Just in time for the holidays, we have received our first shipment of our USA-made canvas tool rolls, which are available for immediate shipment. The tool rolls are made by the same factory that makes our workshop waist apron, so the build quality and stitching is immaculate.
The price is $39 plus domestic shipping. Also, I’ve been meaning to mention that we now offer free shipping on orders more than $100. (Maybe you need three tool rolls?)
These tool rolls are based on one that I used many years ago to schlep my tools all over the world. Most tool rolls are not designed for small hand tools; they are instead designed for a huge graduated set of wrenches or auger bits. This tool roll is designed for smaller tools: chisels, knives, marking tools, rulers, awls, cutting gauges, screwdrivers and the like.
The tool roll has 18 pockets, so it will hold a lot of stuff. The longest tool it will hold is about 11” long – plenty long enough for most tools.
The tool roll also has two foldable flaps that cover the handles of your tools and prevent them from falling out during traveling. The whole thing cinches together with a webbed cotton strap and two nickel O-rings. Once cinched, your tools are protected.
This tool roll is great for travel. Or for protecting your tools in a tool chest. We are thrilled to offer this tool roll as part of our line of canvas gear. We have two more canvas products coming next year that will be great for owners of a tool chest or tool cabinet.
James Krenov, the well-known furniture maker born in Russia, author of the hugely influential “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook,” for 21 years the lead instructor of what is now the Krenov School in Fort Bragg, Calif., and who died at 88 in 2009, was not always revered. When my late wife, Carolyn Grew-Sheridan, and I met with him in 1974, in a suburb outside Stockholm, Sweden, he had been rejected for a teaching position at the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology and thought himself to be in exile. His wife, a native of Sweden, was supporting them as a high school teacher of economics. His professional world was a tiny basement with small machines and a bench where he made his signature handplanes.
While cleaning out several old boxes, I recently found notes from our trip to Scandinavia. Carolyn and I had taken a six-week backpacking and youth hosteling trip to visit woodworkers, museums and schools there. We had just finished a 14-month apprenticeship with Karl Seemuller and Andy Willner at the Peters Valley School of Crafts in New Jersey. Arrangements for that placement, which saved us huge tuition bills, had been made by Dan Jackson, a creative genius who died far too early.
On May 15, 1974, I wrote the following short notes without the benefit of a tape recorder:
A four-and-a-half-hour visit to a meticulously maintained shop. A chance to hear master cabinetmaker, James Krenov, formerly of Seattle, talk about wood, furniture and, most importantly, people. We made the appointment on the recommendation of the editor of FORM magazine, Kirstin Wickman.
I wrote that “he lives in a pleasant house 25 minutes outside the city. Huge high-rise complexes built for the commuter rail line surround his detached house and others in the area, but the overall feeling in May is of light and sunshine. He met us at the train and immediately showed himself to be on the defensive. He asked me why I was wearing hiking boots, ‘those heavy things.’ Well, I didn’t want to tell him that I used to own a pair of shoes like his Wallabies, but they hurt my feet. So I just said that my boots were comfortable for our traveling.
“This short, strong, grey-haired man then led us toward his house while our attempts to make conversation failed. But that didn’t stop him from talking. It simply meant that there was no exchange, at least for a while, until things warmed up. We were offered the hospitality of cake and coffee and a tour of his workshop. We found his basement space to be immaculate, with perfectly sharpened tools and handmade planes. Everything was in its assigned place. He had a few of his pieces there, including a clock with one hand.
“Krenov appeared to Carolyn and me to be working on a delicate scale with discipline and consistency. He made only minimal, preliminary sketches and did not believe that woodworkers have to know how to draw.
His opinion was that “they can respond to the wood. Too many students get lost in their drawings and find themselves only able to think on paper.”
During our conversations he apologized for his being antagonistic, but said that he didn’t know how people felt about him, or his methods and style of work. He was tired of being a curiosity. He was defensive. We heard (and he confirmed) that in Scandinavia young people were not interested in training to be cabinetmakers. New companies like IKEA were being created. (We brought home as a souvenir the first IKEA catalog). He felt that he himself needed only simple tools and machinery. He loved and treasured his wood collection.
