“The world is filled with people who are no longer needed – and who try to make slaves of all of us –
And they have their music and we have ours –
Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare –
And without their musical and ideological miscarriages to compare our song of freedom to,
We’d not have any opposite to compare music with – and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle,
We’d never know its speed, its power….”
— Woody Guthrie, from the liner notes of “Mermaid Avenue” by Billy Bragg and Wilco.
Anyone who has heard me talk about sharpening knows that I don’t really give a rodent’s hinder what system you select. Just pick one and stick with it. Just please don’t sample all the systems — that will definitely slow your efforts to get a keen edge.
Despite my “I’m OK, you’re OK philosophy,” I have a few beefs with some sharpening systems. Sandpaper is crazy expensive in the long run. Water-cooled grinders are crazy slow in the long walk, short run or whatever. I can say this because I’ve had to learn and use all the systems on the market, including LapSharp, Jool Tool, WorkSharp, etc. etc.
When I worked at Popular Woodworking Magazine, I used Shapton waterstones almost exclusively. Why? Because they cut faster than any system I’ve used, and they don’t need to be soaked. They do have downsides. They are sloppy, like all waterstones. You need a dedicated place to sharpen or you have to be one of those woodworkers who is, um, let’s just say “fastidious.” And they are expensive. I can say this because I have burned through several stones from several manufacturers.
When I left Popular Woodworking Magazine, I moved all my woodworking equipment to my shop at home. This shop is a lot smaller. There is no easy access to water. The floor is oak instead of hateful concrete. I don’t have room for a dedicated sharpening station.
So I switched back to oilstones for sharpening.
When I first learned sharpening, I had an India combination stone and a nice black Arkansas that a friend picked up for me at a gun meet. And a strop. That was plenty of equipment to get a keen edge.
But as I became the person who had to sharpen lots and lots of tools for the shop and for all our tool testing, I needed a system that was faster. We had the space for a dedicated sharpening area, so I dove into waterstones.
Today I have had to go back to my roots. I need to be able to sharpen on my bench. I need to do it without slopping water all over my benchtop and work pieces. And the system needs to be fast, but seconds don’t count anymore.
So I switched back to natural oilstones. When I was on the hunt for some, I bought a couple nice vintage ones. But then I had a chat with Larry Williams at Old Street Tool (formerly Clark & Williams planemakers) in Eureka Springs, Ark. He had been down to visit two places that mined and sold natural oilstones. He was quite pleased with the stones he picked up, and he’s now working on an article about the stones.
The two places Larry visited are Best Sharpening Stones and Dan’s Whetstone Co. (Correction: Larry informs me they visited Dan’s, but not Best, which is in New Jersey. My mistake.) Both carry a full range of natural and beautiful novaculite stones in any size you could want. Natural oilstones cut plenty fast for the home woodworker and make a nice keen edge.
So should you follow suit and switch to oilstones?
No. Stick with the system you are exploring right now. But if you haven’t chosen a system, don’t let the sharpening snobs talk you out of trying oilstones. They are tremendous.
So that is why I recently switched to oilstones. I sold one of my set of Shaptons. I’ll probably hold onto the other for when I teach classes, or until the day comes when I have a dedicated sharpening area in my shop.
When I embark on a writing project I try to begin with a ridiculous premise. During the revisions and the re-writes, the absurdity begins to mellow or even drain out of the manuscript altogether.
Take “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” for example. When I began writing the book, the nutty, never-happen-but-it-would-be-cool premise was to sell most of my tools, write a book, then quit my cushy corporate job… aw crap.
When Roy Underhill asked me to be a guest on a couple episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop” for the upcoming season we decided to do a show on planes and a show about the English Layout Square that graces the cover of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
So I began thinking about new ways to talk about handplanes. Stupid and perhaps insensitive ways to talk about handplanes. Stuff that would generate angry letters.
Here’s the set-up: What if smoothing plane use were an addiction? And there were support groups?
The following unedited script was completely discarded. We probably used only one line on the show. And yes, I know that addiction is a serious problem – ask me about my family’s struggles with it over a beer sometimes.
— Christopher Schwarz
Smoothing Plane Recovery Program
Chris: My name is Chris Schwarz, and I am a recovering smoothing plane addict.
Roy: An addict? Really? Strong words. Well let’s see … there are basically six steps to recovering from some sort of addiction. Let’s check the list:
“Step one: Admitting that one cannot control one’s addiction or compulsion.”
