Lost Art Press

Category: Personal Favorites

Take My Advice, I’m Not Using It

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Three TablesDuring my final year of teaching, I had three distressing encounters with teenagers in my classes and lectures. At the end of the event, the teens came up and said: “I want to be you when I grow up.” And then they asked a terrifying question: “How do I get to where you are?”

I hate to give advice. But I also hate to be a jerk. And so I gave some after-school-special answer about working hard and never listening to adults.

The honest answer is: Become a hedge fund manager for five years, make more money than I will in a lifetime and “retire” to building furniture for clients and writing about woodworking.

As we don’t need more hedge fund managers, here is a list of things I have done right in my career (the list of things I’ve done wrong would fill a book and require multiple therapy sessions).

  1. Keep your day job. Don’t quit your real job until you have paid off all your debts (I paid off my mortgage when I was 39) and have purchased all the equipment you need to get started. Build your business while you are working for the man. Yes, this requires multi-vitamins or amphetamines. I chose vitamins.
  2. Reject all overhead. Don’t hire employees, buy/rent/lease a building or add any overhead until these things seem like pocket change. Even though I can afford an employee (or five), it’s better to keep a business small and flexible. Plus, you didn’t really quit your job to become a middle manager at your own business, did you?
  3. Embrace the Internet. If you aren’t happy to share your struggle on Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, blogs, forums and usenet (they’re FREE), I think you are fighting without using your fists. These tools allow you to compete with huge businesses. All it takes is being clever and determined.
  4. Make friends. You cannot do this alone. Take other makers out to lunch and figure out how their businesses work. Because I have a network of woodworkers here in Northern Kentucky, I could live off referrals if I needed to (not that I really want to make 600 shutters for the county courthouse). Friends will keep you fed. And you should return that favor for other makers.
  5. Don’t do one thing. Make sure you have multiple income sources. I make money from writing, building furniture and publishing other people’s books. All of those hands wash each other. When one goes to pot, the other one can make up the difference.
  6. Live someplace cheap. This is huge. The Cincinnati area is dirt cheap but densely populated. That’s perfect for what I do. I have the infrastructure I need (gigabit Internet, lumberyards, transportation, other makers) and access to the rest of the world, thanks to the Internet.
  7. Do it all yourself. Learn photography, website design, copywriting, CAD, QuickBooks and whatever else it takes to make your business work. Yes, you might hire others to do some of this stuff (someday), but you should be good enough at all these things that you can tell when you are getting cheated or are working with a slug.
  8. Keep your day job. If all the above points sound exhausting, then maybe your day job isn’t so bad.

One more point: I’d do exactly what I am doing even if there were no money in it. I’d do it if no one read it. I’d do it if no one bought it. Seriously, I can’t not do it. I am obsessed and crazy (ask Lucy). And that, more than anything, is why we didn’t eat ramen tonight.

— Christopher Schwarz

Master of Nothing

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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One of the common criticisms I hear of North American woodworkers is that we try to do so many things – casework, carving, veneering, chairmaking, turning – that we never become good at any one of those things.

There’s truth to the criticism. When I work side-by-side with traditionally trained European woodworkers, they beat the pants off me (speed-wise). German, English and Swiss joiners can cut dovetails and assemble casework much faster than I can.

I do get a small measure of revenge when I pick up a turning tool without a second thought to make a leg or knob. Most of them have never touched a lathe, worked with green timber, dealt with compound-angle wet/dry chair joints or carved even a simple detail.

Maybe it’s the frontier blood in our veins or the fact that our society never embraced the European apprentice system for woodworking. There was just too much work to do, not enough people to do it and not enough time to train people in that manner. Heck, most North Americans I know are one or two generations removed from our subsistence farming ancestors.

At times I wish our history was different. I covet the pure European skill when I watch people from the French schools, for example, make astonishing chairs with ease. Or when I watch German carvers at work on restoring a cathedral. Or English joiners making ridiculous dovetails. I feel inferior, as if I’ve spent my entire adult life working at the craft and haven’t really gotten anywhere.

