Category: Making Book

I wrote my first book when I was 11 years old. It sprouted and took root like all the other books I’ve written during the last 42 years.

Step one: I become bizarrely interested in a topic. Back in 1979, it was how the U.S. military had moved so many people around during World War II. 

Step two: research. I went to the school library and paged through every book they had on World War II, drawing the troop transports, jeeps and motorcycles I spotted in the photos. But there wasn’t much there. Back then – way before cable television – my mom took me and my sisters to the city’s public library every Saturday. So I spent three or four weekends there poring over all the library’s illustrated books on the war – drawing, taking notes and writing.

Step three: I write the book. I drew all the illustrations for my guide to troop transport and folded my primitive four-up signatures at my workbench. I managed to staple and glue the thing together. And when the glue was dry, I presented it to my father, who was relaxing with a cigarette in the living room after dinner.

He slowly paged through the book. My father had been a captain in the U.S. Army, and he had served in Vietnam in 1972. So I was certain he’d be interested in my topic.

He handed the book to my mother, who was sitting next to him – also with a lit Kool.

“Why would you write a book that glorifies war?” he asked me. “This (and he nodded at the book in my mother’s hands) doesn’t help anything or anyone.”

It was the most devastating review I’ve ever received (yes, Nick, even worse than being compared to a rapist). And as I stood there with my legs all wobbly, I began to put together the pieces of a family puzzle I hadn’t thought much about.

Yes, my father had been a captain in the Army. But – more importantly – he had served as a front-line physician in a field hospital. Until that moment, I’d never really thought much about what he saw or did in 1972. He’d never talked about it much. 

After a few uncomfortable and silent seconds, I took my book upstairs to my room. And in that moment I lost all interest and taste for violence, guns, wars, conflict and hunting. It really was as simple as that.

(Please note that this – or my father’s reaction – was not an anti-military statement. My dad loved the military, and he missed the order and sense of purpose it provided. He didn’t, however, miss the blood.)

And that evening also nudged me onto the path I’m on today. It’s important to me that every article, blog entry and book I write should help something or someone. It’s part of the reason I became a newspaper journalist, and it’s a large part of the reason I started writing how-to articles.

I know what I do isn’t Upton Sinclair. I’ve never tried to fool myself into thinking it is anything more than “put tab A into slot B” with rodent jokes. 

But then I remembered a piece of mail I’d pitched this week. Today I went down to the workshop and dug it out from all the shavings and packing peanuts that had been piled upon it. It was a handwritten note. Short and to the point.

Today marks the first day away from my corporate desk job and as a full-time maker. It is also the first time I write fan mail.

Taking this leap to chase my passion could not be possible without the inspiration and guidance from you. “The Anarchist’s Workbench” spoke to me on so many levels, and although I am a bit terrified, I have the knowledge to put my hands to good use.

Thank you for sharing such detailed instructions and leading us all back to more inspired and quality work and items.

Thanks,

John

The letter made me think of my parents on that evening in 1979. They were about 10 years younger than I am today, but they still had the backbone and the wisdom to tell me what was in their hearts.

“…this doesn’t help anyone or anything.”

Today I opened up the unbound signatures of “The Stick Chair Book,” which arrived this week for our inspection. The book is now being bound and should be headed to our warehouse in the coming week. As I flipped through the pages, I realized that the last line of the book that I wrote is probably the first thing you’ll see on the dedication page:

“For mom and dad.”

I hope “The Stick Chair Book” helps someone or something. I know that would have made them happy.

— Christopher Schwarz

Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.

When “The Stick Chair Book” finally evolved from a vague notion into an outline, I knew instantly what I wanted to put on the book’s cover: a carving of a stick chair made by artist, fellow chairmaker and friend Rudy Everts.

Rudy made the carving last year, and it’s one of my most prized possessions. I keep it on a shelf in the front of the shop so I see it every day. I love the way the chair’s appearance changes during different hours of the day. And the carving captures everything I love about the form of these stick chairs, which I’ve been obsessed with for far too long. Though Rudy might dispute me, I think this carving is art.

And, as you can see in the image above, the thing looks fantastic as a book cover.

But then data and manufacturing considerations entered the picture.

