“He is a writer for the ages – the ages of four to eight.”
— Dorothy Parker
When people ask us about the books we are working on, they usually say something like: “That’s nice, but you should really get <insert name here> to write a book. That would be awesome.”
I can tell you most definitely that book is unlikely to be awesome.
After 25 years of writing, ghostwriting and editing authors of all skill levels, I can say that your world-class woodworking skills have little to do with the quality of book you might write. Many people are incapable of organizing their thoughts into words. Their prose is a diarrhea of overlapping and aimless ideas. They prefer to say something in 1,000 words when 10 would do. They never get to the point.
I’ve worked successfully with these people. I interviewed them (sometimes for days) and distilled their thoughts into a magazine article in their voice. It took about a week to create 2,000 words that way. Books are usually about 100,000 words. I don’t even want to do that math.
Even worse – and there is worse – are people who want to write a book yet have no idea what it should be about.
“Can you give me a topic?” they ask.
“Nope.”
Truth is most authors at Lost Art Press are burning up inside because of an obsession with some aspect of woodworking. They are already writing a book, but they don’t know the mechanics, or they think that only four people would read it.
Here’s what we ask of these people.
Come up with a title. If you cannot summarize the book into a compelling title, you should be worried.
Write a “high-concept” sentence that can describe the book in one sentence of no more than 12 words. Here’s the high concept for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest”: Buy better, but fewer, tools. Build stuff that defies consumerism. Disobey.
Write a “Table of Contents,” what we call the “TOC.” Write a title for each chapter and a sentence that describes what the chapter is about.
If you can do this and we’re excited about the book, chances are good that we can work together (unless you are an arrogant wiener).
All these thoughts are boiling in my brain right now because I am writing up a contract for our 20th potential project – that’s about five years of work we now have stacked up ahead of us. So trust me when I say there is a lot of unexplored ground in our craft – perhaps even a birdhouse book with your name on it.
I know it’s too late to convince you to come to Handworks. But it’s not too late to make you feel bad about skipping it to attend your daughter’s wedding.
In addition to the H.O. Studley tool cabinet in nearby Cedar Rapids, Jameel “Jamal Alabama” Abraham of Benchcrafted will be exhibiting the traveling tool chest that he and I collaborated on early this year for the August 2015 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The chest features a silence-inducing carved marquetry lid that was designed and executed by Jameel.
Read about it here and get a peek at the upcoming magazine cover.
In addition to that, Jameel says there will be two other special chests on display at the Benchcrafted booth by some young woodworkers that you won’t want to miss.
And if that’s not enough, Marco Terenzi will be displaying his 1/4-scale Anarchist’s Tool Chest (I think it will be in our booth), which is on a stateside tour from its home in England. This thing is sick. Also, Marco tells me he is bringing one other tool chest to Handworks that – if it makes it – should make you freak.
And in addition to that, I’ll be baring my chest at the top of every hour. Just to get attention.
Mark Firley of The Furniture Record with Megan Fitzpatrick at a recent meal at The Eagle Food & Beer Hall.
I’m a Southerner, so please forgive the following hyperbole: If you want to become a better furniture maker you need to see a lot of furniture. Tons, really. You can do this by traveling the world, or you can read The Furniture Record, one of my favorite blogs.
The Furniture Record blog is the tip of the iceberg of Mark Firley’s photo collection on Flickr, a library of more than 11,000 images of furniture and its details that Mark has encountered with his camera. Because Mark lives in North Carolina, his photos have a Southern bias, but he also travels quite a bit so you are going to find pieces from all over the world.
A quick browsing of his blog or Flickr sets should convince you of two things:
The furniture record is far more diverse than what you’ll find in books or on auction sites.
Construction methods are not standard or absolute. People have found a wide variety of ingenious (that’s a kind word) ways to join wood. And oddball methods can survive remarkably well.
I’ve known Mark since I started teaching at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School in Pittsboro, N.C. Mark is a huge supporter of the school and the local woodworking scene in the Research Triangle, where he helps organize and has hosted weekly building session for woodworkers at his and other shops.