Chris: At one time I had more than a dozen smoothing planes. I was trying out all the angles, all the mouth apertures, infills, vintage, new, bevel-up, bevel down, woodies, different sizes, you name it.
shows different planes
I had a micrometer to measure whether I was making shavings that were .0005″ thick. I was watching Japanese planing contests – where they measure the shaving thickness in MICRONS.
shows wispy shavings
My wife even caught me down in the shop making shavings… and I wasn’t even building anything. Just… smoothing.
Roy: That is serious stuff. What made you finally quit?
Chris: The good book.
Roy: You mean…
Chris holds up and opens book
Chris: Yup. Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises; or the Doctrine of Handy-works Applied to the Arts of Smithing, Joinery, Carpentry, Turning, Bricklaying.” The first English-language book on woodworking.
Roy: That’s the second step – recognizing a higher power can give you strength. So you found strength through a 17th-century printer and hygrometer to the king?
Chris: Yes I did. Moxon showed me the error of my ways.
Roy: How’s that?
Chris: When I first read Mechanick Exercises I was struck – nay – blown away by how much Moxon wrote about the “fore plane” and how little he wrote about the “smoothing plane.” It was incredible. More than 1,800 words on the fore plane. And on the smoothing plane: just 33.
shows fore plane.
Roy: Dang. Well I hope they were strong words about the smoothing plane – about how it is the end-all plane, end of story.
Chris: Hardly. Here’s all he said:
“S. 6. The Ufe of the Smoothing-Plane.
The Smoothing-plane marked B 4. muft have its Iron fet very fine, becaufe its Office is to fmoothen the work from thofe Irregularities the Fore-plane made.”
Roy: That’s it? Nothing about finding your power animal or opening your heart chakra or adjusting your aura with sub-thou shavings?
Chris: Nope. That’s it. So I started diving deep into Moxon’s text on fore planes and I found that this plane (holds up plane) is the most powerful bench plane in the world.
Roy: You don’t say.
Chris: With this plane I could correct all the things I was doing wrong with my smoothing plane, and that’s ….
Roy: …the third step.
Chris: Indeed. The secret is inside the mouth of the tool. The iron (shows iron) is a convex arc – this one is an 8″ radius. And this radius can give you superpowers.
(reinstalls iron)
Roy: Like making paper-thin shavings?
Chris: Like making shavings the thickness of an old Groat! (makes massive pass with plane, pulls off thick shaving). This is what gets the work done, not the mamby-pamby lacy doily shavings where each one is unique like a snowflake!
This is what flattens boards (continues to work). Every shaving from a fore plane equals 10 from a smoother. You can do 10-times less work.
Roy: But won’t thick shavings tear up the work?
Chris: Ahhhh. That’s where Moxon helps us again. He tells us to traverse.
Roy: Traverse?
Chris: Yes. Don’t push your plane with the grain (shows) or against the grain (shows). Instead go ACROSS the grain.
Roy: Won’t you go to a dark and very warm place for doing that?
Chris: Hardly (demonstrates). By going across the grain we can take a much thicker chip with much less effort. And because we aren’t levering up the wood fibers, the tearing is minimal. This also allows us to get boards really flat – something a puny smoothing plane can’t do.
(discussion and demonstration of flattening a board by traversing bark side, then heart side. showing the different sounds and how to determine flat – just wink!)
Roy: That’s pretty remarkable, but the tool seems rather coarse; aren’t you going to make a lot of clean-up work for the other tools?
Chris: Hardly. Moxon says we can reduce the cut of the fore plane and clean up our dawks before moving on. (demonstrates; discussion of dawks ensues).
Roy: It seems like you really got true religion here. As I understand it, you are supposed to “make amends for your errors” in cases like this. Did you. Did you really?
Chris: I did. I sold almost all of my smoothing planes or gave them away to friends. I’m now down to – two smoothing planes, which is probably still one too many. And I’m trying to live my life with a new code of behavior – working as much with a coarse tool before I switch to a fine tool. That’s the core message in Moxon.
Use a hatchet more than a fine file. Use a rough plane more than a fine one. Chop. Don’t pare. Pit saw. Not coping saw.
Roy: And then there’s the last step, right? Helping others who suffer from an addiction to smoothing planes?
Chris: Yup. Wherever there is a woodworker using a Norris A13, I want to be there. A Holtey No. 98? I’m there to take your hands off the $5,000 tool. I’ll be there to trade you a moldy Scioto Works fore plane and show you the way: Across the grain, to get thick shavings, to actually accomplish something.
The tape is about to start rolling on Sunday morning for an episode of “The Woodwright’s Shop” with Roy Underhill. I’m so nervous about being a guest on the show that I can feel my morning coffee surging in my throat — about to pulse forward like a brown Trevi fountain.
