Lost Art Press

One More Word on ‘That Word’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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There is great power in naming things, but there is also violence.

A few years ago I was driving to dinner with a fellow furniture maker, and he asked me this question: “Do you consider yourself a writer or a woodworker?”

I hate this question, but I also hate looking like a wanker.

I replied, “I’m a writer who builds furniture.”

“Ah!” he said. “You said the word ‘writer’ first. So that’s more important to you?” He raised the tone of his voice at the end of the sentence like it was a question. But it wasn’t.

So I bristle a bit when people tell me what I am and what I am not. At times I build cubbyholes, but I won’t be put into one. After writing “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011, a fair number of blowhards declared that I wasn’t an anarchist. Anarchists, they explained, are explicitly anti-capitalist. They seek to overthrow the government. They embrace violence.

Saying that you have to be committed to violence to be an anarchist is like saying you have to oppress Africans to be a Christian, or you have to own a gun to be an American. It’s nonsensical.

The truth is, I barely discuss my beliefs about the world in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” There might be only two or three people in this world who have heard my unfiltered thoughts on how the world works, and I plan to keep that number in the single digits as long as I live.

Do I have problems with authority – liturgical, corporate and governmental? Absolutely. Do I routinely disregard laws and mores because I think they’re at odds with human decency? You bet. Am I going to write about my behavior in a book that is already quite difficult to ship to military bases because of its title?

Do you think I’m stupid?

So if I don’t espouse the full details of my personal belief system, why bring up anarchism at all? Two reasons.

It’s the right word to describe me. I’m an anarchist and here is a book about my tool chest. Here is a second book of my furniture designs. Beyond those simple declarations, the goal of the books is to point to a path that doesn’t get discussed much in Western society.

During my training as a journalist we were urged to tell “both sides of every story.” After working as a journalist, the problem I discovered was that there are usually about a dozen sides to every story. It’s just that most of those ideas aren’t discussed at the country club.

Ideas such as: Organizations dehumanize and homogenize us. Modern production methods enslave us to a cycle of making nothing and consuming everything.

But these ideas, which I discuss in both books, are only starting points. If you have a brain it’s easy to see where the trail head leads. Like working with hand tools, it can be a difficult path to travel, but it can take you almost anywhere.

The second reason I couch these simple ideas inside work-a-day books on tools and building furniture is that I refuse to become part of the circle-jerk clique of writers who obsess on discussing Craft, its Demise and How to Fix Things.

In my 25 years of hanging out with woodworkers, I’ve never once heard someone say: “I just finished reading David Pye’s ‘The Nature and Art of Workmanship,’ and now all I want to do is carve bowls.” It just doesn’t happen.

Don’t get me wrong. Discussing craft is important. I just don’t think you should talk about it much until you have done it – a lot.

The solution to “fix” everything – for lack of a better word – is not in words. It’s in your fingers. Pick up the tools, and the answers to these questions will become apparent. Make something, and you will understand more about craft than all of the books written about its doom.

Yesterday I had a tape measure clipped to my pants pocket, and a young woman in a store asked me what I did for a living. When I told her I made furniture, she gushed at length about how that was all she’d ever wanted to do. As a child she built all of her Barbie furniture. Now she watched television programs and read books about woodworking every night, but she didn’t want to go back to school to train as a furniture maker.

“You don’t have to go back to school,” I told her.

“But how will I learn it?” she asked.

“By doing what you did when you were a little girl: Pick up the tools and use them.”

Every word I write is aimed at one thing: To make you crazy to pick up the tools. They are the answer to everything that’s wrong with our lives and with our world. With tools you can fix things. You can make things. You can escape from a job that is slowly killing you.

With tools you can build a life that doesn’t depend on your next annual review and whether or not you managed to wear out the knees in your pants while groveling for a raise.

I don’t care if you call that anarchism or not. In fact, I recommend that you don’t.
So stay tidy. Be friendly. Build things instead of buying them. You’ll know what to do next.

— Christopher Schwarz

‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’ Videos, Free

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Inside the Anarchist’s Tool Chest from Christopher Schwarz on Vimeo.

First a little history, then a disclaimer and then we play the moviefilm.

When I wrote “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011 I steered clear of discussing brand names of tools because I didn’t want the book to be a tool-buying guide for 2011. My hope was it would be useful to woodworkers getting started in the craft long after I’m dead.

But people asked me: What specific tools are in your chest? So we made a short DVD that had a one-hour tour of the tools in my chest on that summer day in 2011. Plus I assembled a five-minute slideshow that was an overview of the chest’s construction process. Finally, we added a document of sources for the tools and a SketchUp drawing of the chest.

We sold the DVD for a few years, but it was plagued by technical problems. Our DVD presser at the time couldn’t seem to make an error-free disc, so we switched vendors and then ultimately began giving the discs away as commemorative drink coasters/safety Ninja throwing stars instead.

So last night I loaded up the videos on our Vimeo channel and we now offer them free of charge.

Disclaimer: The tools in my chest have changed since 2011. So please don’t ask me to compare this, that or the other to then or now. We’re producing a new tour of the chest for the five-year anniversary that also will be free.