And this is the part of the writing arc where I am supposed to say: But we’re great! We get to do so many different things! And blah blah freedom #Murica.

That’s not how I resolve this conflict in my mind. I turn to the parable of the scorpion and the frog, made famous in the movie “The Crying Game.”

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across the river. But the frog queries: “How do I know you won’t sting me?”

The scorpion replies: “Because if I do, we’ll both die.”

Satisfied, the frog allows the scorpion to hop on his back. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. And before they both drown, the frog asks: “Why?”

“It’s in my nature,” replies the scorpion.

Sometimes I ponder my 11-year-old self. Would I have signed onto a seven-year apprenticeship at a technical academy if it were offered? It’s an unanswerable, navel-gazing question, and so I pick up a saw and get back to cutting some tenons. And so should you.

— Christopher Schwarz

Gallery – D’Elia Antique Tool Museum

Posted on by fitz

D'Elia Antique Tool Museum - ATTIC 2013

On May 5, 2013, I attended an event at the D’Elia Antique Tool Museum for the spring meeting of Antique Tools and Trades In Connecticut (ATTIC), a club dedicated to preserving the knowledge of the tools and trades of bygone times. This organization hosts two events per year at museums and historic sites related to CT industry.

The Museum is located in the town of Scotland Connecticut (population 1,726). The tool collection is housed in the Scotland Public Library, built in 2005 as a gift by collector Andrew D’Elia and his wife Anna Mae. The collection consists of approximately 1400 planes.

ATTIC members arrived at dawn to set up a small scale flea market. Somebody brought coffee and donuts. Most of the attendees have been active in the tool collecting community for decades. This event was special because the D’Elia Museum contains one of the largest public collections of patented American planes in the country.

There were several notable dealers in attendence. Martin J. Donnelly was there to promote his ‘Live Free or Die’ auctions in Nashua, NH. He had a table loaded with old auction catalogs and was handing them out to any takers. Jim Bode was there selling tools off the tailgate of his truck. The largest table belonged to Roger K. Smith of Athol Mass., renowned collector and author of Patented Transitional and Metallic Planes in America Vol 1 & 2.

I spent some time talking to Roger and examining his tools, including a pair of Cesar Chelor planes. I was given a free copy of his 2010 calendar ‘New Discoveries of American Patented Planes’.

Andrew D’Elia arrived later in the morning to unlock the building. ATTIC members held a small meeting in the library where they voted on which site to visit in the autumn and collected membership dues. They passed around mystery tools and announced recent discoveries. During this session each member was given a canvas gift bag containing informational packets about CT tool inventors, catalog reprints, brochures, a mug and some stationary. Then we all headed inside the museum to view the collection.

The planes are stored in custom built display cabinets with glass shelves, mirrored backs, and recessed lights. The stained glass windows of the museum were custom made to depict actual tools from the collection. The entire museum is a single 1000 sq. ft. room. You can read more about the details here. On several occasions Andy unlocked the display cabinets and brought tools out to his desk to be examined more closely by the visitors.

I did my best under the circumstances to take some photos of the cabinets. The extreme sun glare combined with all the glass and mirrors made things difficult to say the least. The gallery can be viewed here. The download link contains much higher resolution photos for those of you who would like to read the cards and see the fine details.

About 400 of the most important tools from the collection were professionally photographed for the book American Wood & Metal Planes. Copies of this book were for sale during the show. It is well worth the purchase.

At the time of the 2013 event the museum was open on weekend afternoons from June – September, and year round by appointment. Since that time the hours have been removed from the brochure. It is suggested that you contact the museum by email or telephone to arrange for a visit.

Because this museum is dedicated to rare patented planes, I thought I would offer a document from my own research on American plane patents. This is an unfinished piece that I compiled for reference. It has not been edited since 2012.

