Some of the things the author bought directly from Lost Art Press and Crucible Tool that were sent on to Belgium through a forwarding service.
Editor’s note: We get asked all the time about ordering from overseas. We don’t ship outside the United States, so we typically send people to one of the international specialty stores that carry our books and tools. But maybe you want something that they don’t carry, or won’t have for some time; there’s a solution. We asked our friend and long-time overseas customer Mattias to write about it. — Fitz
I’m in Belgium. I’m also a multiple return customer with Lost Art Press and Crucible Tool. And while all the LAP retailers in my neck of the woods are shops that I frequent, well, frequently, they don’t stock every LAP item. Some are not available to them for good reasons. Others they chose not to carry, again for good reasons. And sometimes I just can’t wait the month or so that it usually takes for a new item to get over here after it is released in the U.S. So I buy directly from LAP.
How is that possible, when LAP don’t do international shipping? Through a re-shipper or forwarding service or whatever you want to call it! This is a company in the States that, when you sign up with them, provides you with a valid postal address **in the U.S.**. You then give this as your delivery address when you order from LAP, and your goods are sent there. On arrival, your things are checked, declared for customs and forwarded to your home address. That’s it in a nutshell. Now for some more details.
First I should perhaps say that the forwarding company I use is one in Florida called MyUS. When I first decided to try this way of buying from Chris & Co., I asked around a bit – Klaus Skrudland, who should be familiar to readers of this blog, said he’d used them with success – and also did some general research with the help of Google. Based on this I decided to try MyUS, signed up with them, and put in my first order. It worked an absolute treat, and has continued to do so every time since, so for my part I’ve seen no need to look elsewhere. As they say, though, other options are available. So should you want to explore this possibility, you might want to spend some time with Google too, and shop around to see what would suit you, your wallet and your final destination the best. For my part I have been so happy with what I first went with that I’ve seen no need to check out the competition.
And just to be totally clear: My only affiliation with MyUS is as a contented customer. No sponsoring. No discount. No nothing. Nor, for that matter, from LAP, for writing this. And the only reason I mention MyUS by name is that they are what I know about from experience.
Back to our regular programming. Are there no drawbacks, then? Well, yes. It is usually more expensive than buying from your local LAP retailer, and tends to take a bit longer, too.
The first reason that it is more expensive is that you pay postage twice, once from the LAP fulfillment center to the forwarding company, and again from them to you. The second reason is that in most places of the world, and certainly here in Europe, you will also be hit by customs clearance fees, customs and import duties, local sales tax (VAT) etc. (the latter often calculated not only on the value of the goods but also on the postage and duties too).
How much more expensive? Well, it varies of course. Here’s an example. Last year, I bought a Crucible Card Scraper, a Lump Hammer and two Iron Holdfasts. Costs for the goods was $240, and postage with UPS to Florida came in at $63.30 (the package weighed 14 lbs after all). I then paid MyUS $85.99 for shipping to Belgium with DHL Express and also $2.99 for insurance. On arrival, I was charged a further €82,75 ≈ $99 in fees, duties and taxes. Total cost: $491.28.
As for time, I put the above order in on February 25th 2020, it shipped on the 27th, arrived in Florida March 3rd, was turned around by MyUS the same day and finally delivered to me here in Belgium on March 5th 2020. And those timings are pretty typical in my experience.
If I were to buy the exact same things today from Rubank Verktygs AB in Stockholm, I would pay SEK 4095 ≈ $448 plus postage but no further fees or taxes, and I would expect to get my items in one or two days.
Depending on destination, MyUS offers a fairly large selection of different courier and freight companies for the onward delivery. I believe (although I cannot say for sure, as I have no real way to compare) that as large customers, they get very good rates with them. For my part I have always opted for DHL Express, as that company is fast and reliable to where I am, but there are less expensive options, and you might also want to consider which couriers have a good reputation where you live.
The MyUS basic service level, which is what I use, is free, but additional services are available for a monthly fee. I don’t use the service enough, though, to have found it worth the extra cost. But all of that one can find in full detail on their website, same as for their competitors. Google, and ye shall find! Read, and ye shall know!
