Category: Personal Favorites

In some old images of staked stools and chairs, you’ll find the legs and other components are a bit curved. Sometimes this is the result of the “hedge carpenter” using a curved branch scavenged from the woods. Or from using sections of a log that are riven from the swelling at the butt of the tree, which is naturally curved.

Today I encountered a description of a hedge carpenter that was charming that led me back to Walter Rose’s “The Village Carpenter” (of course).

“Thus they had never become enslaved to line and level; their minds had not been trained to revolt if their work deviated from the square, or if it was slightly on the twist and the faces of their joints not absolutely flush. They themselves made no claim to art – I doubt if they knew the meaning of the word. But the work they did was part of the beauty of the countryside; the cleft fence-rails and posts split from oak saplings, with the bark left on in places, and the rough knots trimmed with axe or drawing knife.”

— Christopher Schwarz

I get asked to promote crowdfunding efforts all the time. I almost never say yes because most of the campaigns are ridiculous, ill-planned or just bad ideas. But this one is different.

Auriou (Forge De Saint Juery) is fighting for its future after 162 years of operation. Business it good – as it should be because Auriou rasps are the best – but the company’s equipment is outdated. They need new equipment and training to survive.

You can read all about it here. The page is in both English and French.

I know it’s not a sexy cause – like a gun that shoots salt at housefies – but it is an investment in the future of our craft. A set of good rasps is essential to curved work – I discuss them in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”

If you love Auriou rasps, please consider making a contribution to help this fantastic company. I am making my contribution today.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. For those of you who are experts on running light industrial factories in France, you might want to hold off on your critiques unless you know the whole history of the company, the labor challenges it has faced during the last decade and its financial book. For those of you who are *not* experts on French manufacturing, you *definitely* should keep your trap shut.

For me, woodworking tourism is the best kind of tourism, though I resist dragging my family along when I go to lumberyards, museum exhibits or auctions. I want them to remember me fondly when I’m dead.

Luckily, these days I have Brendan Gaffney working alongside me in the shop, and he’s always up for a ridiculous day trip. This week we went to Amish country in north-central Ohio to visit a tool store, some lumberyards and – most importantly – Keim Lumber.

Keim is about a three-hour drive from Cincinnati, so it’s a bit of a stretch to shop there regularly. But I’ve heard so much about the place during my life here that I had to visit it. What is Keim? It’s a lumberyard and home center that caters to the furniture maker and high-end carpenter.

The lumber section, for example, is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Keim stocks both domestic and exotic species that you’d be hard-pressed to find, such as Tree of Heaven, Osage Orange, Butternut, Sassafras and a couple dozen others. On the exotic side, the stock was equally amazing. I’m not into exotics, however, so I didn’t retain a lot of the species names (you can browse the inventory here).

What is equally impressive is how the lumber is presented. Every board is beautifully planed with no tear-out and then drum-sanded. Yup, drum sanded.

The tool section is equally impressive, though it is geared to professional furniture makers with production equipment. Keim carries several lines of machines, such as SawStop, Jet and Rikon. But where the store really shines is in all the shop supplies and accessories. They have every sawblade imaginable, an entire aisle of sanding supplies and deep inventory on handheld electric tools. Plus they do repairs.

There’s an impressive section of hardware, though most of it is geared to the production woodworker (though they had Acorn strap hinges). Plus a huge section for finishing (5-gallon buckets of boiled linseed oil).

And there were entire sections of the store we didn’t explore, such as the custom millwork area.

Oh, and the prices were considerably lower than in the city.

If you are ever passing near Charm, Ohio, I highly recommend a visit to Keim. We’re already planning a return trip to the area to visit some additional lumberyards in the area.

— Christopher Schwarz

After almost three decades of woodworking and writing about woodworking (and its occasional excesses), I am not easy to impress. I’ve been to all the big woodworking shows (including IWF and AWFS multiple times). And I’ve been to factories and stores all over the world.

But Dictum’s new headquarters in Plattling left me fairly speechless.

I have worked as an instructor for Dictum for many years and continue to work for the company because it it is on the same ethical wavelength as I am. Dictum takes a long view with its business practices, in everything from the way it treats it employees, to the fixtures it chooses for its bathrooms.

So yes, I am biased. I am a huge fan of the company and its employees.

This summer I got to visit the company’s new headquarters building after wrapping up a long day of teaching a workbench class. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a woodworking facility like this. Though I’ve never visited Google, Apple or Facebook headquarters, I imagine they might be something like this.

Everything is modern, open, airy and friendly. All the tools are hanging on the walls and can be taken down for inspection or use. The showroom is (easily) as twice as large as Highland Woodworking, the largest woodworking store I’ve ever visited.

There are separate areas for the knives, the leatherworking tools, the woodworking hand tools and the machinery. And there is a large section of Filson workwear – a bit of a surprise but not really.

After an hour in the showroom one of the employees took us of a tour of the warehouse and offices. I have never seen a cleaner or more efficient shipping operation (and I’ve seen a lot). And the offices and public employee areas made me re-think being self-employed (only a bit).

So if you are in southern Germany, a visit to Dictum is definitely worth the effort, whether it’s the company’s headquarters in Plattling or the store and school in Munich (which is where I’m teaching this fall).

One more thing: If you’ve been reading this blog for longer than 5 minutes then you know this isn’t a sponsored post. Dictum didn’t give me any tools for free. They worked me like a dog and paid me a fair wage.

— Christopher Schwarz