I woke at 4 a.m. this morning, my brain boiling with some thoughts on beds and coffins to build for the “Furniture of Necessity” book. And while barfing these notes into my laptop, I received an e-mail from David Savage.
He wrote a review of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” for his blog. Read the whole amazing thing here. Or if you are incapable of clicking things, here’s an excerpt.
A real quality book, nice binding, good paper and a typeset that look good. I have had your book on my night stand for several months now remaining to be read. I have been a professional woodworker now for over 35 years and wood work books tend to hit the wall before I get past chapter one. Amateurs writing with utter conviction about something they don’t really know tend to get me cross. Schwarz is an amateur but somehow through a lifetime of woodieness he avoids the wall. Since starting this wonderful tome I have come to carry it about with me, almost closer than a good friend.
If Savage had thrashed me, I would have been just as honored. His woodwork is mind-blowing, and his writing is like getting bludgeoned by a hardbound copy of “The Sun Also Rises.” (That is a compliment.) He’s a regular contributor to many magazines that I read. For a sample of his prose, start here.
When we started Lost Art Press in 2007, our goals were simple: Print books that we want to read. Keep the overhead as low as possible. Don’t borrow money. Don’t do something stupid to overextend ourselves.
So John Hoffman and I stored and shipped all our books ourselves. (My sunroom and living room have been stacked to the ceiling.) We did our own accounting. We were our own webmasters, secretaries and janitors.
We’ve grown tremendously during the last five years, and we ship tens of thousands of books to customers and retailers all over the world. But we are still just two guys with laptops. No employees. No building, photocopier or debt.
We’ve managed this by farming out everything to our friends and colleagues, from editing manuscripts to page design to filing tax forms. And today we took a big step forward by moving our warehouse full of books to MSL Packaging & Fulfillment in Indiana. We looked at using a big international fulfillment house, but MSL suits us better. It was started by two guys who always pick up the phone when we call (sometimes while eating bacon) and who share a lot of our principles.
This move will increase the speed with which you get your orders – MSL is jacked right into our ordering system. And it will free us up to work even more on books, woodworking, editing, layout and blogging.
If you have a problem with an order (it happens) you’ll still deal directly with John or me. We will never cut the line of communication to our customers. (If it weren’t for you, John and I would be in miserable corporate jobs.) All out contact information is here.
• If you have a question or problem with an order, contact John Hoffman at john@lostartpress.com.
• If you have a question about the content of a product, contact me at chris@lostartpress.com.
We answer all e-mail, even if you are a rude prig. If you don’t hear back from us in 48 hours, we probably didn’t get your e-mail. Try again.
Oh, and the title of this blog entry? That’s what our accountant said to me on the phone this week when I called with a silly tax question.
A recent NPR story on a project using vintage 1930s recording equipment featured a device that plays a big part in “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!” The portable Presto acetate disc recorder was used by folklorist Alan Lomax to record musicians such as Leadbelly in the last years of the great Depression. The NPR story covered the Presto’s role in music recording, but left out its part in recording one of the great tragedies of that era, the 1937 explosion of the airship Hindenburg.
The Presto disc recorder was a game changer in 1937; it was a 50-pound portable machine that could produce high-quality audio recordings on location. Two reporters from Chicago had traveled to New Jersey to cover the arrival of the Hindenburg and interview the Chicago passengers. As they described the approach of the great airship, it exploded and burned with such force it knocked the cutting needle momentarily out of the track on the acetate disc. The recording they made “…all the humanity!” is one of the most memorable of the 20th century.
Eluding the German agents that tried to confiscate the recordings, the two made it back to Chicago, and the next day the recordings were heard on radio receivers in millions of homes around the world. It was a shocking moment that changed broadcasting. Prior to that time, the networks suppressed any use of recorded media on radio. Everything on radio was performed live over wirelines that the networks controlled. The broadcast of the Hindenburg recordings helped break down the barriers to recorded or “transcribed” programming from that time on.
This change in the broadcasting game plays heavily in “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!” In the story, the Hindenburg recordings make it possible for Calvin’s show “Grandpa Sam’s Woodshop of the Air” to be distributed to radio stations on records, rather than be presented live. Today, everyone knows to be very careful about what they allow to be recorded – but in 1937, this was all new! Once the records were out there, just like Facebook posts today, there was no way to get them back!
One of the greatest evils of the present day is the unfitness of the average workman for anything but mere routine work. Such a thing as a knowledge of the general details of a craft or trade, is almost unknown. The workman, from boyhood up, has become so accustomed to the pursuit of one idea; one branch of the trade, that he strives only for mediocre excellence in that one branch, and has no ambition beyond that of acquiring a sufficient knowledge of the particular line of business in which he is engaged to insure him the maintenance of his situation.
The average workman, if he has the intelligence, has not the ambition to perceive that the skilled and careful man, familiar with all the details of the business, is the one who is most likely to retain the good will of his employer, and fails to perceive that when the hard times come, the man with the limited knowledge of his business is the first to be dropped from the payroll, while his more competent brother, when work fails in one branch of the business, can be profitably put at work in another.
Every man should thoroughly master all details of his business, and some day, he can not tell how soon, the opportunity will come for him to better his condition and take advantage of those acquirements which have come to him in the days of his apprenticeship.
American Machinist: “ ‘Hard times’ are apt to be hard on nice, delicate workman. Perhaps business gets so dull that a nice tool maker must go to work repairing old engines. For a time he uses tools tenderly. He is as careful with them as of old. It makes him wince to see the boys throw nice tools into a box, and then dump into a drawer or on the bench. Soon our man gets hardened. He begins to ‘don’t care,’ and quickly gets as bad a tool smasher as any of the gang. ‘Hard times’ not only spoil business, but they sometimes spoil the mechanic as well.”
Every word of the foregoing is true. The “hurrah” and “rush ” of American practice in the workshop or on American buildings, is surely destroying skillful workmanship. To do good work requires time, and no man can make a good honest piece of work with the lash of the foreman pressing him on to “hurry up,” “hurry up.” The writer of this has known of more than one case, where first-class workmen have been elbowed out of existence, by men who did not know half so much, but who have the fatal knack of always appearing to be in a hurry.
In these days—in the building trades at all events—there seems to be no incentive to become a good workman. It is not the quality but the quantity of work a man can do that gives him value in the eyes of his employer. All this has a tendency to make indifferent workmen, and to fill up the ranks of the building trades with half trained men, botches and pretenders.
The Builder and Wood-Worker – October & November, 1885