Roy pulls on his hat, which his mother gave him about 35 years ago, over his thicket of hair and picks up a foam tube. I think: That’s… weird. It looks like one of those foam insulators that you wrap around your pipes to keep them from freezing.
He walks over to one of the cameramen and whacks him mercilessly with the foam sword, and the cameraman submits meekly to the mock beating. Then Roy walks over to the next camera operator and administers another stage whuppin’.
But when Roy approaches Mike Oniffrey, a cameraman and set photographer, Oniffrey resists and parries Roy’s attack using a long metal pole (where did a cameraman get a metal pole?). The two men re-enact a scene from “Star Wars” and suddenly the show has begun and I’m babbling.
Today we shot two episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop” for its forthcoming season. One show is about the importance of the fore plane and the impotence of the smoothing plane. The other show is about how to build the English Layout Square that graces the cover of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
I have appeared on a fair number of television programs in the last 20 years, but those were nothing like “The Woodwright’s Shop.” The crew of “The Woodwright’s Shop” is tiny and close-knit. The entire program is shot in one take – there is no series of cuts that are spliced together. You either get it right the first time or you do the whole dang show over again.
And then there are the beatings…. Aw, who am I kidding? Most TV sets have people who beat you.
The first show on Sunday we did was about the English Layout Square. I was happy with my performance because I made only three embarrassing errors.
1. I cut myself. Yup. Just as the cameras started rolling I nicked my left index finger with my panel saw. I don’t know if you’ll be able to see the wound, but I’m trying to stop the bleeding for the first five minutes.
2. I threw Roy’s mallet off the bench during the show. I meant to just put it down, but the thing went flying off the end of the workbench. Lucky for me I had a second mallet on the bench and I just pretended that nothing happened.
3. I grabbed the wrong piece of wood when I demonstrated how to cut a bead on the square. I was supposed to put it on one of the legs of the square, but I grabbed the horizontal brace instead. Roy helpfully pointed out the error.
Despite all this stupidity, the cameras kept rolling and somehow didn’t record me wetting myself, which is what I wanted to do.
And this first taping of the day was the tame one. The second show was like “Pretty Woman” meets “Fight Club.” More later.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Roy wanted me to tell you that his show is free to all PBS stations. So call your local station and demand they run “The Woodwright’s Shop.” And don’t let them tell you that they can’t afford it. No more “Teletubbies” — we want the Woodwright!
Perhaps the best way to design nice furniture is to first look at thousands of examples of it.
That’s the path I take, and I always recommend woodworkers visit museums and galleries, or pore over books crammed with photos of pleasing forms. But it never occurred to me that looking at furniture could have the opposite effect – it can ruin you.
During my last week in Germany I spent a lot of time with Ute Kaiser, who is in charge of public relations and the class program for Dictum GmbH, the company that runs the classes where I teach.
Ute is a former newspaper reporter like myself, so we get along just great. And usually before or after I teach at Dictum, she and her boyfriend take me sightseeing somewhere in Bavaria. This time we went to Regensburg and ended up ducking some spotty weather in a cafe that looked like something transplanted from Paris.
As the three of us chatted about what we had seen that day, the conversation turned to furniture, both old and new. That’s when Ute told me a story about a Bavarian furniture factory and the time she had interviewed the owner while she was a reporter.
The man had made a lot of money selling factory-made furniture all over Germany, though the furniture wasn’t particularly well-made or beautiful. During the interview, he explained his business model.
As a long-time maker, he knew that his furniture wasn’t the best. But he also knew something about human nature.
So he bought regular advertising in the local paper that showed photos of his furniture. The more the readers saw the ugly forms, the more they became used to them – the stuff became comfortable and familiar. And after becoming used to it, they bought it.
As much as I hate to admit, this makes sense. We accept the familiar and reject the different, especially when it comes to filling our homes.
It’s just that the world is upside down now. The ugly is familiar and the beautiful is rare.
— Christopher Schwarz
For more design resources….
• If you are interested in furniture design, you definitely should check out George Walker’s blog. Walker, the author of the “Design Matters” column in Popular Woodworking Magazine, has been on a one-man crusade to help improve the design vocabulary of woodworkers.
• If you like period furniture, one of the best and cheapest sources of beautiful forms is Wallace Nutting’s “Furniture Treasury.” Volumes one and two can be had for a song at used book stores.
• The other place to find lots of forms to look at is at web pages for auction houses that specialize in fine furniture. Christie’s and Sotheby’s are always good sources. But there are other houses that specialize in other forms, such as this great site for Southern furniture, Neal Auction house.
