Lost Art Press

Let’s play a game I call “Stupid or Ethical?”

The first time I interviewed Robin Lee, president of Lee Valley Tools, I asked him a few questions that readers had been asking me for years. Robin’s answers are paraphrased below, though I’ve heard him say them so many times in the last decade I could almost quote him verbatim.

Q: Why doesn’t Veritas come out with an inexpensive Bed Rock plane to compete with Lie-Nielsen?

A: That wouldn’t be fair to Tom Lie-Nielsen. We’d rather produce our own line of planes instead of copying his.

Q: Why doesn’t Veritas come out with a line of less expensive Stanley 750 chisels to compete with Lie-Nielsen?

A: That wouldn’t be fair. Besides, we have our own line of chisels already and might do something different in the future.

Q: Why doesn’t Veritas make an infill plane to compete with all these makers who charge thousands of dollars for a plane?

A: That’s their market. We’d rather build our own planes than copy someone else’s.

Q: Why doesn’t Veritas produce a less-expensive brass-back dovetail saw….

Well, you get the idea.

On the other side of that fence, Lie-Nielsen has stayed out of Veritas’s back yard on a number of occasions. During one visit to the Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, I saw a prototype of a bullnose plane. When Veritas came out with its bullnose shortly thereafter, Lie-Nielsen shelved its plans.

The question isn’t about the legality of copying tools. It’s much more important than that. Some might contend that this sort of behavior is stupid. Shouldn’t these companies be out to grab as much market share as possible? Or is it somehow ethical to steer clear of your competitors’ ideas and instead push your own ideas (assuming you have any) forward?

My bias is obvious. My work gets ripped off everyday. People copy my articles, put them on CDs and sell them on eBay. They post them for free download on Russian sites. They place my copyrighted text whole cloth on their foreign web sites and claim it for their own.

Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s right.

For me, copying tools is a simple issue. Ask yourself one question: Will the copy confuse the reasonable consumer? If the copy looks so much like a competitor’s that it is going to confuse buyers, then it’s dishonest.

I’m not saying you can’t do it. Or that you’re violating laws. I’m just saying that I won’t support you with my dollars.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. For those who haven’t been reading WoodNet and the debates on copied tools, try this link. Or (if you have four hours of your life to spare) this.

When I was in high school, my father gave me a great gift: a leather vest.

I wore the snot out of that thing. I wore it when I dated my future wife in college. I wore it when Steve Shanesy interviewed me for my job here at Popular Woodworking. I have – quite literally – worn the buttons off the thing.

Last year, I realized that my beloved cow covering was a catastrophe. Frayed. A bit smelly. Unusually soiled.

So after 20 years of faithful service, I retired that vest and decided to buy myself a new one. My new vest is well made, but it’s shiny and stiff. I am neither.

So I sought out some way to age the finish on the vest. I found a lot of advice out there: Drag it behind my car. Put it in the clothes dryer with some rocks. Sand it. Wad it up, stuff it under the bed and sleep on it over and over.

As I considered all this advice I noticed something about the givers. None of these advisers had actually done this to their precious skin-based garments. They were just repeating things they had heard or were making up things that “should work.”

So I dug deeper until I found the stagehands. According to these people, they used denatured alcohol to age leather costumes for plays about pirates, bikers and S&M-loving citizens. Their instructions were specific and consistent: Put alcohol in a spray bottle. Spray a large surface and then wipe it down. Instant age.

It sounded like wood finishing advice, so I was instantly skeptical. So I decided to do what any wary woodworker would do: I tried it on a hidden area of a non-essential garment.

It worked. So I went to town on my new vest with a squirt bottle and a rag.

Now I have a vest I’m more comfortable in, and a new appreciation for how-to information. You see, whenever I write something about woodworking, I strive never to repeat things as gospel that I haven’t tried. If my name is on it, I’ve done it. Or I’m quoting someone I trust.

This isn’t always the case in any journalism (including knitting journalism and ferret-training journalism). I have read enough garbage in my lifetime to know that some people just repeat other people’s garbage because it has been repeated enough times that it has to be true.

This is the long way of saying that we should do what Virgil (70 B.C. – 19 B.C.) recommended: “Believe one who has tried it.”

— Christopher Schwarz

If you write hilarious T-shirt slogans and have some hand saws with loose nuts (and who doesn’t) then read on.

We’re giving away three custom split-nut drivers made using the Pin-Eez tool. (If it doesn’t sound like I’m typing English here, read this blog entry and it will all make sense.) The manufacturer of the Pin-Eez gave me these three tools last week to thank me for my blog entry.

So what do you have to do to win this fabulous split-nut driver? Be hilarious. We’re trolling around for the next slogan to put on the back of our Lost Art Press T-shirts. We sold out of the ones that read “Rude Mechanicks Since 1678.” Our latest T-shirt features the slogan “Boring Since 1678.” Click here to see that shirt.

The slogan has to be short – six words or less. And it has to relate (obviously) to woodworking, hand tools, beer drinking, Joseph Moxon, Andre Roubo – or preferably all of those at once.

Here is how you enter: Simply post your slogan as a comment at the end of this blog entry before midnight, Friday, Feb. 6. Be sure to include an e-mail address so we can contact you. (This isn’t a scam to collect your e-mail addresses; we’re not that sophisticated.)

We’ll pick our three favorite slogans and announce the three winners on Feb. 7. Each winner will receive a split-nut driver and a T-shirt with the current slogan.

— Christopher Schwarz