Peter Follansbee has built a tool chest that shames us all when it comes to adding a little flash. No, he didn’t opt for the airbrushed Thundarr the Barbarian on the lid that I suggested. Instead he used “odd bits” guides for his tool trays.
These “odd bits” – pieces of oak he used in carving demos – are gorgeous, and especially fitting for a chest designed for a joiner, as Peter calls himself.
Visit his blog, Joiner’s Notes, for the whole story and more pictures of his fine piece of work. Peter, the joiner at Plimoth Plantation, says he’s not much for dovetailing; I think he’s being modest.
In any case, get a good gander at his carving – I think you’ll be seeing a lot more of that in the coming months with the release of the long-awaited book from Peter and Jennie Alexander, “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree: An Introduction to 17th-century Joinery.”
The book goes to the printer next Friday, and right now we are finishing up work on the index, the dust jacket and a few minor typos. When will it be on sale? We will start taking pre-orders in about a week. The book will ship in late February or early March, barring some disaster.
I’ll have complete details on the book next week, including pricing and (joy) an excerpt for you to download.
On Friday we sold the last beige copy of the second printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and are now shipping the charcoal third printing, which includes a full index and a slightly extended ending.
The page count is now 494 pages, but the price remains $37 plus shipping.
The new printing is also on its way to our retailers. Yesterday I shipped 612 pounds of this book to Lee Valley. (Note to self: Write shorter, lighter books.) Plus 200 pounds to Highland Hardware.
One final note: All the copies that we sell through our store are autographed. I’m only mentioning this because we get this question a lot.
The third printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is available here in our store.
We have a box of slightly damaged copies of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” from the first two printings that we are offering at the reduced price of $18 plus shipping.
The damage to these copies is cosmetic: A corner was bruised during manufacturing or shipping, there is a small tear to the cotton cover, or a drip of glue from the bindery.
All the copies are 100 percent readable.
All the copies are also marked as damaged with a green marker across the bottom. All sales are final on these copies. We have only 14 damaged copies. Once they are gone, they are gone.
A highly skilled woodworker, teacher, draughtsman and writer has said the following about me on several occasions, according to his students.
“You shouldn’t listen to Schwarz. He’s never been a professional woodworker.”
He’s 100-percent correct, of course. I spent one summer building entryway doors for Therma-Tru. A second summer I built folding particleboard tables. And I did 14 years building furniture infrequently for Popular Woodworking magazine. But I would never ever call myself a professional furniture maker.
I am, like many of you, a frustrated amateur furniture maker. Since 1993, I have spent every waking moment trying to perfect my skills. I have taken classes, read every book I thought was worth reading and happily soaked up every bit of wisdom I could find from woodworkers alive and dead.
I struggle every day that I am in the shop, which is just about every day. I mess stuff up. I design some pieces that are awkward, which I would never show in public. I mis-cut joints, curse my hands and wish I were as confident as Frank Klausz.
If I had to put a resume together today, the only real skills I’d list are an insatiable curiosity for our craft and the ability to string together words in a way that upsets some people. Oh, and I am one of the founding members of the Radio Shack Battery Club.
So why am I pulling my pants down on the Internet and not even asking you for a credit card number? Because I want you to know that there are very few (if any) woodworking gods. Yes, there are some people who are savants at a particular joint or process, but anyone who thinks he has mastered the craft should study 40 more years and get back to us.
Woodworking is hard. For everyone. And if you love the craft as much as I love the Radio Shack Battery Club, then you will never ever be satisfied with your work. Something in every project – a joint, a reveal, a quirk – can always be improved.
So why do I teach? That seems like uber-hubris.
Wow. That’s a good question. I teach only because people ask me to teach. I’ve never called a school asking to teach there. I teach because there are always people who know less than I do (incredible though it seems). And I teach because I have met some of my best, lifelong friends in classes, including John Hoffman, my business partner in Lost Art Press.
So I agree with the guy who says you shouldn’t listen to me because I’m not a professional. But perhaps I am a somewhat useful ugly bag of mostly water because I am an amateur.
I am no different than the goofy guy next to you at the bench in the last woodworking class you took. Except that guy… whew… he really smells.
I don’t collect tools, books or even Hummels (he said, throwing up a little in his mouth).
Instead, I like to collect clarity.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always gathered little scraps of paper filled with notes jotted down from the books I’ve read, the lectures I’ve attended and the friends I’ve had beers with. I am a great admirer of people who can frame their ideas in a compelling way using as few words as possible – even if I vehemently disagree with them.
I turn these phrases over and over in my mind, like a fine object. I examine the workmanship, look for flaws and study the social context in which they were made. I also like to place these them against other ideas to see if new meaning emerges.
And that is why I post these quotations on the Lost Art Press blog and pair them with images. I don’t mean to confuse or upset. And I don’t use them to indicate my own personal thought processes, mood or aura (I’m trending orange this morning, by the way).
Instead, the blog is a way to record these quotations (I sometimes lose my scraps of paper), and the response from others is always interesting.
So about that Elbert Hubbard quote on obedience. Here’s why I posted it with that image.
1. This is from Elbert Hubbard, the guy who wrote “Jesus was an Anarchist” (1910), a spiritual founder of the American Arts & Crafts movement, a book maker and a soap salesman. Was the guy a genius? A sellout? How does that quotation square with what I know about Hubbard’s philosophy? Does his “Message to Garcia” tick you off or make you nod your head in agreement?
2. Hubbard founded the Roycrofters, an organization of craftsmen who specialized in making all sorts of beautiful handmade and sometimes eccentric objects. Like many Arts & Crafts proponents, the idea was to mimic the medieval guilds.
3. Which takes us to the image, which is from “Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftungen,” naturally. It’s a collection of images of craftsmen from many trades that began in 1388. I’ll let you run the web pages through Google Translate yourself, but these books were created for an interesting reason — they were part of a retirement home for impoverished craftsmen.
So for me, this image and this quotation make me think about the meaning of obedience as it relates to craft, especially now that I am out of a job.
So there you have it. I don’t mean to be opaque, but I also don’t teach people how to cut dovetails by going over to their house and building them a dovetailed tool chest.