Why did the tools change? In many cases I tried to get something more accessible. I loved my Barrett plow plane, for example, but it was intimidating to beginners (especially the price tag). So I switched to a Stanley 45, which I bought for $50. (And no, I don’t know what happened to Dan Barrett and his planemaking company.)

Construction Slideshow of The Anarchist’s Tool Chest from Christopher Schwarz on Vimeo.

So you can watch the tour and slideshow above. And below you can download a zipped folder of the SketchUp drawing and the tool list.

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— Christopher Schwarz

Milk Paint – Advice and a Mad Chef

Posted on by saucyindexer
First: Clear the premises of all penguins
First: Clear the premises of all penguins.

In addition to the Milk Paint appendix in the “The Anarchist’s Design Book” there are a few more resources that the new milk painter might find useful:

  • Chapter 25 on Finishing in “Chairmaker’s Notebook” by Peter Galbert, available from Lost Art Press.
  • Peter’s blog Chair Notes has tons of information including this article on using milk paint, “Bullet Proof Finish.”
  • Chris recently completed a DVD for a bookcase where he covers the use of milk paint. The DVD (or dowload) is available from Popular Woodworking.

For the adventurous painter and finisher:

  • Brian Anderson, our compatriot in France, experimented with a milk paint recipe and reported his results in “The Mad Chef’s Milk Paint Gets A Shellacking” post here.

A big thank you to Richard Byrne and Ryan Mooney for providing a wealth of links to painting and finishing resources in yesterday’s post, “Milk Paint – A Short History.”

– Suzanne Ellison

The Poisoner’s Tool Chest

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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A journeyman joiner in Kelso, having procured some arsenic for poisoning rats, mixed it amongst oatmeal, and laid it in his tool chest. His wife accidentally finding it, and not knowing the meal contained poison put it into their porridge on Monday morning last. Her eldest child who was about three years of age, upon taking the porridge, said they were bad, and would take no more, but she and a child she was nursing took a few spoonfuls of them, which they had no sooner done, than they were seized with violent reaching [sic] and vomiting, attended with a heat and pricking pain in the stomach. The husband coming in soon after for his breakfast, she told him what she had done, when he exclaimed, “You are all poisoned!” He immediately run [sic] for a doctor, who made use of every proper means to expel the poison, which was happily effected, as they are now in a fair way of recovery.

— from The Pennsylvania Packet Friday, Nov. 18, 1785, courtesy of Jeff Burks

Milk Paint: A Short History

Posted on by saucyindexer
From "Painter's and Colourman's Guide" 3rd ed. 1830 by P. F. Tingry
From “Painter’s and Colourman’s Guide” 3rd ed. 1830 by P. F. Tingry

In “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” one appendix is devoted to milk paint. As Chris notes there are plenty of milk paint recipes from the 1800s and provides a reference from 1836, “The Painter’s, Guilder’s and Varnisher’s Manuel…” by Henry Carey Baird. I thought 1836 was rather a late date. And I wondered if there was a recipe that was accepted as a standard and when the recipe came into use in America.

In 1774, an updated edition of “L’Art du Peinture, Doreur, Vernisseur” by Watin was published. This book took an orderly approach to the painting arts compared to the many ragtag publications that covered trade secrets that ranged from royal cake recipes to how to do your laundry.

About 20 years later, Antoine-Alexis Cadet de Vaux, a French chemist (and friend to Ben Franklin), was experimenting with the distemper recipes in Watin’s book. He published his findings in “Feuille de Cultivateur” around 1793. This was followed by “Memoire sur la peinture au lait” published in 1800 or 1801 (depending on which month it was in the French Republic Calendar at the time of publication). Cadet de Vaux noted that his previous recipe was published at a time of public misfortune (the Revolution) and a time of shortages. Although distemper paint was inexpensive the cost and shortages of linseed oil led him to use milk instead.

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In “Memoire,” Cadet de Vaux describes the advantages of milk paint compared to distemper: milk paint was cheaper, the recipe was not heated, it dried fast, did not smell of size or oil and when rubbed with a coarse cloth the paint did not come off. The recipe consisted of skimmed milk, fresh slaked lime, oil of caraway, linseed or nut oil and Spanish white. He explains that the “skimmed milk has lost its butyraceous part, but retains its cheesy part.” The cheesy part acts as a kind of glue and gives the mixture an elasticity.

Cadet de Vaux also provides a milk paint recipe for exterior work. In 1801, “Memoire” was translated and published in London in “The Repertory of Arts and Manufacters,” and you can read the recipe and the butyraceous remark here.

Cadet de Vaux’s recipe was repeated in “The Painter’s and Varnisher’s Guide…” by P. F. Tingry (a Swiss chemist) in 1804. Many more editions of painting and varnishing manuals with various titles and translations followed. Cadet de Vaux’s recipe appears to be the standard.

Somewhere around 1803-1808, milk paint recipes appeared in articles and almanacs in New York and New England and for the most part were from the English translation of Cadet de Vaux’s “Memoire.”

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Now I get to write my favorite command in Franglish, “Fetchez la vache!”

— Suzanne Ellison