It should also be noted that MyUS (and I assume the same will be true for the competition) will **always** open your package when it arrives at their premises in Florida. This is to make sure that the goods are OK, both to be exported from the U.S. *and* imported into your country, and to prepare the customs declaration. Again, all details are on the website. In any case, since last year, I have had a total of 29 packages from the U.S. forwarded to me through MyUS. Not all of them from LAP, mind, but in every case they have all been handled with due care and speed, opened and repackaged carefully and correctly, with turnaround times varying between 12 hours and three days, and postage between $36.98 and $92.37.
In conclusion, buying from your local retailers will (almost) always be the better deal, and they’re worth supporting too. But when the itch for the latest Lost Art Press or Crucible Tool offering becomes too much to bear, and you can’t get it locally (yet), well, as you now know, there **is** a way to have it scratched!
“When I was at school, woodworking was where the bad kids were sent.” — Mario Rodriguez
When you reach a certain age, it’s common to observe that people who have been fixtures in your personal woodworking pantheon have become less visible. As a reader of Fine Woodworking since the early 1990s, I’ve long associated the magazine with one of its prolific contributors, Mario Rodriguez. Mario has appeared regularly on the pages, instructing readers how to “Soup Up a Dovetail Saw,”optimize work set-up on job sites, or build a variety of pieces, from a classic Federal tilt-top table or mid-century coffee table to a fireplace mantel or oak chest on stand. After being relatively absent from my notice, there he was in issue No. 291 this summer, still doing his thing.
Every so often over the past few years I’d heard the occasional mention that Mario teaches woodworking to kids at a Waldorf School in Philadelphia. A masterful craftsman with decades of experience and a portfolio bursting at its figurative seams, teaching woodworking to kids in elementary and middle school? I had to learn more.
In 2018, I gave a presentation at Philadelphia Woodworks related to my book “English Arts & Crafts Furniture,” and was more than a little starstruck when Mario introduced himself. Those boots are not a fashion statement; he comes by them honestly. (From left to right: Bruce Chaffin; Michael Vogel, president of Philadelphia Woodworks; Mario; and me. )
Mario was born in 1950 and is the eldest of three siblings. His parents had come to New York from Puerto Rico; his dad worked as a merchant marine and was away from home for weeks at a time, and his mom worked various jobs, from hairdresser to surgical nurse, a field in which she was employed for some 20 years. After that she went into flipping houses. “She had no experience,” says Mario, “just a head for business.”
Mario at 2, already in touch with wood.
In elementary and middle school Mario was drawn to art. He later attended The High School of Art & Design in New York City, which prepared students for professional jobs in the field of art, broadly defined. Many of his fellow students went on to college, but Mario lost interest in school and dropped out.
After a series of menial jobs he joined the army at 17 and trained as a paratrooper and infantryman.
“What was nice was that in civilian life you were sized up and opportunities were provided or denied to you based on who you were and where you were from,” he remarks. “In the Army, you were judged by your ability to do a job. The overriding principle was: You had to do your job. If you did your job and took care of those you were responsible for, you moved ahead. It is one of the greatest social engines in this country, providing opportunities for ambitious young men and women not available to them in civilian life.”
He stayed three years and was posted in Germany, in addition to the United States.
“At 17, I found it very exciting and new,” he remembers. “As I advanced through the ranks, eventually making sergeant … I found that if I was stationed somewhere I didn’t like, I was stuck there.”
Despite the opportunities, he says that “on a day-to-day basis, it was stifling. I thought I could do better once I left.”
He returned to Brooklyn, where he’d grown up, got an apartment with a couple of roommates and took a series of unfulfilling jobs.
“I would have jobs that were boring or uninteresting where I was not excited or interested, and all I could think about was the coming weekend,” he says. It’s an experience many of us have known at one time or another. But Mario’s life was about to change in exciting and challenging ways.
Arts & Crafts-inspired cherry side table.
A Life-changing Couch
At around the age of 24, he decided it was time to acquire a sofa. It was the mid-1970s; being in New York City, he went to Macy’s, where he found an affordable damaged floor sample. The store scheduled delivery, and Mario took time off from his job to wait for the couch. The couch did not show up. He rescheduled the delivery, took more time off work … and the delivery people were again missing in action. At this point he asked the store to return his deposit and decided to make his own couch.
“I went to Barnes & Noble and looked for a book on making furniture,” he continues. “I made this crude thing out of plywood.” It’s rough, he remembers thinking. I enjoy the process and the compliments, but I really have no idea what I’m doing. It was time to get some training.