During the Great Quiet of the pandemic I spent a lot of time digging into the 14 years of data we have on our books. Our customers and our books are not like the customers and books I knew from my time in corporate media. But I had no idea how different they were.

In the corporate media world, books with dust jackets and beautiful photos do very well. However, our customers see the world differently. No matter what the topic or who wrote the book, books with simpler cloth covers and diestamps are preferred to books with dust jackets and photos on the front. I have looked at the numbers a dozen different ways. It’s not even close.

When John and I started Lost Art Press, neither of us were interested in dust jackets. But Jennie Alexander insisted that “Make a Joint Stool From a Tree” have a nice dust jacket. And so John and I said: OK, we’ll let the authors drive this important aspect of their books. And so we have. And we will continue to do so.

When it eventually came to designing the dust jacket for “The Stick Chair Book,” I knew in my in-denial heart that a cloth cover with a diestamp would be the right approach for this book. It’s a shop manual, and a dust jacket is going to take a beating. Eliminating the dust jacket will allow us to reduce the retail price significantly. And that’s a big deal because this book is huge – it’s well more than 600 pages and in color. And, our readers prefer cloth covers.

So I’ve decided to do something we’ve never done before. When the book is released, it will have a cloth cover and diestamp. But you will also be able to download a free pdf of the dust jacket with Rudy’s carving on the cover. You can send this pdf to your local print shop and the employees can print out a perfectly sized dust jacket for your book.

(Side note: We investigated selling the book with and without a dust jacket. The jackets would have to be manually added at the warehouse. It was stupid expensive.)

I hope this is the right path. The book will be more affordable, which will lower the price barrier for some customers. And customers who love a dust jacket can easily make one for themselves (and make another if the first one ever wears out).

On the days when I have to make these hard decisions, I wish I worked at the gas station instead. 

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. The carving is now on the title page in the book, and it looks great.

This is a short update on “The Stick Chair Book” and, if you stick with me, I’ll even throw in something useful at the end of the blog entry. No peeking, John Cashman.

When I started writing this book, my goal was a massive brain dump on everything I knew about stick chairs that was righteous and good. All the techniques that work. All the stuff about wood that would be helpful. All the little tricks, finishes, shapes, patterns, sharpening methods etc. etc.

I have concluded that instead there needs to be a “Chair-clopedia.” There should be one entire volume on processing wood. A second on legs. Separate volumes on steambending, arms, sticks, crests, saddling seats, tools, finishing, assembly, patterns and on and on. Written by a host of experts. All bound in hardbacks with the look and feel of hand-tooled leather.

I’m being serious. I’m also serious when I say a project like that could never happen.

As I began to drown in my own outline and circle around the toilet bowl of my own making, I found a bright string – something that could pull me out of the watery grave. It was a new outline for the book.

I’m now more than halfway finished with the book. Half the chapters are designed and are being edited by Megan Fitzpatrick, Narayan Nayar and the Chair Chat Twins (Klaus Skrudland and Rudy Everts). It’s going to be a monster of a book, likely more than 600 pages. But so far it’s a quick read thanks to my love of simple sentence structure and ample doodle space.

I am on track to get it to press by June. It should be released in August, just in time for chair season.

And now for something completely useful. We use acid flux brushes to spread glue in mortises, which is pretty common. But we trim them to a certain size and shape that makes them far more effective. 

When acid flux brushes are born, their bristles are 3/4” long and spread out about 1/2” to 5/8”. If you’ve ever used a stock acid flux brush, you know what happens. The bristles get sopping wet and flop around like a wet mop.

It’s almost impossible to get glue to go where you want it. 

I like to trim the bristles so they are 3/8” long. Then trim the width of the bristles so they are 3/8” wide. If there are any errant bristles, snip them off.

A brush with this shape is ideal for grabbing a decent amount of glue and putting it exactly where you want it. The bristles will be stiff, but flexible enough so you can press glue into corners and crevices.

When the glue-up is over, clean the brush (I’ve had brushes last five years or more). When it’s time for another glue-up, first inspect the brush. If there are stray bristles, snip them off. 

What’s your favorite useless trick from a woodworking magazine?

— Christopher Schwarz

Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.

Writing a book isn’t hard. Anyone can write a book. The real trick is this: Once you start, can you stop writing a book?

