During my travels, I’ve met lots of vegetarian woodworkers. And their No. 1 complaint about the woodworking industry is how sheep must be slaughtered to lubricate hand woodworking tools.
Yes, the mighty paraffin/home canning industry has tried to provide an ethical substitute called Gulf Wax – the tofurky of the tool-lubrication world. But nothing compares to slick, silky rendered sheep guts.
Like many meat-eaters, I dismissed these complaints at first. But after some beers thought, I had a revelation.
And that’s why today I am urging the mutton tallow industry to unite with the liposuction community to give us “no-kill mutton tallow.”
Think of it: Sheep could be fattened as per usual. Then, when sufficiently obese, their fat could be safely removed using liposuction and then rendered into tallow, leaving the sheep both unharmed and sexier (to other sheep – not me).
Mutton tallow could then fill your nostrils with the smell of “hot lambchop” without the nagging guilt that some sheep had to die so your handsaw could mindlessly butcher trees with less friction.
So please, sign the petition below stating that you support “no-kill” mutton tallow. Because the next glob of sheep fat that you smear across your tool could have come from a sheep in your town.
If you have a tool that generates heat – and who doesn’t? – then you know the power of regular lubrication.
But with lubrication comes the loss of your source of lubrication.
How many times have you said the following to yourself:
“My plane sole is so hot and hard to push that I need to wax it up with some copious globs of paraffin. But gosh, I cannot find my block of paraffin. I wonder where I put it?”
And so, like the prison movies that inspired “soap on a rope,” Lost Art Press brings you: Love Wax. Yes, it might look like a simple piece of Gulf Wax from the local Kroger that has been crudely hacked into a heart shape and then bored with a Forstner after a couple beers and then stamped with the Lost Art Press shop mark and then threaded with some leather left over from a run of Roorkhee chairs, but it’s not.
It’s your never-lose lubrication solution.
Put the adjustable leather strap around your neck. Nice. And when that plane sole gets too hard for your pretty little arms to push, cup your hands around the ergonomically designed piece of specially impregnated love wax. It’s waiting right there, next to your heart.
And with long strokes, rub the love wax on the the rough, too-hot-to-handle sole. Rub some extra in the corrugations in the sole – if you’re coo-coo enough to have them.
And there, isn’t the pushing all the easier now? We thought so.
The first time I met Frank Klausz we were both demonstrating at a woodworking show outside Philadelphia. I was flattening boards by hand with a panel plane when Frank walked up, snatched the plane off my bench and walked away.
I stood there like a slack-jawed mouth-breather for a few moments, and then tried to finish up my demonstration.
About 20 minutes later, Frank returned to my bench with my plane. He had taken it apart and polished some corrosion off the chipbreaker. He had eased the sharp corners of the iron with some sandpaper. And he had wiped the entire body with a light coat of oil.
“A craftsman takes care of his tools,” Frank said with a serious look on his face. “No rust. No sap.” Then he gave me a great big smile and walked back to his bench.
That day was a turning point in my relationship with my tools. I stopped looking at them as just a chunk of something that held a pointy bit. Instead, they were something to be cared for, like a pet or a child. Every part of the tool became important, not just the cutter.
Why am I telling you this? Since May I have been on a marathon streak of teaching, and I have dealt with the tools of almost 100 hand-tool woodworkers. And I’ve spent a lot of time removing corrosion, oiling adjustment mechanisms and scraping crud off chipbreakers.
And so here is my brief guide to the care and feeding of tools.
1. Own the fewest number of tools possible. The fewer tools you have, the easier it is to keep them in good shape. Think of tools as cats. Do you really want to be the lady down the street with 63 cats and all the problems that 63 cats have?
2. Have some permanent tool-care products. Get a bottle of oil (any non-drying vegetable oil or light machine oil will do). A rag (I use a micro-fiber cloth, but an old sock is also good). A rust eraser (you need only one – the medium grit is fine). A paint brush for cleaning out the escapements of your planes. An old awl for dislodging fossilized gunk from corners. An old toothbrush for cleaning crap off threads.
3. Every time you take a brief break from your work, wipe the soles of your planes and remove any dust from the escapement and under the bevel. Wipe the dust and pitch off your chisels and saws. Clear any shavings from the mouths of your moulding planes.
4. When you are done for the day, break down your planes. Take apart the iron and chipbreaker, de-crud them and wipe them down. Clean out the mouth of the tool with your brush. Make sure the sole of the plane is clean and undamaged. File or sand off any dings. With your chisels and saws, wipe off all the sap and dust before you put them away. Same goes with your knives, awls, dividers – anything that’s ferrous.
5. Every month or so, oil the adjustment mechanisms of your tools. Students are always amazed at what a drop of oil on the threads can do to improve the way their tools work.
6. Store your tools so they won’t get coated in dust. A tool chest, wall cabinet or Tupperware will do.
7. If you are overwhelmed by all this, go back and read tip No. 1. Or bundle up your naked body in an old housecoat and haul the 50-pound bag of cat food out to fill the buckets on the front porch.
Being a “Schwarz” really stinks at times. Most people in the United States misspell your name as “Schwartz.”
That’s actually OK with me because that’s how you say it (sort of) in German. Well actually, it sounds more like you are saying a bodily function onomonopia-style after a big dose of the “long chicken.”
I digress.
Today I received my August/September 2012 copy of American Craft magazine, which I have been reading for almost a decade, and I am quoted in it. Yay!
My one paragraph of fame is in the “Voices” column, where the editors asked the question: “How important is history to your work?” The answers, from a variety of artists, were interesting. I’m not an artist, so mine wasn’t so interesting. But I was quoted! And they spelled my name correctly! Yay Schwarz! Oh, here’s my answer:
“History informs everything that I do in the shop or at the drafting table, whether I’m building an 18th-century workbench or an Eames table. But I don’t seek to replicate – that’s like using a phrasebook for a foreign language. Instead, I try to become fluent in ‘campaign furniture,’ or ‘French workbench’ and build things using those same rules of syntax and grammar.
“My guiding principle is from John Ruskin’s ‘Stones of Venice’ (1854): Never encourage copying or imitation of any kind, except for the preserving of great works.”