He applied to a four-year training apprenticeship with the Carpenters and Cabinetmakers Union in New York City. They put him in the program for exterior construction – “not what I really wanted to learn.” When he asked about changing programs, they said he couldn’t, so he changed his approach: Could he at least add some millwork and cabinetmaking classes to the work they’d already assigned him? Yes, they said; he could do both. So after spending the day at work on a jobsite, he attended millwork and cabinetmaking classes, two nights a week during the second year of his apprenticeship, three nights the third year and four nights during the fourth.
At that point the construction industry took a nosedive. As an Army veteran, Mario qualified for education benefits under the GI Bill and had already been taking college classes at night. When he found himself unemployed, he assessed his options and decided to attend school full time at Lehman College, a City University of New York four-year college. Around 1978, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art with a specialization in applied design through the university’s Self-Determined Studies program.
“That allowed me to explore woodworking,” he says.
Building & Furniture Making
With his newly minted degree, Mario went to work as a carpentry crew chief with a sweat-equity construction group in the Bronx. By the late 1970s, the South Bronx was devastated; some areas were so neglected they looked like bombed-out neighborhoods in European cities after the Second World War. The group secured its first building and raised the money necessary to gut and renovate. In lieu of a down payment, a would-be resident would invest 500 hours of labor, then be awarded an apartment. Not only did this plan increase the availability of affordable housing, it taught participants a range of practical trade skills.
“The notion was so new,” he says. “We took people from all backgrounds who needed a place to live and had a desire to move ahead.”
Would-be residents came from the area. The program even attracted the attention of Jimmy Carter, who paid them a visit and pledged some $5 million to expand. The union, though, was opposed to this idea; they built homes for profit.
“The idea that people could get together and build their own homes was not something they approved of,” Mario says. They put challenging stipulations on the project, but the program still grew.
After three years, Mario returned to Brooklyn with a plan to strike out on his own. He rented a 12’ x 30’ space in Greenpoint, and started to take on small, fairly simple furniture and cabinet jobs. If he finished a job and had nothing lined up, he’d spend a couple of days going to museums or the park, then come back to new orders. He often found himself starting to work with a prospective customer, only to have them complain about his price. Once that had become “a frustrating and frequent event,” he decided to find a market where price was not the primary consideration.
He found that market in antique restoration, learning the necessary skills on the job as he worked for dealers, fixing broken joints and replacing missing parts. Before long, he was teaching part-time in a college-level antiques restoration program at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Hans Wegner-inspired modern armchair in white oak with laminated arm and back splat. Mario carved the seat on the table saw.
He also started writing for Fine Woodworking and had a growing interest in building Windsor chairs. At the time, the best-known person building Windsors was Michael Dunbar, who had written a book about the form. Michael “didn’t give measurements,” Mario says; he focused on techniques. Michael was building chairs in his basement and at Strawbery Banke Museum, a historic village in New Hampshire. “He was very friendly,” Mario recalls. One of the most valuable pieces of advice Michael offered sprang from his observation that “there’s no money in making these chairs. The money’s in teaching people how to make them.”
So Mario explored Windsor chairmaking as a sideline, fascinated by the chairs’ design and construction – so economical, and largely done by hand.
By this point Mario had married; he and his (now-former) wife had a little girl. Their location in a Polish and Italian neighborhood of Brooklyn was “still a frontier,” he says, with no dependable public services – a good place for a solitary artist, but not for a family. So they moved to Warwick, New York, and bought a farmhouse.
For the next few years, Mario renovated the house and taught woodworking classes in a garage at the back. He focused primarily on classes based on hand tools – Windsor chairs, basic veneering, cutting dovetails – taking four to six students at a time. Then they lost their daughter, who was 7, in a swimming accident.
“That derailed everything,” he says.
Work was most helpful as a diversion from the pain. He continued to write for Fine Woodworking and teach at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship and other schools. As Mario puts it, “I was pretty much a mess.” When his wife took a job in New Jersey, they moved there. They had a son, Peter, and eventually divorced in the mid-1990s.
Sheraton-style lady’s work table. “I built one a few years ago that appeared in FWW,” says Mario’s caption on Instagram. “It’s made of solid mahogany and crotch veneer. It has tapered, reeded legs, dovetailed and cock-beaded drawers.” His wife, Nicole, uses it in her sewing studio.
