty. I’m not trying to make art. I’m trying to convey information as I see it.
With that (lengthy, sorry) preamble, here’s the point: You don’t need fancy equipment, lights or training to make book-quality photos. In fact, the expensive gear will absolutely get in the way of learning to shoot good photos.
My current setup: A Canon 5D and two ARRI LED lights. I honestly miss my old Canon Rebel and CF light setup. But I loaned them to LAP authors, and they never came back.
Until recently, I shot every frame with the cheapest Canon Rebel I could get. My lights were a cheap compact fluorescent system (less than $100). When we work with authors, I still recommend a entry-level Canon Rebel and a cheap LED lighting system (still less than $100). Plus a used high-quality tripod. I have a Bogen that I bought used 20 years ago. I don’t know how old it is, but it is rock-solid. Honestly, you can get everything you need to be a book author for less than $700. Less if you buy a used camera.
Once you get the gear, stop reading about gear. Just work with what you have and don’t think about new gear. Don’t listen to podcasts about gear. If you think tool junkies are a problem in woodworking, just spend five minutes in any photography forum.
Guidelines for Good Photos
When I train people to take workshop photos, here are the principles I emphasize.
Lighting. Color temperature is important. Don’t mix a bunch of different lighting sources – lamps, daylight, overhead lights and your shop lights. That will confuse your camera. I recommend two different kinds of lights at most. I use the daylight from the windows and my LED lights. All other lights are turned off.
Lighting, part two. Keep it simple. I use two artificial lighting sources for workshop photos: a keylight and a backlight. Backlighting your subject (even if the subject is an electric drill) improves almost every photo (try it and you can convince yourself). The keylight is used to illuminate and isolate the subject. Move the keylight to produce highlights (like bouncing a billiard ball from the light, to the subject and into the lens). The above paragraph could be expanded to be a book. Move your lights and observe the results.
Lighting, part three. Sometimes removing a light from the setup is the answer. The more light sources you are juggling, the more difficult it is to control the result.
Shutter speed and f-stop. Learn the relationship between shutter speed and your aperture (the f-stop). The aperture controls how much of the frame is in focus (called the “depth of field”). Because you are shooting with a tripod, choose an aperture that shows exactly what you want with the background blurry. You can use any shutter speed – even slow ones – because the tripod holds the camera steady. I regularly use shutter speeds that are 1/2 second and slower. You just have to hold still. Use the timer on the camera (or a remote shutter release) to prevent camera shake.
Set your camera to shoot RAW files. These are easier to manipulate in Photoshop and don’t degrade like jpegs do.
Composition. Avoid taking photos that are like construction drawings: straight-on elevation views, for example. The eye likes diagonal lines. If you can compose objects in the frame, you can use them to guide the viewer to what is important. A chisel can guide the eye to a joint, for example. This takes some patience and relates to the next principle.
Composition, part two. Do your cropping in the frame. Don’t assume you can “zoom in” on an image in Photoshop and get good results. That said, I crop tight and then back up just a little to give myself a little background to play with.
Never stop with one image. After you take a photo, force yourself to move the camera, move the objects in the frame (or both) and try another setup. I almost never use my first frame. It’s usually my second or third (at least). When shooting a finished piece, I might do 10 setups.
Note the shallow depth of field and the diagonal lines of the legs of the divider that take you to the armbow.
When I shoot photos for a book, I record every process at the bench, even if I don’t think it will make it in the book. When I move images from my camera to my computer, I also delete anything that is unpublishable (to save disk space) and give my photos meaningful file names that reflect what is going on in the image.
These actions have saved my butter many times in the last 24 years. Recording all the woodworking processes helps me remember construction details while I’m writing the text for an article or book. And having meaningful file names makes it easy to find the photos years later when I might need them for another book, magazine article or blog entry.
— Christopher Schwarz
Note: This is the first of several posts on photography, though they aren’t all going to run one after the other. The next post on photography (in September) will show some lighting setups and what happens in the frame.
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
Printed copies of “The Anarchist’s Workbench” were scheduled to leave the press’ dock last Wednesday, but our quality control people (who don’t work for the printing plant) spotted a manufacturing defect on some copies.
If you look at the photo, you’ll see the problem. We aren’t exactly sure how it happened, but it occurred on only one signature of the book, and it didn’t happen to all of the copies of the press run.
That means every copy of the entire run has to be inspected. Good copies will get repacked and sent to our warehouse. Bad copies will be fully recycled.
So shipping this book has been delayed a bit. As soon as we know anything, we will let you know.
We hate it when these things happen, but we’re grateful our quality control people caught it. Having to process 1,000 returned, defective books from customers (and paying for it) is the stuff of my nightmares. I’d much rather have the nightmare where I’m in college, naked and riding a goat into my Law & Ethics class.