It contains hundreds of pages of plane related patents that are not available in sources like DATAMP or book lists. The document is 4557 pages in length and consists of image files only. Bookmarks are provided by year to help navigate the volume. It is 227 MB pdf so right click and “save as” to your device.

—Jeff Burks

The Pace

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Are we becoming adjusted to speed? I was talking a few days ago to a factory worker who thinks we are and that men are changing and will go on changing under its influence. “Everybody is working,” he said, referring to husbands and their wives, even children in holiday times. “The pressure is terrific.”

Conversely, so are the tensions. Perhaps these are at the root of the restlessness of some men, who seem to be always on the move, and in the growing number of others who, in their leisure, embark on creative, often very exacting work. With outlets like these, tensions tend to diminish, more so than if a man simply relaxes into com­plete idleness.

The important difference is that we make our own speed and with this comes the feeling of release. When we want to work quickly, there are the small power tools to take the edge off our impatience. When we want to taste to the full the luxury of unhurried, relaxed work, then we can settle down to a job with all the sober pleasure of an old­world craftsman, finding perhaps some stray particles of wisdom touch us unaware.

But however we work, the thing of prime importance is to live, really live in the job of the moment so long as it lasts. Once we begin to cast our eyes ahead to the next item on the schedule, away goes peace and back come the tensions. When this happens, reasonable speed looks only an irritant, hands fumble through sheer unmitigated im­patience. And that kind of impatience is the very devil in creative work. Unless we are careful, it mars the work, it certainly mars our temper and our enjoyment of the job. For the great thing about craft work when we do it on our own terms, is that it can be so thoroughly enjoyable. It has the power to take a man right out of himself, right into the thing he is doing, an excellent therapy against the stringencies of a busy world.

But the mind, being so much quicker than the hand, can easily betray us, so that a great part of the patience of true craftsmanship comes from keeping the mind reined in, never to be tempted to dream about the following job while we are doing this one, so risking making this one look like an interminable nuisance. “Little by little and bit by bit, that’s the way you does it,” as an old gardener once said to me reprovingly, and it is a good, steadying philosophy when we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

 

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As a matter of fact, it is quite remarkable how many men today are learning to take the long view. They may have bought a partly derelict property at a bargain price or have determined to modernise their old-fashioned house, but whatever it is that starts them going the project is often one which has to be carried out over a long period of spare-time work. Some men even put themselves to school first for one or other of the essentials, such as bricklaying, engaging this with some other skill they already have. The result is often first-class. When a man puts his whole mind and will to a job, amateur or part amateur though he be, it is remarkable what excellence he can achieve. The trouble with most of us most of the time is that minds and wills are only half engaged. Put the whole of ourselves into a job and the good thing emerges. What is most noticeable is how readily these men shape down to the steady, progressive, long-term view, neither hurrying, nor unduly worrying, but taking each stage as it comes, dealing with it so thoroughly that care goes a long way towards meeting the demand for expertise. Because their number is now increasing all around, there is almost certain to be a friend or neighbour able to help and advise at difficult moments. And it is not at all unknown for a lecturer at a Technical College, becoming interested in the ambitious projects of his pupils, going out to give them a hand over the tricky bits.

It is a new wave of craftsmanship that has come upon us, born of changed social conditions. Before the war no ordinary householder, however skilled, would have dreamed of attempting single-handed the jobs which his modem counterpart undertakes. It is craft work from quite a different direction, bringing with it an ability and sense of independence which are the best kind of answer to the various pressures which make up the modern world.

It is the ordinary man standing squarely on his own feet, learning to “do” for himself once more and finding quite a bit of enjoyment and an amazing potential in the doing. The general collapse and withdrawal of handicrafts from industry is helping to bring about a revival in our very midst. Truly we are adjusting ourselves to changes of all kinds, not only pace. Pace, indeed, can kill. It can also be exhilarating.

— The Woodworker magazine, September 1964