Back by request: Three sticker designs for your tool chest, nail cabinet or wall. These are available from my daughter Katherine’s etsy store. They are sold as a set, and yes, she ships internationally. Here are the stickers in this set.
‘Sharpen This’ Book Sticker If you have the “Sharpen This” book and would like to add 20 percent more rudeness, this is the sticker for you. It is designed and sized to stick to the cover of the book over the book’s diestamp. The sticker features a 1,000-grit sharpening stone emblazoned with a bony and and slightly rude gesture.
Nail Size Chart Here’s a sticker that is actually useful. The sticker features the four most common size furniture nails (4d to 8d) in full size. So you can hold up any nail to the sticker and know what size the nail is. The sticker also tells you what size wood the nail is designed to fasten.
Tony Konovaloff Sticker This sticker features one of my favorite quotes from Tony Konovaloff, a West coast furniture maker. The quote is emblazoned over a carving by David Bignell, a local carver and furniture maker.
These are high-quality 100-percent vinyl stickers, which are weatherproof. Made in the USA by Stickermule. You can buy the stickers here.
“I do not get your weird chairs,” exclaim about a dozen messages or comments every year.
I understand your bewilderment.
I remember being a prospective student at Northwestern University in 1985 where I had been paired up with freshmen journalism students. We were supposed to sleep in their dorm rooms and see what university life was like.
My two hosts sat me down on a bed and thrust a Budweiser in my hands.
“Drink it,” they said. “And you’re drinking 10 more. You are getting drunk. Maybe we’ll drag you outside naked.”
Up until that point in my life I had taken one sip of beer. It had been my dad’s Coors Light, which had been poured over ice at the beach during a vacation. It was memorably disgusting.
I took a sip of the Budweiser, and I can still remember the metallic and bitter liquid spreading through my mouth and snaking down my gullet.
Beer is objectively nasty stuff. It’s basically watery bread. Fermented starch. And flavored with a bitter plant (hops) or worse.
I did not “get” this weird drink, and I took about four sips of it that night, each one warmer and worse than the previous. I did not end up naked and drunk in the quad.
Now 37 years after that fall evening, I have changed my mind about beer. I am endlessly curious about the different forms of the drink and enjoy learning about its role in our culture and history. After listening to a podcast about beer in Biblical times, I was struck by the parallels between the history of the beverage and of the vernacular stick chairs I have been studying and building for many years.
I suppose these parallels shouldn’t have been a surprise. The stories of many good things in our world have a similar arc. And the turning point in the story’s third act is always the Industrial Revolution.
But it’s a good story, and it helps explain my love for both hops and these funky chairs that are “a smidgen off being ugly,” according to chairmaker Chris Williams.
A craft beer and a carving of a stick chair by Rudy Everts.
For most of human history, beer was something you made at home. Everyone was a brewer. Beer was a source of nutrition and hydration. But ancient beer was unlikely to taste like the stuff you buy today. For a long time the role of yeast wasn’t understood. And hops – the most common added flavor today – weren’t always used. Honey and other spices were common.
Commercial production of beer might have been an innovation of the Ancient Egyptians (you can read a history of beer and business here, which is where much of the following business data comes from). But up until the mid-19th century, most brewers were local businesses. There were no national or international brands of beer.
The rapid industrialization of the West allowed beer to be produced on a large scale and homogenized. Prohibition wiped out most of the local and regional brewers. And by the 1970s, 75 percent of all the beer in the United States was produced by only four monster corporations.
The product also kind of sucked. Coors Light over ice?
My kids, pretending to be drunk while in Germany.
And while those macro brewers still exist (and are still growing through acquisition and consolidation), there has been a remarkable renaissance in small- and mid-sized brewers. In 1980, there were only 92 breweries in the U.S. As of 2021, there were 9,247 breweries. A hundredfold increase.
Plus beer as a beverage is far more interesting and diverse these days.
The history of stick chairs is not as long as the history of brewing (as far as we know). But it also has some wild twists and turns.
The first image of a stick chair that I know of is from a Welsh book of laws from the 12th or 13th century called “Laws of Hywel Dda.” There are two images of stick chairs shown in this particular Latin translation. My favorite one shows a judge in the stick chair, and he’s pointing with one hand. His other hand holds what is likely a book (but which I prefer to think of as a cup of beer for the purposes of this story).
