“He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.”
— “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke
Warning: This is one of those blog entries that will make some of you wonder why you bother visiting here. You might just want to skip this entry and go play with your safety gear, micrometers and “Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition.”
As I’m waiting for the epoxy to harden on the half-scale model of a chair shown above, I’ve poured myself a stiff drink and am raising a toast to Jonathan Strange.
Strange is a magician in my favorite contemporary novel: “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke. I’ve been quite obsessed with this book since it came out in 2004. It is, and I do not say this lightly, the most finely crafted piece of fiction I’ve read as an adult. Every footnote is pure genius. And it reeks of a work that has been finely combed over like the garden at Versailles.
(Oh, and If I ever get a tattoo, it will be the silhouette of the raven in the book. Also: I am just as likely to get a tattoo as I am to start vaping my own ear wax.)
So Strange, the radical magician in the book, figures out that to do really interesting magic, one needs to be somewhat mad. The insane kind of mad; not the Lumberjocks sort of mad. As Strange is quite sane at first, he gins up all sorts of ways to induce madness. In the end, it involves cats (naturally) and drinking something awful.
And that describes my ideal writing and design process.
“I’m not going to a party; I’m a writer.” That’s what I tell the nice people at the liquor store when I arrive at the register with two boxes of wine and four six packs of potent beer. The wine is for my wife (also a writer); the beer is for me.
Lucy and I very rarely get drunk. The last time I got drunk was by accident (Note to self: Never drink casually with the Irish.) But Lucy and I do have a drink with dinner and then we have a drink after dinner. Then we write and talk and write.
I know that some odd souls are fantastic writers and designers when they are dead sober. I am not. I find that a drink helps. As does fatigue, stress, incredibly loud music and stupid external constraints.
Why? Who cares why. Feel free to make up a theory. I’d rather just use these tools that have worked (since 1986) to write and design stuff at 5 p.m. that seems out of my league at 11 a.m. And with these tools I don’t have to bifurcate my private parts (thank you, Mayan civilization) or vape my boogers.
So I say to the Stone Saison in my glass tonight: Bring on the madness.
One of my favorite woodworking quotes from the late John Brown is: “By all means read what the experts have to say. Just don’t let it get in the way of your woodworking.”
This morning I was thinking about this quote, and it occurred to me that there are so many other things that can get in the way of woodworking and building useful things. So I created this MadLib in the title of this post and began filling it with things that weren’t the word “fart” or “poo-poo.”
Here are a few:
tool acquisition
frugality
lack of tools
lack of skills
lack of a shop
sharpening
tool minutiae
YouTube videos
books
magazines
blogs
me
anything
“Most of (Hans) Wegner’s furniture is delivered untreated – only buffed and treated with soap and water, so that the fine wood is ready to become more beautiful with use. Some furniture is delivered with a clear lacquer finish.”
— “Hans J. Wegner: Hacedor de Sillas (Chairmaker)” by Jens Bernsen (Danish Design Centre, 1998)
I’m in the middle of building a new chair design in ash and am planning on finishing the chair in soap and water – a finish that is common in Denmark.
It’s a simple, easy-to-mess-up finish that I first heard about from Bob Flexner while I edited his column “Flexner on Finishing.” You can read a 2010 column by Flexner on the finish here at Woodshop News. For more details, including photos of the mixing process, check out this blog entry from Caleb James.
I’ve seen this finish on some vintage pieces at a couple stores that carry Danish Modern pieces here in Cincinnati. I visited one of the stores yesterday to get some photos, but they had filled the showroom with giant live-edge tables. Dipped in plastic. Not good.
So the photo above is one of Wegner’s pieces.
Like paint, oil or beeswax, the soap finish appeals to me because it doesn’t require special equipment (spraying lacquer) or years of experience (a shellac polish) to execute. It’s a good place for beginners to start when finishing furniture (or floors). I’ll post photos of the finish next month when the chair is complete.
While I would love to use blacksmith-nails all day and every day, my customers aren’t willing to pay $1.35 per nail. So I use Tremont cut nails, which are about one-fifth the cost of a homemade nail – a 6d “wrought” nail with a head is about 22 cents. That’s still expensive, but cheaper than handmade.
But the Tremont wrought head nails are covered in black oxide, a fact that I’ve blogged about before and have offered dangerous solutions to fix (hydrogen chloride). (Edit: Not all the Tremonts are covered in black oxide; but the one with the “wrought head” are.) Why can’t I have a plain steel nail with a nice head?
Turns out that I can.
Dictum in Germany has been carrying a variety of excellent blued-steel nails that are forged (using dies) and have square-tapered shanks. I received my first shipment from Dictum today (it took only three days to get the order) and I am more than impressed.
These nails, which I recently encountered in England, are awesome. They are plain blued steel. They look way better than the Tremonts (sorry Tremont, but it is true), and they hold like crazy. Oh, and they are less expensive.
A 6d (50mm) nail from Dictum is about 6 cents a nail (plus shipping). Order a bunch to save on shipping. You will not regret it.
