It has been two years since “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was released, and so I am an unpleasant person to be around.
During the last 24 months I have been distracted or devoted to the task of publishing books from other authors. I’ve been teaching classes on three continents. I’ve filmed four DVDs. I’ve written a dozen articles for magazines and more than 300 blog entries.
But no books.
So I’m doing what I always do when I write a book. I gather all the material I need, I ignore the world around me and I start typing.
Today was huge. I managed to gather all the wood I need to finish my book on campaign furniture with a trip to Midwest Woodworking.
I needed about 160 board feet of mahogany to build the remaining three projects for the book, which are now drawn in SketchUp and outlined on my laptop. Four 16’-long boards from the racks at Midwest did the trick. And this beautiful stock is now sitting in my basement, waiting patiently as I finish making a bowsaw and tidy up some loose ends for upcoming classes.
Why the heck am I telling you this?
Because I’m about to go underground. From now until Dec. 31, I will be slow to respond to e-mails. I’ll be blogging less (thanks in advance to Jeff Burks for picking up my slack). And I’m dialing down my teaching schedule for the next two years.
So if you have an urgent question, you might want to ask some of the other excellent hand tool bloggers out there. If you want to take a class with me, you might want to look at what’s on the calendar for the next few months (see the right rail of this blog). And if you are waiting for the campaign furniture book, know that I am forsaking all others for you. Well, really it’s for me. I don’t care if you buy the book, I’m writing it for me.
Only suckers and the richie-rich buy tack rags at the store.
The rest of us can do a better job of making our own tack rags with simple shop chemicals and a just a few hours of work.
Step one: Get some cloth. To make the rag, you need something cotton that has got no lint. Old tank-top T-shirts are fine – just as long as they are thin enough that you can see your nipples through them.
Other options: Swipe some cheesecloth from the garbage of the local yuppie “cheeserie.” Raise some ungrateful kids and use their cloth diapers. Tip: Sort through the trash of your neighbors and get their old tack rags. Soak them in mineral spirits to remove the dust and binding agents. Launder them.
Step two: Soak your rags them in turps. If you live in the South, then turps are easy to get. Just pull over on the interstate in November and tap a longleaf pine tree by the side of the road. Here’s how:
First “box” the tree. Using a long-headed axe, cut a “box” shape into the base of the tree that is 10” to 14” wide and 2-1/2” deep. This will catch the sap from the tree.
Drive off.
In March, chip a “streak” approximately 3/4” wide and 1” deep above the box using a “hack” tool. This releases the sap, which collects in the box you cut back in November.
Drive off.
About April, use a steel spatula to scoop the liquid (called gum) from the box and into a bucket. With the turpentine collected, you can then soak your cotton cloths in the pine resin and get them ready to receive the thing that makes them “tack” cloths – some sort of resin.
Now, you can buy a varnish at the store and spend upwards of $13 on a quart of stuff that you can drizzle on your rags. Or you can easily make your own varnish using ingredients from the sporting goods store.
Step 1: Go to the sporting goods store and buy a cheap “batter’s bag,” which is filled with unrefined tree rosin, the key to making beautiful varnish. Suckers.
Step 2: You need a few quarts of olive oil. Take a Ziploc to your local Olive Garden and get the unlimited salad and breadsticks lunch. On the table will be a bottle of olive oil. Empty that into your plastic bag. Tell the waiter you are out of olive oil. Repeat until you have enough.
Step 3: A gallon of turps. You know the drill. Drive out to your longleaf pine forest in November….
Step 4: Boil these ingredients until they are the consistency of honey. Let it cool and put it into mason jars.
Now you are ready to make your tack rags. Take your turp-soaked diapers and drip some of your varnish on them, kneading the rags the whole time. Drizzle. Knead. When it gets real sticky, stop.
Victory. You are done. Store the rag in a plastic bag until you need it.
Today (one day early) we finished up building a dozen Roorkhee chairs plus their accompanying campaign stools at the Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking.
Then we sat on the lawn and tried to stay awake.
What are we going to do on the final day of the class? Can’t say, really. But it’s going to be pretty cool.
I’ve had a brief conversation with Jennie Alexander about the structure of this form of chair. Jennie, one of the authors of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” had this to say:
“Years ago I owned an R chair.
It was not only uncomfortable it was downright unhealthy.
My back still aches.The spine is curved.
The back of this sucker is dead flat.
The spine has both a convex and concave curvature.
Good woodworking project.
Taken home it is unsittable.
“Take a seat Granny and feel the rotating back move
forward to meet you and turn your spine into a plank.”
For warriors in the field, yes.
For civilians at fireside, nada.”
I would be interested to see the chair that Jennie had. I’ve been sitting in this chair for more than a year and find it quite comfortable, especially when the back is made from stiff leather (8 oz). When the chair is properly made (according to the 1898 pattern) the bend in the leather back pushes right at, or slightly above, your lumbar region.
In any case, it’s hard to argue with Jennie. I have sat in one of her chairs and it is an exquisite piece of engineering. Lightweight. Hits you in all the right places. I want to build one.
First-time visitors to the Lie-Nielsen Toolworks in Warren, Maine, are sometimes bemused by all the machinery used to make handplanes.