Stick chairs have been around for hundreds of years before mass manufacturing. We suspect that most were made by farmers in the off-season, so it was a household enterprise, much like making beer. Judging from the surviving examples, they were made by crafty individuals who likely made the chairs for their nuclear or extended family. Or for people in their village.
Because each stick chair is unique – I’ve never seen two that are identical – we can conclude that they were likely made one-by-one. Or in small sets at most. There are variations in the chairs that can place them in certain time periods or in certain regions. But there’s little to no evidence that these chairs were even a highly organized commercial endeavor. (Irish Gibson chairs might be the exception.)
These vernacular chairs show up in many countries throughout Scandinavia and the UK. And stick chairs could be the ancient ancestor of Forest chairs (aka Windsor chairs).
Danish stick chair.
Regardless of the shape or strength of that family tree, Windsor chairs appeared in the early 18th century and rapidly became a commercial enterprise that employed hundreds and then thousands of people. The city of High Wycombe became Britain’s primary chairmaking region. But the chairs were manufactured all over the UK and were a major export for the country.
The Windsor chair became so successful that today it is widely regarded as the most common form of chair.
“It’s been said that half of all wooden chairs on the planet are either Windsors or are directly descended from the style,” according to the Magazine Antiques.
An early Windsor (and a personal favorite).
While there are exceptions, most mass-produced Windsor chairs are unremarkable firewood and share little or nothing with their ancient ancestors – except for a name.
Evidence: All of the broken chairs that have been dragged across my doorstep have been factory-made Windsors. (I decline all chair-repair requests from customers – not because I am a jerk, but because chair repair could easily consume all of my waking hours.)
These factory-made Windsors are the Coors Light of the woodworking world.
Just like with the world of beer, however, things began to improve for the world of handmade chairs in the 1970s and 80s. Mike Dunbar and Dave Sawyer began exploring Windsor forms, and both began teaching others, planting the seeds for thousands of other chairmakers. John Brown self-published his “Welsh Stick Chairs” book, which began to sketch in the early history of chairs from his part of the world.
Mike Dunbar at work.
And now we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to chairmaking instruction and tools. Well-made Windsor chairs and stick chairs are much easier to find. And the chairs are available at a variety of price points.
Plus there are now a lot of talented chairmakers out there that I have never heard of – and I try to keep up.
I get the same feeling when I visit my local beer store. The shelves are brimming with interesting beers from all over the country. I’ve heard of maybe 10 percent of them. There is so much good stuff out there to try.
It’s quite amazing, really. Well, that is until I look across the aisle of the store and see the mountains and mountains of Coors Light there, too.
During the last 25 years, all my sharpening processes have become simpler. And use much less gear. This has made me faster, and my edges are just as excellent.
This evolution is most evident in the way I sharpen scrapers. I was taught the first step was to file the edge at a perfect 90°. Then stone away the scratches. This is completely unnecessary (unless you tried to scrape concrete with your tool). Instead, you can simply use a burnisher to turn the hook vertical and stone it away.
The second huge change also involves the burnisher. I was taught to polish both faces of the scraper to create a durable tool. This is also totally unnecessary. You can use your burnish to polish the face – right up where it needs to be polished.
Both of these tips are shown in this quick video.
My new video “Sharpen This (the Video)” is filled with small tips and tricks such as these that (I hope) will get you back to work a little faster.
When I finally got the honor of being Frank Klausz’s editor, I was curious as to what sort of manuscript he would turn in. I was curious because I had read almost everything out there with Klausz’s byline on it.
Some of his stories sounded just like he talks. With his Hungarian accent, his pacing and his refreshing bluntness intact. Other stories sounded like Klausz had just graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
The manuscript arrived by mail. It was two pages, hand-typed and single-spaced. The text immediately brought a smile to my face because it was pure Klausz. Graceful but firm. No adverbs or complex sentence structures.
I handed it to a junior editor to input the text and clean up any errant typos. A few hours later, he showed up at my desk with an unsure look on his face.
“This manuscript needs a lot of work,” he said. “I might not get it back to you for a couple days.”
Seriously? Two typewritten pages? It should be done before you head home.
“The sentences are just so weird,” he said. “I basically need to rewrite the whole thing so it makes sense.”
You want to rewrite Klausz? So he makes sense? Just type it in, and I’ll do the edit.
I barely changed a word of the manuscript, and I was done with the story before I went home that night.
When it comes to editing, I try to take the lightest hand possible. The goal is to preserve the writer’s voice and even amplify it by removing redundant words and phrases that slow things down.