Meanwhile, Mario’s position at the Fashion Institute of Technology had become full-time, with benefits and newfound job security. He commuted to the city daily. The program, however, “was not well designed,” he says. “The chairman had no experience in manual creative work but was a very charming Ph.D.” As a result, the curriculum “was full of holes.” Students would graduate but not be able to get a job. Decreasing enrollment invited closer inspection by authorities, who eventually shut the program down. Between his part- and full-time positions, Mario had taught at the Fashion Institute for 14 years. It had been a stable point in his life, “like hitting the lottery – good, solid pay, security, outstanding benefits.” The loss left a gaping hole.
As he wondered what he was going do next, it dawned on him that the secure, well-paid job had come with its own price. “You’re giving up time you would [otherwise] devote to pursuing your craft and becoming as good as you can. So it’s kind of a trap.” He says he wandered around a bit, and ended up at the Philadelphia Furniture Workshop, where he met the founder, Alan Turner, a lawyer and part-time woodworker who invited Mario to teach there.
Federal candle stand in mahogany and crotch veneer.
The students at the Philadelphia Furniture Workshop were a mix of amateurs and professionals interested in learning new skills or refining those they already had. Many were men looking for a hobby or on the verge of retirement; a good percentage, says Mario, “had abandoned ‘getting dirty’ and using tools for their [professional] work” and wanted to explore the creative process afresh.
“It was great to revive that need that everyone has,” he says, adding that he could have a student “who hadn’t picked up a hammer in years and take them from a total beginner course all the way through construction of a Federal card table.”
Portsmouth card table in solid mahogany and crotch veneer. All the inlays, paterae and bandings were shop-made. Mario offered this piece as a masterclass at Philadelphia Furniture Workshop.
Mario says that when many amateur woodworkers run into a problem they can’t solve, they abandon the project. “The real damage is, it limits their vision and undermines their confidence. Running these masterclasses … I could illuminate the pitfalls and guide them through the process. You are having an impact on someone’s life and supercharging their confidence in relation to woodworking.”
He stayed 10 years, until 2012. The job was “extremely demanding for just two people,” even after Alan Turner, founder of the school, left the practice of law to work at the shop full-time. They worked six days a week, with more than a few 14-hour days. By the age of 65, Mario was ready to slow down.
A Different Kind of Teaching
Serendipitously, a teacher at a local Waldorf School inquired whether the Philadelphia Furniture Workshop might know of someone who could teach woodworking to kids. Mario took her up on the offer to visit and agreed to teach at the school one day a week. He found he liked it and increased his teaching there to two days a week. The job also introduced him to his wife, Nicole, who teaches sewing and knitting, known as handwork in the Waldorf system.
In the Waldorf system, handwork and woodworking are required, not elective. Mario emphasizes that while he teaches at a Waldorf School, he has veered away from the traditional curriculum slightly.
“The Waldorf education process is essentially threefold, engaging head, heart and hands – thinking, feeling and doing. I’m a woodworking teacher who teaches at a Waldorf School, not a Waldorf woodworking teacher. I come from a different place than trained Waldorf teachers.”
He strives to bring honesty, attention to detail and reflection to each student’s work.
Introductory students start with a branch, which they have to shape, sand and finish; Mario encourages students to familiarize themselves with the wood, exploring its natural shapes and colors. Next they make a spoon, using a template and a #7 sweep, 1/2″ carving tool. (Yes, he says, there’s plenty of focus on safety.) In fifth grade, students make a spinning top using a rasp and block plane instead of a lathe; although the project is designed to encourage creative expression, it demands real skills – the top has to spin upright for at least 30 seconds. Some, he says, spin for almost a minute. Sixth-grade students make a sword and shield, the sword with hand tools – “that’s a lot of fun,” says Mario – and the shield cut out of a plywood panel. They learn about the culture of heraldry and create a coat of arms that represents their interests, family background and ambitions, coming up with three qualities that they admire and practice, such as honesty, curiosity and kindness. They cut the parts out of Baltic birch plywood and finish them with paint, then mount these inspirational elements on the shield.