The beginning. In the House of the Vetti, this dining room fresco is perhaps the earliest depiction of a workbench in the West. Photo by Narayan Nayar
Editor’s note: On this day (Aug. 24) in 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, killing thousands and forever changing the course of archaeology. The ash that covered the nearby towns was devastating, but it also created a detailed snapshot of everyday life. It also gave us the two earliest images of workbenches in the West. To remember this day, here is the first chapter of “Ingenious Mechanicks,” which is about my visit to the volcano.
The journey to the summit of Mount Vesuvius has all the romance of visiting an unlicensed reptile farm. It begins in Ercolano, Italy, a touristy village in the shadow of the volcano and home to Herculaneum, one of the towns buried by Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 C.E.
As Narayan Nayar (the photographer for the journey) and I stepped off the train from Naples we were assaulted by young, attractive Italians. Their job: Bait tourists to nearby restaurants. We glanced around and saw only one escape route from the train station’s cul-de sac. So, we plowed through the crowd of eager human fishing lures.
We emerged from the other side a bit relieved. Then we realized we’d scurried past the bus company that was supposed to drive us up the volcano. We turned around and dove back into the swarm of too-perky people in order to catch our bus.
Where are the virgins? The cone of Vesuvius is not a fiery hole leading into the bowels of the earth. It looks like a gravel quarry where you might buy stone for your garden. Photo by Narayan Nayar
The twisty-turny bus ride ended 660 feet below the volcano’s summit, and we then climbed a steep trail to the volcano’s rim. The top resembles a gravel pit where one of Frank Herbert’s worms might emerge. There’s no deep hole for tossing human sacrifices – throw a virgin into Vesuvius and she’s only going to get skinned knees and a sunburn. I looked around the volcano and promptly excused the early settlers of the area for building their homes at the base of Vesuvius. The only evidence you’re on a volcano (besides the little gift shops) is the occasional tiny plume of gas and the odd rocks below your feet.
I picked up a few rocks. For rocks, they were young – likely the result of the 1944 eruption, which destroyed several villages. I looked out from our 4,200-foot perch at the buildings in every direction below, which are built on top of villages that were covered in ash from earlier eruptions. It’s a grim scene if you think about it too much – 600,000 people now live in the so-called “red zone” for a future eruption.
Ruined. Even with thousands of tourists around you, Pompeii is so sprawling that it seems deserted. Photo by Narayan Nayar
And yet, as I fondled the rocks in my hand I felt only gratitude for this deadly, fire-breathing mountain.
The Earliest Workbenches The recorded history of woodworking begins with the Egyptians. But the recorded history of workbenches begins (for now) with Vesuvius. Its massive eruption in 79 C.E. buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites, preserving frescoes, buildings, pottery, human remains and even wooden furniture.
At Pompeii, the ash blanketed a fresco showing a low, four-legged workbench being used for mortising by a man in Greek attire. At nearby Herculaneum, the eruption preserved a fresco showing “erotes” – what we might call “buck nekkid cupids” – sawing a board at an eight-legged low workbench. It features a holdfast and other holdfast holes. This fresco has since been destroyed, but we have engravings that were made soon after its discovery (more on both the frescoes’ stories is ahead).
Graven image. This copperplate engraving was made by Italian artists shortly after the Herculaneum fresco was discovered. Sadly, the original has deteriorated.
These two images are the earliest representations of workbenches of which I’m aware. And they launched my interest in exploring knee-high workbenches and how to use them to build furniture, boats, storage containers and wagon wheels.
The conventional wisdom is that these low benches were used in former times for simple work and were replaced by superior modern benches, which are thigh-high or taller. But the more I studied low benches, the more I found that they never disappeared. They are still in use. Additionally, these low benches can be used for complex work, including steam bending compound shapes and lutherie.
The low bench is more than a thick plank of wood with legs. It’s also a collection of simple jigs and appliances that allow you to do remarkable work while sitting comfortably on an easy-to-build platform. For centuries, these simple jigs remained hidden in plain sight in paintings and drawings in museums. And their appliances have been proven to work, both at my low benches and by the modern craftsmen who still use them.
But why bother with this musty old crap? Modern woodworkers are blessed with a wide array of vises, dogs, clamps and other devices that can immobilize a piece of wood so you can work on its faces, edges and ends. Well, at times I think we tend to make our workholding far more complex than it has to be. And that can affect your approach to the things you build. While your brain might see the logic of a screw-driven tail vise with a series of movable metal dogs, the ingenious early craftsman might find this same vise slow, fragile, fussy to maintain and cumbersome in use.
Teach a Roman to shave. It is a short intellectual leap from the low workbench to other “sit and work” appliances, such as the shavehorse.
