Category: Personal Favorites

We receive frequent letters from readers who are frustrated with the way we publish books. Our deadlines sometimes slip. Projects that we think will take a year end up taking two or three years. Some projects disappear off the radar and reappear later.

One frustrated reader suggested we should change our company’s logo to a marijuana plant because that is surely what we are smoking.

When John and I started Lost Art Press in 2007 we decided that our internal corporate motto would be: “It’s done when it’s done. No sooner.”

This is important to me because I came from the corporate world where deadlines were more important than quality. A book took exactly two years from concept to delivery. Exceptions were rare.

While this is a great way to keep your revenue predictable, your employees paid and your lights on, it is my opinion that quality can suffer in this system.

When I explain this, some respond with this logical retort: Why don’t you stop writing and focus all your energies on getting other author’s books published?

My answer is two-fold: If I did this it would damage my mental health, and many times I’m not the problem. When a manuscript comes in, I drop my personal projects and work on the outside author’s project. So when you ask, “Why isn’t the Felebien translation done?” my answer is, “Because the translator is still working on it.”

We don’t pressure our authors to turn over a manuscript until they are happy.

So it might surprise you to find out that the only book I have in my hands to edit is Andrew Lunn’s book on sawmaking. Everything else is at some other stage of the process. So if you’ll please excuse me, I really need to read about setting saws.

— Christopher Schwarz

If you told someone you like to restore hammers, they might think you lazy. Aside from tightening the head on the handle, what else is there to do?

Today during a lull at The Furniture Institute of Massachusetts, I spied a hammer on a student’s bench and had to snatch it. It was a Bluegrass 16 oz. claw hammer. Though this hammer isn’t made anymore, the student had one that was still factory fresh – or “new old stock” as the collectors call it.

The head and handle were still covered with factory goop. So I sneaked away with the tool while the student was occupied.

Step 1: Get the goop off. Yes, it protects the hammer from rust while it is on the shelf at the store. But it is as attractive as the plastic covers on the furniture in your grandmother’s fancy “drawing room.” Lose it. Remove it with solvent or elbow solvent.

Step 2: Dress the striking face. Sand the face of the hammer to remove the rough milling marks and to ensure the face is very, very slightly bulged. (It should come made this way, but the sandpaper ensures it will be that way.)

I usually start with #150-grit and finish with #220 – at most.

After you sand the face, don’t touch it with your hands. Ever. If some numbskull touches the face, dress it (the hammer head, not the numbskull) with sandpaper. Any lubricant on the striking face encourages the face to slip off a nail head.

I then returned the hammer to its owner.

— Christopher Schwarz

On Tuesday, for the first time ever, I felt my hand skills fade a bit.

I was chopping half-blind dovetail sockets and I could not get the tail board to lock smoothly and at 90°. I looked down and noticed my hands were trembling. Weird.

It could be that I’m still recovering from a nasty infection that cut me down at Handworks last month. Or that I have an iron or protein deficiency as a result. But at that moment, I thought that dovetailing had evaporated from my hands.

I sat down and thought of R.J. DeCristoforo.

One of the odd aspects of entering the woodworking magazine business in my 20s was that I became the editor for a lot of mature craftsmen. I watched them make the transition from a vibrant maker to someone who struggled at the bench and then turned his efforts to teaching or writing.

Some of them continued to explore the craft in ways that their abilities allowed. Woodworkers who were traditionalists allowed themselves to use more machines and power hand tools. Others explored aspects of furniture design or history. But they were always curious. Always looking to learn something more that could be passed on.

The majority, however, seemed to close up like a paper fan. They guarded the ideas, designs, tools and techniques they developed during their long and fruitful careers. They lashed out with letters at other woodworkers who stole, borrowed or adapted their ideas without due credit. They began writing the same column over and over, like it was a copy-and-paste job.

After observing this cycle a few times, I resolved to be R.J. DeCristoforo – or Cris as he preferred to be called. He was a poet (literally) who fell into writing and editing for a staggering number of magazines and books (almost 90 titles). His pioneering work in the radial-arm saw and Shopsmith practically launched those two machines into American garages and basements.

We might snigger today at those machines. But my second machine was a radial-arm saw, and at the time I thought it was way better than my coping saw. Yes, even for ripping.

Near the end of Cris’ life he wrote a column for Popular Woodworking called “Cris Cuts,” which was basically anything he wanted to write about. Even up to his last column he was dreaming up new and different ways to explain the craft to people like myself who weren’t qualified to buff shoes on his radial-arm saw (my grandfather had that attachment!).

And he still kept building right up to the end in 2000.

His wife, Mary, called to tell me the news and I cried at my desk. It’s not cool these days to list Cris as your woodworking hero. But he was mine. And he was my first. Not just for the way he wrote, but for the way he lived out his handmade life and avoided becoming the bitter woodworking crank that I fear I’ll become.

I can still hear him saying on the phone: “It’s Cris! from sunny California!”

This afternoon I took a friend’s advice and ordered a big bloody double cheeseburger for lunch – I don’t eat all that much meat, to be honest. Within about 30 minutes, I wanted a second crack at those dovetails.

— Christopher Schwarz

Many woodworkers I know have a similar dream shop. It’s a gorgeous structure deep in the woods, which is surrounded by lakes, fields and wildlife.

When I have this dream, I wake up in a panic.

Growing up in Arkansas with my family’s 84-acre farm inspired me to do only one thing: Move to Chicago. As a writer and woodworker, I prefer the constructed world and its continuous cycle of rebirth and decay. Industrial ruins, overgrown bridges, and neglect set my mind reeling.

The only question is: How much entropy can Lucy and I stand? We might have our answer at 5 p.m. today.

— Christopher Schwarz