“I’m at the other end of the age spectrum now,” he reflects. “When I was at school, woodworking was where the bad kids were sent. Anybody with ability was steered toward the advanced, [more intellectual] classes. Now I’m getting [kids] on the front end, where they’re still curious and exploring things. I’m there to guide them through the experience.”
One of his seventh-grade students made a Wharton Esherick stool and told Mario that her mother, an architect, cried when she saw it, overwhelmed that her child could build such a piece. “That’s a pretty common experience,” he adds. “Even if they never make another object of wood, they leave the woodshop with an appreciation and respect for handmade objects.”
Ask Mario for a word that might characterize his professional trajectory and he answers “curiosity. I live for the challenge of something new, never tried before.”
“Chris Becksvoort is the Shaker,” he suggests by way of contrast. “People generally gravitate to a particular style or period.” (To be fair, Chris Becksvoort also has some striking contemporary pieces in his portfolio.) But Mario is “all over the place,” with mid-century modern, Early American, Arts & Crafts and Federal pieces, and he has written and taught about a wide variety of tools and techniques.
Chest-on-stand in quartersawn oak.
Lately, he has been doing more work for Fine Woodworking. He was fascinated by the display of Julia Child’s kitchen at the National Museum of American History, especially her kitchen table. The table was covered with a yellow oilcloth, which hid a lot of detail. He Googled the image and found it was basically a Scandinavian farm table. Wow, that is so cool! he thought; there must be some interesting joinery involved. He contacted the museum and asked if he could take measurements and get pictures, but didn’t hear back for close to a year.
The table Mario built based on the one in Julia Child’s kitchen.
“Everything Julia Child belongs to the Julia Child Foundation,” he explains; the whole thing is very proprietary and controlled by lawyers. “I just want to run a class,” he told them; “maybe do an article.” They refused. He persisted, appealing directly to the museum. They finally sent him some vague dimensions. So once again he took a different tack: One of his students happened to work at a studio that used a program capable of translating a photograph into a design with measurements. He published the piece as a project article in Fine Woodworking issue No. 241.
Drawing of a handplane.
Today, at 71, Mario is combining less physically demanding projects with furniture making and teaching. He’s going back to his artistic training, exploring more painting and graphic work. Part of his basement now serves as a painting studio. He can see himself teaching for a good five more years. And who wouldn’t want to, knowing the difference good teaching can make in a young person’s life? One of the nicest compliments anyone has ever paid him came from a parent who, on learning that Mario Rodriguez taught woodworking at their child’s school, exclaimed, “What?! You know, that’s like Mick Jagger teaching seventh-grade band.”
I get asked a lot about starting and growing a small business, mostly from woodworkers who want to make the leap from corporate life to a diet of hot dogs and crescent rolls. So this post is mostly about business, with a little woodworking thrown in.
Right after I quit my job at Popular Woodworking in 2011, I was making about $10,000 a year from Lost Art Press. To make ends meet, I was teaching, freelancing and hustling. I think I was on the road about 18 weeks that year.
Then John and I got some great news. F&W Media (owner of Popular Woodworking) wanted to carry our entire line of books. And bam – F&W immediately became our largest customer.
Things went great for about a year, but then F&W missed a payment. The company was supposed to pay our invoices within 30 days. So John called F&W’s buyer to see what was up.
“Oooooh. Sorry. Meant to tell you that we switched everyone to 60 days,” the buyer said.
Sorry, but no, John explained. F&W’s buyer relented and said: “We’ll keep you on 30 days because of our close relationship.” Meanwhile, F&W placed another huge order of books.
But F&W hadn’t relented. They’d lied. After 30 more days, F&W was behind on multiple invoices. John called the buyer.
“Oooooooh, sorry. Management decided to put everyone on 120 days. No special treatment. Sorry.”
John demanded payment, and we stopped filling F&W’s orders until we could decide what to do.
In the meantime, trouble was brewing elsewhere.
When we sell our books to our retailers, we ask that they sell them within $3 of our retail price. That $3 wiggle room means that Highland Woodworking can knock $3 off the price and say our books are “on sale.” Lee Valley Tools has some flexibility with the currency transaction to Canadian dollars. And Tools for Working Wood can price our books at $27.68 so it looks like they use a magic pricing formula (maybe they do).
But you cannot sell our books for 50 or 70 percent off. (FYI, if you think this is price fixing, it’s not. It’s called Minimum Advertised Price and was approved by the Supreme Court about 2007.)