I empathize with the early woodworker. My brain is wired to look for a simpler solution to a problem instead of creating complexity.
Example: Earlier this year, I spent a couple hours in the dentist’s chair and was force-fed several episodes of a home-improvement show focused on carving out storage from oddball places in a home. Some of the examples I remember over the whirring of the dental Dremel include:
• Hinge your steps to create trap doors on the landings of your stairs to make small bins in the wasted space between your stringers. • Find stud walls that are chases for utilities and turn them into built-in chests of drawers. • In attic spaces, create sliding racks on the interior of a high-pitched roof. You slide giant plastic bins into the racks – it’s a bit like a top-hanging drawer.
Through the entire program I wanted to puke (that was mostly because I have a sensitive gag reflex). But it was also because these “storage solution” programs neglect to mention the easiest way to control clutter: Get rid of your excess crap.
No one should have so much stuff that they have to slave excessively to make a place to stow it. In the same way, no workbench needs vises on all four corners (I’ve built these for students and customers) to build fine furniture. You just don’t.
With this book, I hope to expose you to early and simple ways of holding your work. While many of these devices were used on low workbenches, most of them work on high workbenches as well. I use both sorts of benches – high and low – in my work for building all manner of things, from stud walls to Welsh stick chairs, dovetailed chests to nailed-together coffins.
The workholding on these benches is truly ingenious and effective. Things change when you sit down to work. And I think you’ll be surprised what you can do on your bum: planing, chiseling, shaving and even dovetailing.
The low bench form might not be for everyone. But it might be right for you and you might not know it. Woodworkers with limited mobility use low benches because they can sit and work. Apartment woodworkers use low benches because they take up little space and do double-duty as seating or a coffee table. Curious woodworkers use them because – dammit – they are an interesting form to build and use. Many chairmakers already use a low bench (but they call it a shavehorse), as do many other specialty trades, including coopers and basketmakers. Oh, and a low bench is the best sawbench ever made – promise.
One more plug for these early benches: Using their lessons, you can make almost any surface into a worksurface. A couple drywall screws can turn a picnic table into an English-style workbench. A missing brick in a wall (and a pine wedge) can become a face vise. A shavehorse can be cobbled together with a rock and a scrap of wood strapped to your gut.
Even if you never build a low workbench and reject its appliances as “not whiz-bang-y” enough for your engineering mindset, you might enjoy the journey of discovery required to write this book. It involved trips to exotic Italy, Germany and Indianapolis. (And understanding the low bench might connect your work to Chinese benches.) In the process, we rescued oak slabs from a pallet factory. We flushed $1,000 down a metaphorical toilet to learn about the construction of the first modern workbench in 1505. We ate a ton of Neapolitan pizza.
Workbenches are at the heart of everything we do. So, let’s take a brief look at the history of Western workbenches and consider why it’s even worth looking at ancient benches.
On July 13, we sent the final corrections for “The Anarchist’s Workbench” to the printing plant. When I woke up on July 14, I couldn’t get out of bed.
Like a lot of writers and artists I know, I deal with clinical depression. I am open about it, but it doesn’t define my work or factor into my personality much (plus depressedwoodworker.com seemed too, well, depressing). In fact, I doubt I’ll ever mention my diagnosis on the blog again. I don’t want this disease to become my calling card. (Norm has his tool belt, Marc Spagnuolo has tattoos and Schwarz is like Eeyore, lol.)
But it’s part of the story of this book.
Two years ago I weaned myself off antidepressants (I hate taking pills), but after lying in bed for two hours that Tuesday morning I knew I should call my doctor. He put me back on medication, but the stuff usually needs to float about my brain for about four weeks before I feel relief.
(I suspect there are well-meaning people out there who want to give me advice about depression. Thanks, but really I’m fine. My health is my problem alone. I’ve been through the wringer and around the horn during the last 14 years. My doctor and I know what works for me. But I do sincerely appreciate your good intentions.)
The next step to get my head working right is to push myself into building things. Once I get moving, my body can handle the rest. Plus, working on a project helps speed up the time. When I’m depressed, every day feels 40 hours long. If I’m deep in a project, time passes normally.
Luckily I have a backlog of commission work. I knocked out a couple small pieces, and then looked at the next customer on the list: Two Scottish Darvel chairs.
Hmm, I thought, I could start taking photos of the chairs’ construction process for “The Stick Chair Book.” This serendipity seemed like a gift. I could build a couple chairs (which I love doing) plus feel like I was moving forward on a book project.
The next day I got in my truck and headed for the lumberyard. It was too early for the drugs to start working, but I was already starting to feel more like myself.
— Christopher Schwarz
Note: The last few entries in this series have been pretty touchy-feely. Next up I shift gears into a discussion of photography and lighting and how we produce photos for Lost Art Press books.
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
