After a few of my tools ended up in other people’s tool chests (by accident) during classes, I decided to mark all my tools and the projects I build with a “pair of compasses,” which is the Lost Art Press logo.
I did a lot of research into the different makers of steel stamps a few years ago, and I settled on InfinityStamps.com. And I have nothing but praise for the company, the customer service, the quick turnaround and the final product.
You can send them anything to make your logo – I sent them a scan of the compasses from Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises.” They took that .jpg and converted it into a rasterized image that could be scaled and turned into a steel stamp.
A couple days after submitting my scan, the customer service rep sent me a proof of what my stamp would look like.
I was completely skeptical because of the high amount of detail in the proof. I called the guy and he insisted that the stamp would look like the proof he sent.
So I gave it the green light (yes, I paid full price and blah, blah, blah).
The stamp arrived a couple weeks later, and I went mad stamping everything – everything – in the house (241-KIDS never found out, whew).
If you are looking for a good maker’s stamp, I recommend InfinityStamps.com without reservation.
“Ebenezer,” continued John, ” I have come to ask you a question for my mother. I want her to buy me a chest of tools, and she says she will, if you think it is a good plan. And I knew you would think it was a good plan.”
“No,” said Ebenezer, “I don’t think any such thing.”
“Why not?” asked John, much surprised.
“Because boys can’t do anything with carpenter’s tools,” said Ebenezer.
“Why, yes,” said John, “I could make a great many things with them. Think how many things you can do with your tools.”
“What you need most,” said Ebenezer, “in making things is skill, not tools.”
“Skill!” repeated John, much surprised. “We could not do anything if we had ever so much skill, unless we had tools to work with.”
“That is possible,” said Ebenezer; “but still, if you have skill, you can do a great many things with very few tools, but without the skill you cannot do anything, if you have all the tools in the world. To give a chest of tools to a boy who does not know how to use them, is like giving a pair of spectacles and a telescope to a blind man.”
Jacob Abbot’s “Boy’s Own Workshop” is a fine little book about a boy named John Gay and his driving passion to build things from wood – everything from a workbench to a pond for his little brother, Benny. Though your 21st-century eyes might find the language stilted and the lessons a bit on the Victorian side, I urge you to give it a serious look. (Dude, it’s a free book.)
If you can look past the 1866-era mores, you will find that John Gay has the heart of a true craftsman. He wants to learn how to do things right – he is willing to sign on as an apprentice with a local carpenter. And he takes great pains to do his work neatly.
And while John Gay is someone we might all identify with, the real hero of the book is Ebenezer, the 18-year-old carpenter who guides John’s education as a woodworker. Despite his young age in the book, Ebenezer dispenses the kind of wisdom that 21st-century woodworkers need.
His patience for the craft rubs off on John. His maxims for workbench design are in line with mine, for the most part. Ebenezer doesn’t think John should build a tool chest – his reasons are interesting. And his lessons on layout are worth the price of the book (dude, it’s free).
If Google Books didn’t have such an excellent scan of this book, I’d would consider republishing it. But there is no need. Go and get this book for your computer or portable reader. It’s just the thing to read as the nights get colder.
“The customer is always wrong,” Felix Klipstein in the John Brown column #129, December 2002
I never got to meet John Brown, the Welsh chairmaker, artist, writer and author of “The Anarchist Woodworker” column in Good Woodworking magazine. But he is with me in the shop every day.
I saw one of his Welsh stick chairs in Good Woodworking in the 1990s, and it changed me in an instant. I knew that the chairs he’d dug up from the rustic countryside and dragged into the modern shop were exactly the type of chair I wanted to build.
Yes, I like Windsor and ladderback chairs. But Welsh stick chairs, which look more primitive and animal-like, are far more interesting to build.
I wanted to take a class with Brown, but I missed out on his short visits to the United States. And going to the United Kingdom in the 1990s to learn to build chairs was just a crazy idea with my salary and my young family.
So I sought out closer chairmakers to learn about Welsh chairs, which took me to Cobden, Ontario, and Paint Lick, Ky. Yet it has always been Brown’s chairs that I have been studying and striving for.
This fall I finished two chairs that are influenced by chairmaker Don Weber (I love the rake and splay of his legs), by Brown (the four-spindle back is classic Brown), and a little Schwarz. I lightened the arm bow, altered the seat plan and designed the crest rail from scratch.
When I sat down these chairs for the first time, I wanted to smoke a cigarette – and I don’t smoke. But Brown did (check out his book “Welsh Stick Chairs” for some great photos of this). So I might be getting close.
The profession of journalism has some odd quirks you should know about.
They are odd enough in print journalism; in television journalism they are downright bizarre. When I was a newspaper reporter in Greenville, S.C., I made friends with many of the TV reporters in our market. They told me about their generous “clothing allowances,” which was a stipend they were paid every month to keep them looking snappy.
But I was always most amused by their names. One reporter, Anthony, had come to South Carolina from an East Coast market. He had Italian blood, and his first employer was in an Italian market, so they told him his name was “Tony” and he was encouraged to talk and dress “more Italian.”
In South Carolina, the only Italian food is at Fazoli’s, and so they told him to be “Anthony” and to “drop the ethnic stuff.”
After a couple years Anthony left South Carolina for a job in Chicago. One of the first questions at the interview: “Can you be a Hispanic?”
So Anthony had to go by a different on-air name. This time something “Hispanic.”
Over on the print side, we are more boring, but we do have a thing about our names.
I started training for the profession in eighth grade. Getting a spot in the journalism class was tough because if you were admitted, you got to skip Spanish classes. (Wow, was that short-sighted on the school’s part.)
To get in, you had to have good grades (my grades were OK), and you needed the recommendation of your English teacher. Lucky for me, Mrs. Hatfield liked me. Though I was a mediocre student, I read voraciously. And so did she.
In Arkansas, this is the nice way of saying "kinda slow."
So I squeaked by (a common theme in my life) and was admitted to the journalism class. As part of the class, we published the school’s paper, The Cougar Print, and the students did everything: writing, editing, layout, composition, paste-up and photography.
I was pegged as a writer and photographer, so I was sent to the darkroom to learn the lab processes and was trained to write. The first piece I ever did was probably the most ethically suspect story I’ve ever put my name to, but it turned out to be an important bit of writing in my career.
It was a feature on the editor, Stephanie, who was a candidate in the school’s beauty/scholarship pageant. The story was a total puff piece designed to catch the eye of the pageant judges. I didn’t know better, and I played along.
When I turned in the story to the teacher, she sat me down to have a conversation about my byline. I was told that this was the time when I had to pick my byline, and it would be something I should stick with for the rest of my life, even if I changed my birth name.
I had to carefully consider if I should use my middle name, “Martin,” as my first name. Or if I should use “Christopher M. Schwarz” to look more pretentious grown-up. At the time, everyone called me “Chris,” and they still do. But there was a problem with “Chris.” My voice hadn’t changed yet, and it was really high-pitched. So high, in fact, that people on the phone thought I was a girl.
So I wanted to appear less girly in every way. “Chris” was a girl’s name, so I chose “Christopher.”
But no one calls me “Christopher;” it’s a terrible mouthful of consonants. So when you write, call or see me at a woodworking show, just call me “Chris.”
But whatever you do, don’t ask me if I’m Chinese – another weird and scarring event from my childhood.
This morning we began shooting photos for the new book “Virtuoso: The Toolbox of Henry O. Studley,” and I shot this short video with a narrative by Don Williams, the author of the book.
There’s not anything more for me to add, except that these photos were taken by me with my Canon G12. The photographer, Narayan Nayar, is using his Leica M9 for the book’s photos.