But that’s exactly what F&W started to do. They had “blowout” sales where they would knock 50 percent off a book’s price for a week.
We told them to stop. They apologized. Then they did it again.
John at our warehouse in Indianapolis. He is really quite ill in this photo.
I got the news of the sale while I was teaching a class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. During lunch, I called F&W from Marc’s gravel parking lot. I told them we were done and to send all our unsold books back to us. We would pay the freight.
When I hung up, I thought: This is the phone call that will put us out of business.
I was wrong. Our other retailers noticed the skirmish with F&W and increased their orders with us. Some ordered more books. Others added titles they hadn’t carried before. By the end of the year, we were back in good shape, and I think I took home $20,000 from Lost Art Press that year.
Two lessons: Big business will try to bully you. They will try to decide when to pay you. They will decide how your pricing should work. They will ask for special treatment compared to your smaller customers.
Don’t give in. Once you start treating your customers differently, you are in for a world of drama and deceit. Whenever we get asked for special treatment, I simply remember what Jennie Alexander always said: “’No’ is a complete sentence.”
The second lesson: Pay your vendors on the day you get their invoice. When someone drops off work they did for us, they leave with a check. When an invoice arrives, John pays it the same day.
Vendors remember this. And if you’ve wondered how we kept so many of our products in stock during the pandemic shortages, you now have your answer.
My friends with MBAs roll their eyes when I talk this way. They argue that LAP should use the 30 days between when we get an invoice and have to pay it to invest our cash and make a little extra.
The facade of the Florida School of Woodwork in Tampa, Florida (not that I’m biased, but I’m teaching there in 2022).
I’ve been getting a lot of requests for gift certificates for our Covington Mechanicals woodworking classes at the storefront. But as I’ve written before, we’re not really a school, and we have so few classes (and so few spaces available) compared to actual woodworking schools that it’s not practicable for us to offer gift certificates for them. (Gift Certificates are available for Lost Art Press/Crucible Tools, but they aren’t usable for classes because those aren’t really associated with LAP. Chris just lets me hold them at the storefront because he’s a prince among men.)
There are surely many more woodworking schools that offer gift certificates; please list them in the comments (ideally with a link to the GC page), so that your fellow woodworkers may get a gift they’ll love: a weekend or week or more of woodworking.
– Fitz
p.s. I’m teaching at The Florida School of Woodwork next October…so that would be my choice 😉
When I grew up, we had a red Lada 1200. It was a 1982 model, a compact four-door sedan, produced in the The Soviet Union. It was a primitive and humble car. Nothing fancy anywhere. No bling or stylish features. But it was affordable, reliable and easy to repair. And most importantly it was built for driving across Russia’s vast and frosty tundras. So it came with a hand crank. That way the car could be started if you were stranded with a flat battery in deep Siberia and the wolves were coming. Or in a modern Norwegian suburb.
The car fit us well. It was, of course, frowned upon by those who could afford the arrogance. We didn’t care. It had four wheels and could take a beating. My parents were working class. They had to get their priorities right. Meaning whenever there was anything left after paying the bills, they weren’t going to spend it on flashy stuff.
And just like the Lada, everything we owned soon lived up to the same principle. Whether it was our house, our furniture or our clothes – it was made to be used, repaired and then used again. This mindset seeped into everything, and I soon grew up appreciating modest and honest designs. I learned that beauty lies in simplicity, both in principle and form. And patina wasn’t even a word. It was just a consequence.
And while this might be a stretch: The first time I laid eyes on a Welsh stick chair, I instantly fell in love. Something very familiar pulled me in. Just like our Soviet car, the chair was honest and uncomplicated. No user manual needed. No fancy turnings or flamboyant design features. It was rugged, yet simple and elegant. It was the most beautiful and honest chair I had ever seen. Huge personality. No secrets. I trusted it.
I realised that these commonplace chairs reflect life. Like people, each and every one of them were unique. Made to meet a need, without plans, from materials available at hand, they were all direct manifestations of their makers and owners. They were postcards from the past. Like an old woman’s wrinkled face or a working man’s crooked back, they told stories I could believe in.
They were imperfectly perfect. Repairs, scars and bruises just blended into their personality. There was nothing to hide. If I ever found an old stick chair with a hand crank under the seat, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be very surprised.
