Category: Yellow Pine Journalism

I do what I can to avoid the mushy-mushy concepts and questions that are posed by the thinkers in our craft. You know: art vs. craft, sawdust is therapy, what is the saw nib for?

But I do have some answers to the practical questions that beginners ask during classes.

Q: Why do you sign your work? Isn’t that prideful?

I suppose my answer comes from my training as a journalist. Traditionally, your published writing remained unsigned until you “earned” a byline. As a cub reporter, you were first tested with writing unsigned news “briefs” or obituaries until you proved yourself responsible enough.

After you earned a byline, it was a mark of responsibility. If you screwed something up, your name was on it. So everyone in the community knew that you, Chris Schwarz, couldn’t get your facts straight, or spell the mayor’s name correctly.

That’s why I sign my work – unobtrusively. If something ever goes wrong with the chair, cabinet or chest of drawers, then I’m the one who deserves the blame. And I’m the one who has to fix it.

Q: Why do you stamp your tools with your mark? Do you not know your own tools? Aren’t you putting yourself on par with the true maker of the tool?

Again, some history. In many apprentice systems, your first purchase was your name stamp. Not to stamp the furniture you built, but to stamp your tools. Many woodworkers had their tools insured through benevolent societies. And to qualify for the insurance, your tool had to be stamped.

Some more recent history. When my parents sent me to Jesus Camp, my mom sewed my name into all my clothes so that when I lost them, they came back to me.

If you work with others or you teach or attend classes, you need to mark your tools. Every class I have been a part of ends with someone taking the wrong tool home or leaving a tool behind.

Q: Why do you modify your tools? Doesn’t that hurt their value?

This question comes mostly from tool collectors. And I suppose they are correct. Dead stock tools are going to sell for more than modified ones. 

For me, however, a tool is worthless if it doesn’t work well. So I am happy to file the metal bits, carve the wooden bits and upgrade the innards in any way to improve the tool’s working characteristics. 

I have no quibbles with tool collectors – they are preserving tools that will be used by future generations. That’s a noble thing. But tool collecting and woodworking are two different avocations. And I’m a user.

— Christopher Schwarz

Today Bob Mould is 62. That simple fact brings me great joy.

As someone who has tried to remain creative into middle age, I am constantly worried that I will one day wake up and have nothing else to write. Nothing new to build. No areas of the craft or furniture left that I want to explore.

Yet somehow every day I am eager to pick up the tools, read a new (or old) book and try something I haven’t done before. Will this urge leave me?

Maybe. But maybe not. And so I put Bob Mould’s latest album, “Blue Hearts,” and sit down with the LP’s lyric sheet in the library. I’ve been listening to Mould since I was 18 when I first heard “Flip Your Wig” thundering down the hallway of my dorm freshman year. 

Mould’s band, Husker Du, were like nothing I had ever heard in Arkansas. And I would argue that he single-handedly changed the course of rock music while he was in his 20s. 

Out of debt to this man, I bought every one of his albums when they came out. When he slipped into electronica and dance music in the early 2000s I was almost done with him. But something on every album – maybe just one song – kept me adding the CDs to my collection. 

In 2012, Mould changed gears – he downshifted back into first gear, and the noise was incredible. The album “Silver Age” rejected the drum machine and brought back the loud and distorted guitar that is the sonorous background noise in my skull. The album was as good as anything Mould had written in his 20s. And his following four albums each exceeded the previous one. 

I have played his 2020 album “Blue Hearts” so many times I might wear through the 180-gram vinyl.

So anytime I worry about remaining creative into my late 50s and 60s, I remind myself that it’s possible to still stoke the ashes and find the same fire is burning hot below.

Late last night as I was lying in bed, the topic and structure for my next book came into perfect focus. I scribbled a few words in a notepad on my nightstand. (I think you’ll be happy to hear those words weren’t “chair” or “workbench.”) And I rolled over to sleep like a log.

And today Bob Mould is 62. And that fact brings me great joy.

— Christopher Schwarz

When people watch me work, I mess up more. I work too fast. I skip important operations. I can’t concentrate. 

All of which should make you wonder why I ever aspired to be a C-list woodworking celebrity.

When we bought our shop on Willard Street in 2015, I fell in love with the building’s enormous windows, which flood the front room with natural light. But what I didn’t fully realize when I signed the deed was that the windows work both ways.

As soon as I set up shop in the front room, passers-by paused to watch me work. On weekends, entire families would line up at the front windows, pointing and talking about what I was doing at that moment (which was mostly trying not to poop my pants – think Kegels, Chris).

In the morning, the sex workers on the first shift would peer into the window. They would stay to watch if I was working at the lathe. (Sex workers love turning – don’t let anyone tell you any different.) In the afternoon, kids from the elementary school down the block would stop at the window on their way home from school, probably to see if I had stabbed myself. 

And at night, couples would swing by after dinner or drinks to see the mangy monkey (me) sweep up the mess.

The attention was unnerving for the first couple years. I thought about installing shutters I could close while I work to keep people’s eyes off me*. 

Our bench room.

Then one day, I just got over it.

In fact, maybe my daily performances are a good thing for the craft. I’m not alone. If you start at Pike Street and walk down 9th Street, you’ll see upholsterers at work at 9th and Greer streets – Turner Upholstery. A sign and laser shop across the street – Grainwell –  is incredibly busy churning out custom work and retail items. Next door to them is CVG Made, where Steve does a little bit of everything, from slabs to joinery to furniture and built-ins. Then there’s us – the hand-tool monkey show at 9th and Willard streets. And then a few doors down is Main Strasse Upholstery – another upholstery shop. 

All this craft work is within one short block.

Maybe one of those kids walking home from Carlisle Elementary will pass through this corridor and see something that sticks in their head. A beautiful wing-back chair coming together at Turner’s. The wild plywood scraps that pile up outside the laser shop. Steve’s forklift. My weird chairs. 

We are all a reminder that people still make stuff for a living. We are here every day, and we aren’t going anywhere. (Unless you want to see some turning out back – just kidding.)

— Christopher Schwarz

*We do have sun shades that we use to keep the early morning sun off the students and benches. But those don’t offer privacy.