Category: Personal Favorites
Lost Art Press on WVXU-FM
Though I enjoy traveling, I am always thrilled to return home to the Cincinnati, Ohio, area where Lucy and I have lived since 1996 (she’s a third or fourth generation local; I’m the transplant). After 18 years here, I’m a huge fan of the city’s history, architecture and woodworking heritage.
While outsiders see the the city as a cultural backwater or (at best) the setting for the television comedy “WKRP in Cincinnati,” I see the place through a different lens. The food, building stock and (yes) the beer are utterly intoxicating for someone who loves those sorts of things.
And writers (Lucy is also a writer) can actually afford to live here. Amazing.
Recently I was invited to an interview with Lee Hay, who hosts a radio program called “Around Cincinnati.” We talked about Lost Art Press, woodworking and how it relates to my love affair with Cincinnati. It’s a short interview – 10 minutes.
Check it out here.
— Christopher Schwarz
More Unprofitable Shop Posters!
Because our poster experiment last week was so unsuccesful (I think six people sent me photos of their Hayward shop posters), we’ve decided to do it again – this time with original images from my collection that were already scanned and cleaned up for other projects.
Both images are French. One is Juliette Caron, who is said to be the first female “compagnon” (that’s French for “woodworking jedi”). She was so notable that there was a line of postcards showing her at work – I have two of these postcards and this is my favorite.
The other image is of a beautiful French atelier – I love the benches and the bowsaws hanging above each student’s area.
Both have been optimized to be printed at 18” x 24” at 300 dpi and are about 10 mb each. One reader noted that you can get these printed in black and white for only $2 at Staples. Dang. Color is $13.
— Christopher Schwarz
The History of Wood, Part 21
This Weekend: Escape to Canada
After looking through about 100 pages of notes this week, I asked myself: “Does anyone really want to listen me talk about nails?”
I mean, who else gets giddy when reading through a 30-page manuscript detailing the British military’s nail needs in 1813? (Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1976), pp. 88-118.)
So I’m also researching fart jokes to insert into that lecture.
On Friday I leave for Perth, Ontario, to speak at the first-ever Woodworks Conference – a nicely organized event that combines a lot of learning with some nice furniture and some quality tool vendors (Lee Valley, Lie-Nielsen, Konrad Sauer and (drool coming) Douglas S. Orr, a dealer in vintage tools.
Thanks to Delta Airlines, I am not flying to Canada. This is good news because John Hoffman is going to come along for the drive. And I’ll get to bring a few pieces of campaign furniture for people to fondle.
Lost Art Press won’t have a booth, and we won’t be able to bring books or T-shirts. We’ll be hanging out like the rest of the attendees.
I’m actually quite excited about my nail lecture – thanks to some tips from Chris Howe in Australia I’ve been researching a forgotten form of nail that is technologically more advanced than anything we use today. Tonight I got a few more clues about the way the nail is made from blacksmith Peter Ross.
In addition to my lecture on nails, I’m also giving a talk on “double irons” – aka “cap irons,” “back irons” or “chipbreakers.”
While a few people on the forums have burned this topic in effigy, I have found that a reasoned, historical-based discussing of this 18th-century device helps students immensely. Most woodworkers don’t have the patience to wade into the nasty discussions about double irons to extract the useful bits.
This lecture is about the useful bits. (And why Stanley needs to spanked for almost ruining the technology for us.)
So come to Perth and have a beer with your American friends (that’s John and me).
— Christopher Schwarz