This is not always possible. Some people simply cannot write in a straight line. The text is circular, like a mandala. And every point they make has three digressions. Or they suffer from explaining things in minute detail for the first half of the manuscript. And then run out of patience for the second (3,000 words on stock prep. And then “…simply build all the doors and drawers. Add your favorite finish. The end”).
I send these writers a copy of “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser (used copies are $1) and ask them to follow this book like it was a holy text.
My approach isn’t the dominant one in woodworking publishing. Most editors try to make the writer’s text as easy to digest as possible – thinking they are doing a service to the reader. What they have really done is taken a Cuban sandwich and reduced it to Zwieback.
Though it makes me crazy, I know that some readers appreciate this sort of editing.
When I first met the editors of Woodsmith magazine, I was excited to talk to them about their editorial process. They managed to convey immense amounts of information into a small space. Plus they didn’t take advertisements (back in the day). And they had an immensely loyal subscriber base – the most loyal, in fact.
The Woodsmith editors were really nice and open about how they worked. One of the junior editors then remarked: “Well, first you have to learn to speak Don.”
What?
The founder of Woodsmith, Don Peschke, is a bit of a legend in woodworking publishing (ask him about his hot tub). And when new editors came on board they had to learn to write like Don Peschke wrote. So that the entire magazine sounded like Don Peschke.
Oh, so that’s why they didn’t have bylines on their stories.
I totally get their approach. You want to do everything you can to help the reader digest complex technical information. Removing a language barrier is one way to do it.
But not me. I think of visiting Frank Klausz in his shop one time when he was railing against some video he had seen on sharpening.
“I would not sell that,” he exclaimed, “to a monkey.”
Because of the positive reaction to our “Build a Stick Chair” video, we decided to produce a new video on sharpening woodworking tools that delves even further into the topic than our new book “Sharpen This.”
“Sharpen This (the Video)” is a 2-1/2-hour long video companion to our “Sharpen This” book. But because the video medium is so good at showing body motion, we decided to keep expanding the video through 2023. What does that mean?
The video we are releasing today covers all you need to know to sharpen bench tools. Grinding, honing, polishing – the works. But during the next year we will release 20 additional videos that cover the more unusual tools, from scorps to fishtail chisels.
Anyone who purchases the video (from now into the future) will also receive these 20 new videos as they are released (you will be notified of new videos via email).
“Sharpen This (the Video)” has an introductory price of $50 until Oct. 31, 2022. That’s the entire 2-1/2-hour video, plus access to the 20 upcoming sharpening videos. After Oct. 31, the video will be $75.
— Christopher Schwarz
About the Video
Sharpening your tools is simple. And easy. So why do so many woodworkers struggle with it?
One huge reason is the enormous amount of misinformation, needless consumerism and piles of unnecessary (and expensive!) equipment.
The new video “Sharpen This” takes you back to what is important: Getting a good edge that will leave shimmering wooden surfaces with a minimum amount of fuss, sharpening grits or gear.
Most sharpening information these days comes from people who make sharpening equipment. Or from passionate amateurs who have tried to turn it into a science. Host Christopher Schwarz is a furniture maker who sells his work for money. His approach is to create durable edges (in usually 3 minutes or less) that will create perfect surfaces on your work.
The 2-1/2-hour long video explains the entire world of sharpening so you can pick a sharpening system (they all work), sharpen your edges quickly and get back to the good part: woodworking.
In addition to the video, buyers will receive an additional 20 videos throughout 2023 that show you how to sharpen tricky tools (such as marking knives, scorps and fishtail chisels). Plus tips on how to sharpen faster and better while ignoring the immense amount of sharpening BS that clogs the internet.
Contents of Sharpen This (The Video) Introduction 1:26 What is Sharp? 12:59 What Sharpens Tools? 8:59 My Personal Kit 8:48 Set Up a New Tool 22:58 Grinding 24:20 Hone & Polish 27:21 Flattening Stones 4:24 Hand Sharpening 12:07 Sharpen Scrapers 7:33 Moulding Planes 5:05 Reverse the Operations 13:15
Future Videos that Will be Included in this Series Marking Knives and Marking Gauges Scorps Spade & Auger Bits Shop Knives & Pocket Knives Spokeshaves Gunstock Scrapers & Chair Devils Dividers, Awls & Planing Stops The Terrible Flattening Brick The Edge on Up Sharpness Tester And more….