But that’s about all I know about him, except that his humor is as dry as a popcorn fart, he doesn’t drink alcohol and he has an unusual job working for Donald Trump. So recently we went out for dinner and I whipped out my reporter’s notebook and began quizzing him about his background. Megan Fitzpatrick, the editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, was there as well and helped with the questions. That’s a good thing because Mark as a tendency to invent ridiculous stories.
So the following may or may not be true.
Firley was born in Jacksonville, Fla., but moved around a lot as a child as his father tried to find a better job in the insurance industry.
His family history is almost difficult to believe. His father served in the German military during World War II due to a series of remarkable events, Mark said. His grandparents were German nationals in the United States who had overstayed their visas and were deported back to Germany. His father, a U.S. citizen born in Glendale, Calif., was 3 when his parents were sent to Germany in 1930. He was drafted into the Nazi army at 16 in 1943.
After the war, Firley said his father’s citizenship was restored while he was still in Germany. He got a civil service position as a courier in Germany working for the Army of the Occupation and got “rotated” stateside when discharged GIs with greater seniority took his job. Shortly after his return to the states, he was drafted into the U.S. Army.
The story of his mother is even stranger and is beyond the typical word count of this blog. Let’s just say it involves a mental hospital and Mark running away and later being disowned.
An example of “through pocket-hole” joints, one of my favorites from The Furniture Record.
So after this typical American upbringing, Mark attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn., and studied physics. The money ran out during his freshman year, so Mark dropped out and got a job with the university’s computer science department as a technician.
“I liked making money more than school, so I never went back,” Firley said.
Despite his lack of a degree, Mark had no problems finding work in computer, technical and engineering fields. He worked in computer engineering, then as a sound designer and even built a lot of crates for a lighting rental company (one of his early exposures to building things using wood).
“I spent 14 years there as the interim vice president of engineering,” according to Firley. “I built the crates because I was neither a drinking man nor married, leaving my evenings free.”
While working with the lighting company, Mark ended up designing and running the computer voting systems for the Miss Universe pageant in 1979. And he continues doing that today for both Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants.
This job takes him all over the world, but it also leaves him with a lot of free time to explore antique markets, museums and auction houses.
After buying an vintage kit clavichord and wanting to fix it up, Mark decided to get serious about woodworking and began taking classes with Roy Underhill and elsewhere. And he began documenting the furniture he encountered on his travels and uploading it to Flickr.
For a long time he focused on documenting dovetails on pieces to show how dogma about the different slopes and skinny pins just simply wasn’t true. Then he became obsessed with pintle hinges. Then 100 other things.
A wicker casket from The Furniture Record.
Now his blog (and Flickr photostream) are full of all sorts of things, both high-style and vernacular.
“I like to look,” Mark said. “I am fascinated by pieces at antique stores because they are like an uncurated museum. And I like auctions – they are also uncurated, but the exhibit changes every week.
“But I do what amuses me – now that I don’t have the office in Bangalore.”
Um, sure.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Last I heard, Firley was going to attend Handworks. Now that you know what he looks like, chat him up. It’s like talking to Bob Newhart (if he were a woodworker).
Stanley Works used to publish a brilliant booklet called the “Tool Guide” that contained miniature posters that offered instruction on setup, care and use of hand tools.
These booklets weren’t just for woodworkers – you can learn to rivet and create a lock edge on sheet metal with these posters. The 38 pages were bound together, perforated so you could remove them and were pre-punched with holes for a three-ring binder.
Last weekend a student in a class handed me a mint copy of the “Tool Guide” from 1968. He was a retired shop teacher and had used them in his classes. What a treasure. I’ve always wanted one, but they can be hard to come by, especially in this condition.
This morning I read the pages that dealt with handplanes. Stanley packs a bunch of good, no-nonsense information into just seven pages. I scanned them so you could check them out for yourself.