He was not accepted for a teaching position at the School for American Crafts at RIT after teaching and auditioning there. He came to the conclusion that the school drove out the sensitive students, was trying to be everything to everyone and, as a result, was not serving its purpose. The curriculum was not congruent with his philosophy and techniques.
He was critical of other prominent furniture makers and not content within his own work. Krenov singled out Art Espenet Carpenter, founder of the Baulines Guild in the California Bay Area. “Beauty doesn’t come by the pound,” he said. In addition, I noted that he called Carpenter’s work “amateur dabbling” and regretted that Carpenter had been such a big influence on the West Coast.
He felt that Wendell Castle, also teaching at Rochester and who was becoming a towering presence in sculpture and woodworking, was ignorant about wood as a material and a bad teacher. “Castle made too many Wendell Castles,” he said. He emphasized that when teaching at RIT he wouldn’t even grade some of the student projects that were Castle-influenced. He accepted Castle as a sculptor but he thought that he was not responsive to the wood itself and that he should be working in another medium. This was in reference to Castle’s stack-laminated and carved work. (Krenov was unaware that Castle received an MFA in cast bronze sculpture.)
He was fond of my informal mentor at the Philadelphia University of the Arts, Dan Jackson. He thought that Jackson had a lot of sensitivity and ability. At the same time he said that the school encouraged too much originality and “razzmatazz.”
When talking about his own work he mentioned the importance of achieving “the singing drawer” in a cabinet. The fit of the drawer in the finished cabinet. He thought this was a crucial quality that needed be discussed and understood. For him a completed piece has to be good from every side and should not contain plywood. For a woodworker the “joy is in taking a piece completely through each step,” in contrast to industrial line production where the employee has to do the same thing over and over.
He thought that the quality of tools in Europe and the United States was declining (this was in the early 1970s) so he recommended Japanese saws, which were then new to us. In addition, he had a collection of older tools and plane irons. The specialty tool makers that we know today did not exist then.
It was his experience after being in many shows that in Scandinavia those awarding commissions did not often think of ordering a cabinet for a specific space. Usually such work went to weavers or painters. However, Krenov felt that in the United States a buying public for works in wood could be developed if the buyer was able to appreciate the cost of the time in the work.
For someone whose worldwide fame was still in front of him, but very close, we noticed how worried he was about how much longer he would be able to work. He worried about his strength and alertness, even though he was only 53 when we met him.
Unfortunately, we took no pictures of our visit with James Krenov. In the months that followed we finished our second summer as assistants in the Peters Valley wood studio At the same time, Carolyn, who had worked for three years after college as a book editor, attempted to organize Krenov’s thoughts and notes into a publishable format. Eventually she sent her files back to Krenov, who found a publisher for his best-selling “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook.” We started our Grew-Sheridan Studio in San Francisco. It seemed to us to be the cheapest city in the country in which to find working space. There was no “tech.”
Some notable Krenov quotes from the visit:
“Americans want to design a piece on Tuesday and have it ready on Saturday.”
“They want originality. There is none.”
“Craftsmanship has its own justification”.
“Craft must be able to offer something that factories cannot.”
“It is a fallacy to say that a craftsman can make a better joint than a factory.”
“There is a need to explore questions of value and aesthetics.”
“I enjoy teaching.”
“I don’t feel that the best craftsmen will survive but the most aggressive will.”
“I don’t like curves that are just part of a circle. Too boring.”
“Asymmetrical work should be subtle not forceful.”
“No tool is a magic key.”
We had been traveling to see “Scandinavian Design.” Krenov thought it was “living on its past laurels.” IKEA was just getting started. The future of studio furniture making was in the United States.
I try to keep my tool kit as small as possible. So if I don’t use a tool for a few years, I try to get it into someone else’s hands so they can use it. Sometimes that means selling it or giving it away.