That’s exactly where I am. I’ve already built four additional chairs than I had originally planned to make for my next book, and today I eyed the walnut chair coming together on my workbench and wondered about making one more chair. In cherry.

I’m old enough and have built enough things to know the source of my problem. John Economaki, the founder of Bridge City Tools, put my misgivings into words years ago when we were driving somewhere together.

“When I teach a class on design I ask the students this question: Would you rather build a project that is beautifully proportioned with a few gappy joints, or a technically flawless piece with a design that is just OK?

“The students unanimously answer: technically flawless.”

This walnut chair is a good design. It sits beautifully. It looks good from all angles. But there are a number of technical flaws that make me want to grab the Sawzall and dismember it. Three of the through-tenons have cosmetic flaws. I have small bits of tearing around the mortises for the back sticks. The saddling is good overall, but my straight lines have some tiny variations I cannot improve. When I assembled the arms, I was so happy that I didn’t crack the delicate hands when I wedged them that I forgot to check if the arms were in the same plane. They are 1/4” off at the back of the chair.

Oh, and some small (cosmetic) honeycombing opened up in one area of the seat.

I should just look past these problems and move on. I should stop building and dive into the writing full-time. But I can’t.

Several years ago I changed the way I sign my pieces. I have a big stamp and a little stamp. I mark the underside of the seat with my big stamp. Then, with the little stamp I make an additional impression for every defect that the piece has. Most pieces get one or two “little stamps.” A few get three. I don’t know if I’ve ever made a perfect piece with zero little stamps.

But as you can see from the image at the top of this blog entry, this walnut chair isn’t going out into the world. Time to fetch the cherry.

— Christopher Schwarz

The title of a book is serious business. For me, the title is not about marketing. Instead, it is a sincere expression on every page of what the book is about.

When we work with our authors, we ask them to propose a book title before they sign the contract or write a single word of the manuscript. Few of these proposed titles become the title of the completed work. Sometimes the title changes because the book’s content changes course. Sometimes the title changes because the proposed title is so generic – “About Wood” – that the title might as well be, uh, “About Wood.” But having a title in mind helps you focus as you write.

All of the books I’ve written were born with different names (except for “Campaign Furniture”). I keep a long list of ideas for book titles on my phone and append it every week as I take long walks through Covington’s neighborhoods.

For the last few months, I’ve been looking for a better title for “The Stick Chair Book.” It’s not a bad title, but it doesn’t capture the tone of the chapters I’ve been writing. Here are some of the titles I’ve jotted down. Note that I allow even crap-tacular titles onto this list because they might lead me to something useful.

Where the Chairs Have no Names
Irregular Chairs
First Chair
Musical Chairs
Armchair Critic
Be Seated
The Easy Chair

All of these titles suck donkey eggs. But creating and tending to this list keeps my brain working on the problem, even when I’m asleep, showering or writing blog entries to fill an empty Sunday on the calendar.

The work always pays off. A couple weeks ago as I was answering an email or blowing my nose, I thought: My book should be called “Guerrilla Chairmaking.” And I scrambled for my phone to add this to my list of ideas (I’ve lost too many ideas by not writing things down immediately). 

You might hate the title. That’s OK. But it’s the right title. I came around to it as I was building the cherry lowback chairs shown in this blog entry. This chair is built primarily using a jack plane, a block plane and a band saw. That’s about 90 percent of the work. Yeah, you need a couple specialty tools to saddle the seat. But really, you can skip those if you want. The wood is kiln-dried stuff from the lumberyard. No steambending. No shaving horse. No drawknife. No riving green wood. 

Really, this book is about making chairs without proper chairmaking tools, chairmaking training or chairmaking techniques. And the chairs aren’t half bad.

It’s also not a rejection of proper chairmaking tools, techniques or training. It’s merely a stepping stone for those of us who want or need to make chairs but don’t have the skills, tools or access to materials to create the fantastic stuff coming out of other professional chairmakers’ shops. 

It’s a way to get started with what you have on hand. And to do a good job.

Plus, with the title “Guerrilla Chairmaking,” we might be able to show some gorillas making chairs in the book for fun.

— Christopher Schwarz

Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.