“Wait,” I heard one say during a tour, “I thought you made all these tools by hand – no machines. Shouldn’t hand tools be made by hand?”
Similarly, I get asked the following questions almost every time I’m in public.
“You accept credit cards and call yourself an anarchist?”
“Wait, you don’t process all your stock for your woodworking classes by hand?”
“Don’t you think it’s strange to use the Internet to promote the use of non-electrical tools? That’s an electric tool.”
Since we concocted the lever, wheel and other simple machines, we have always sought to harness some sort of mechanical advantage to make the labor easier. We have drawings of sawmills from 1250. Planing machines go back to at least the 18th century.
These technologies supplied hand-tool shops with the stock to make furniture and other household goods (think: “Little House on the Prairie”). I doubt that any woodworker who built a highboy started the process in the forest with an axe and ended with a French polishing rubber.
So yes, I have some machines. I couldn’t build a campaign chest in a reasonable amount of time if I had to start with the tree. And our ancestors who built campaign chests didn’t start with a tree, either. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m doing things in the historically correct and expedient manner: Machines process the stock; hand tools cut the joinery.
And I’m happy to change modes when the work calls for it. Stick chairs are best when they are built from rived – not sawn – wood. So when I build these sorts of objects, it’s best to start with the tree. It’s efficient. Plus it produces a stronger and better-looking chair.
Similarly, if I ever have to build another Eames piece, I’m going to borrow a hydraulic press to mold the plywood sheets. It’s simply the best route from point A to B.
As to the other questions listed above, here’s how I respond:
1. On credit cards. I don’t like them, but we accept them as a convenience to our customers. Know that we use the smallest bank in town. I know all the tellers’ names; they know mine. When it comes to the topic of banking, I think it’s a matter of who is in charge of the relationship. I have no debts, so the bank has no power over my business. As we are on equal footing, it’s just a matter of negotiating their fees and the interest they pay me on my money.
2. On using the Internet. I consider the Internet to be the most decentralized communication system ever devised. It is, compared to all other forms of mass communication, fairly lawless (in a good way) and democratic (with a small “d.”). Lost Art Press wouldn’t exist without it because the Internet has allowed us to avoid working with book distributors, such as Ingram and Amazon, which seek to control our pricing and our business. So once again, it’s a matter of control.
So when I’m ripping out 600 sticks of mahogany for a class on Roorkhee chair class, I am thankful for the machine that granted me an astonishing amount of freedom, both in woodworking and in making a living.
And when I’m cutting 120 dovetails with a dovetail saw, I am again thankful for the saw in my right hand that has granted me an astonishing amount of freedom in how I cut my joinery and in the resulting appearance of my furniture. Same with handplanes and chisels.
Bottom line: Tools (banking, CNC, carcase saws) can enslave or liberate. Take your pick.
For the last decade, I’ve been a terrible sleeper. I wouldn’t call it insomnia, but I tend to wake in the middle of the night and think about everything I’m working on.
The solution has been to take melatonin. The upside: I sleep better. The downside: I have the most hyper-realistic dreams ever. Every night.
I’ve come to accept these dreams; but on occasion, they encroach on reality.
I have woken up some mornings convinced that my family has been killed. Or that I have drowned. Or that I am very good at diagnosing the peculiarities of hot air balloons. But the most alarming dream of all happened right after I returned from Australia this year.
I had a dream that I was employed at my old position.
I was in a marketing meeting. And the things that were said were so disturbing that when I finally awoke, I made myself a cup of coffee, sat in our sunroom for a good hour and just stared at the squirrels and cardinals in our yard. One word kept going through my head:
Whew.
It has been exactly two years since I left Popular Woodworking Magazine, and it has become obvious how unemployable I now am. I love to work all the time (12 hours a day, seven days a week, minimum), but I won’t implement someone else’s master plan. When someone suggests a dumb idea for a product for Lost Art Press, I don’t do hours of market research to come up with an empirical way to say “no thanks.” I just say “no thanks,” and move on.
When someone asks me to promote their product, I now (politely) refuse. Even if I like the product, I dig in my heels and decline. I don’t want to be part of anyone’s marketing plan. Yeah, I know that’s not a smart strategy for making friends and “partners.” But when I write about something – anything – I want it to be out of pure enthusiasm. No obligations, even social ones.
Offer me a discount and I’ll overpay you so that I think we’re on equal footing.
For me, this way of life is the hyper-realistic dream – better than anything that 10 tabs of melatonin could conjure from my frontal lobe. And it was made possible by someone I don’t talk about much on this blog: my wife, Lucy May.
I try not to drag her into the day-to-day operations of this blog. Her life as a journalist is public enough, and she doesn’t need me talking about the time I drew a sheep on her bare buttocks. (No, really, I didn’t do that. Honest. See? This is what I’m talking about.)
If it weren’t for Lucy, I would still be in that endless marketing meeting. I would still be employed at my old position. I would still lose sleep over small changes in the “sell-through” percentage of our magazine in bookstores.
But thanks to Lucy, I get up in the morning, I work until my eyes go out of focus and I then sleep. She tolerates the endless travel, the time in the shop, the writing, writing, writing. She never complains.