Back in 2010 I sold off a bunch of tools to both cull the herd and pad our savings account – I was preparing to quit my day job. One of the tools I sold was a Bridge City SS-2 Saddle Square because it wasn’t getting much use. Plus I had the Veritas Saddle Square, which was less expensive and did the job.
During the last couple years I realized that the Bridge City version would come in handy for my work, especially for marking around bevels and chamfers on my chairs. For a while I made do with a brass butt hinge. And I briefly considered making a wooden-hinged saddle square. But then I broke down and bought a Bridge City SS-2 from eBay.
The SS-2 was new in the box. Unused and in its original wrapper. Obviously it was owned by a collector and was intended for someone else’s tool collection. I recycled all the nice packaging and tossed the square into my waist apron (apologies to the tool collectors, but I think I just made your mint SS-2 a little more valuable).
There have been a few other tools that I have “rebought” over the years. Most recently, I bought back a Wayne Anderson miter plane from the estate of Fred West. Fred had bought the tool off me many years ago and kept it in his collection. It still has my edge on the iron (that was back when I was experimenting with tertiary bevels, so it was easy to recognize).
I must be getting old and soft. I got sentimental and simply missed that beautiful plane. Let’s hope my memory starts to fail so I simply forget about all the other tools I sold. This could get expensive.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I’m sure that some of you are thinking that Crucible should produce a saddle square. Honestly, not many people need this tool for their work, so I think it would be as profitable as a woodworking poster.
I’ve been writing a woodworking blog almost every day since two-thousand-and-good-god five (2005). I pretty much have the hang of it now. And I’m happy with its mix of content, the variety of authors and its “voice,” for lack of a better word.
I have no desire to throw a monkey wrench into the works.
And yet, I’m 54. I have fewer years ahead than behind. And there are things that I desperately want to attempt, as both a writer and a woodworker. So for 2023 I will conduct an experiment. I’ve started a blog called “The American Peasant” on Substack.
If you’ve never heard of Substack, it’s a blogging platform that offers a paywall and is writer-friendly.
“The American Peasant” is the working title of my next book, and the blog will document its development in weird and somewhat dark detail. I’ll be posting the process behind the process. Draft chapters. All the construction drawings and SketchUp files and cutting lists I make for the projects in the book. All the dead ends that have no place in the book but are interesting to visit. The tools I am developing and modifying for this book. Plus the raw research – how I find information, chew it up and poop it into a book. Also, all the business decisions (and mistakes) that go into making a book in the hardest way possible.
I’m sure you have questions.
Q: Why not just post all this stuff here on this blog?
A: I want this blog to carry forward as it is. What I’ll be writing on “The American Peasant” will be raw, personal and less polished. The reader might encounter naughty words. Difficult ideas. And Unfiltered Schwarz. Here’s a concrete example: This book began when I took some psychedelic mushrooms on a German farm. Lost Art Press should appeal to a large swath of woodworkers. “The American Peasant” will not. For the first month or so, “The American Peasant” will be free for everyone so you can figure out if it’s for you.
Q: Why put it behind a paywall?
A: “The American Peasant” will be a lot of work for me. We try to give away as much information as possible at Lost Art Press for free. And we pay our authors generous royalties that are unheard of in corporate publishing. That’s why I have to teach classes and sell furniture – to make ends meet in my household. In other words, Lost Art Press is not some cash cow. The revenue from “The American Peasant” will go into the coffers at Lost Art Press to continue to support the difficult way we do business. Plus, I think the content will be well worth it.
Q: How much will it cost?
A: I’m still working on that. Probably $5 a month.
Q: How does it work?
A: It’s an email subscription service. Once you subscribe, you’ll get an email containing the entire entry every time I post. You’ll also be able to search the archives of past entries.
Q: You said this is an “experiment.” What does that mean?
A: This might fall flat. If it’s not worth the effort, I’ll pull the plug after a year, and readers will get a refund.