Most woodworkers will need only two or three sizes of nails to do most work. The 50mm nail is used for nailing together carcases – chests and the like. Dictum sells these for €6.30 for 100 nails (plus shipping).
For nailing 1/2”-thick backs and bottoms in place, you should get the 30mm or 40mm nails (30mm for hardwoods; 40mm for softwoods). Dictum sells the 40mm nails for €6.40 for 100. The 30mm nails are €4.80 per 100.
These are great nails at a great price, even if you include the shipping. And buying them rewards a nail-making company that has been doing it the hard way for a long time.
Author’s Note: During the next 10 months, Lost Art Press will mark the fifth anniversary of The Anarchist’s Tool Chest. As the quinquennial approaches, John and Chris might even have a few surprises up their sleeves. But before everyone gets all teary-eyed, Chris thought it would be more fitting to have someone grill him about everything that could be better about the book. I volunteered.
Hence, the conversation below is the first of what I anticipate will be a three-part interview. I focused on what I perceive to be some of the most challenging aspects of the book’s “anarchism.” The second interview will focus on the chest itself. In the final interview, I’ll ask Chris what major changes he would make to the book, if he was starting it all over again from scratch.
For the subsequent interviews, I’ll incorporate as many of my favorite reader inquiries as possible. So, if you’re dying to grill Chris about the ATC, please email me your questions.
Brian Clites: Good morning, Chris. Five years ago, you said that you disliked the word “anarchist.” Now that the term has become synonymous – at least among woodworkers – with your approach to the craft, are you less frustrated with it? Or, perhaps, has that made you hate it all the more?
Christopher Schwarz: Good morning. I still dislike it, but I have embraced it nonetheless because it tends to get people talking about what it means. Like, “Here’s a middle-aged man with no tattoos or piercings. Conservative haircut. Horn rims. He’s an anarchist?”
Once you explain what aesthetic anarchism is (a tendency to avoid large organizations and embrace DIY and self-reliance), and what it’s not (violent; an effort to overthrow governments), then a real conversation can begin.
BC: Do you think, as a whole, U.S. society is more or less consumptive of chip-board crap than it was five years ago? In other words, irrespective of your book’s philosophy, have things gotten better or worse for the furniture most people buy?
CS:I am an eternal optimist and am happy to see more Americans interested in well-made things created in their communities – bread, cheese, beer, leather goods, clothing, even flasks. I haven’t seen much interest in craft-made furniture, however. And that interest might be a long way off. What I do see, however, is an overall increased interest in “making” things, furniture, robots, jewelry, whatever.
That is where it will begin: People making things for themselves that clearly outclass the mas-manufactured junk. Then your friends see it and ask: “Will you make me one?”
My personal focus is not on society as a whole. I think my best hope is to train makers and get them to a very high level quickly – and that’s what “Furniture of Necessity” is all about. In some ways it is more radical than “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
BC: Does the readership of LAP satisfy your mantra “disobey me”? Do you worry sometimes that too many of us – particularly novices – want you to be their guru?
CS:We all need some help at first – I sure did. So I’m not bothered by beginners who ask endless questions. That’s totally natural.
What I don’t like seeing is people who cannot cut the umbilical cord. Even after years of bench work and building dozens of great projects, they still want someone to validate their decision to buy a particular brand of 3/16” chisel. Or worse – for me to do the research for them.
BC: You described the ATC as a chest for the tools you really need, and proclaimed that you should probably throw away any tool that doesn’t fit in the chest. The ATC represented for you a moment of enlightenment, a breaking free from the endless cycle of tool attachment. Setting aside for the moment stationary machinery, how would you grade yourself as a tool consumer over the past five years?
CS: I’ve added only two tools to the chest since I finished building it in 2010: a shooting-board plane and a large specialty square for laying out compound angles. I’ve replaced a few tools, but those have actually been downgrades in terms of expense – a simpler coping saw and a Stanley 45 instead of my Barrett plow, for example.
I have bought several tools to review them for Popular Woodworking Magazine – but then I have given those away or sold them. I’m doing those reviews as a favor to Editor Megan Fitzpatrick. I am a reluctant reviewer.
BC: Stated a bit differently, what would you say if someone suggested that perhaps you’ve merely substituted hand tools for power equipment, and that you remain firmly wed to the joys and challenges of tool lust?
CS:Let me put it this way: When I go into a general woodworking store (or the tool crib at the home center) I feel a little ill and upset while surrounded by all those jigs, tools and accessories you don’t need. So I just put my head down, pick up the shellac flakes or glue that I came for and head for the cashier.
My attitude toward tools has seeped into every aspect of my life, as I suspected it would. I beg my family not to get me gifts for holidays. I’ve given away all the cooking gizmos that people have bought me over the years. When I buy socks, I buy the best darn socks I can find.
One thing I want to add, however, is this: I don’t expect or ask anyone to behave like I do. I don’t ask my family to eschew consumer goods. Our household is not “The Mosquito Coast.” Everything I do is by example only.
BC: Thanks Chris. I look forward to our next conversation about the book.
