Book Review: Guide to Woodworking with Kids, by Doug Stowe

This image copied directly from Doug's website, but without his express permission.

"Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth."
-Thich Nhat Hanh

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I love reading about what Doug Stowe is up to. As a graduate of North Bennet, there's a common thread of Educational Sloyd that ties together my experiences and his, but in vastly different ways. I wasn't really exposed to it until I was in my late 20's, and I will always remember walking around the school with my jaw on the floor for the better part of an hour, during the tour. I wasn't even sure people still knew how to do those things, let alone that there would be a school, let alone that it would be so close to me, and that I'd never even heard about it until then. North Bennet will always, always, always, have a warm place in my heart. And the roots of what they taught, and how they taught, were rooted in Educational Sloyd, which had actually been taught there by Gustaf Larsson to the teachers who would be bringing the experience to children. Reading his source material feels like coming home, in some ways, to a home I wish I'd grown up in... and maybe, would like to provide for my children.

But in my experience, there's a difference between the theory of what I thought I wanted to do for my children one day, and what I'm actually doing. In the trenches of temper tantrums and fights over screen time, snack food, and all of the other little battles against low blood sugar, neurological development, growing pains, younger/ older brother power plays... Well, I'm human. And I miss the mark sometimes. And that's when I have to step back and re-assess.

There's a great quote that I read once upon a time, that in an age of information overload, plans don't work, and maps don't work. What you need is a compass, a trajectory, and a way to measure the key values. (Are you headed where you want to be headed, how far do you have to go, how fast are you moving, and so on.) It doesn't matter if you're in over your head, as long as you can swim. And, keep swimming. (cue the inevitable Pixar earworm) And so, when I do step back, I have to consult some of my personal compasses... of which my wife is one. (Having the right partner is key.) But there are others.

And that leads me to this marvelous book, because it's reminded me of a few things. One of those things is, in no uncertain terms, don't project your own self-deluded nonsense onto your children. Another thing I needed to remember, is just how much I didn't know, and just where is the basic base-line?

As I've been getting things set up in my basement, I've been trying to think of ways to integrate the boys, ages 7 and (almost) 5. I've been reading about stick furniture and tapered tenons, and thinking to myself how easy it would be for them to understand. And they've helped, a little, with one small project (a bench) so far.

And in so doing, I missed the point completely. The children ARE the project: The wooden MacGuffin is just a thing. Sure, I'm happy to help them figure out what they can do with their hands. And in good time, I'm sure they'll be more interested in specific projects. But of all of the various tips and tricks and suggestion that Doug has, (and there are many) the big one is this: The point of woodworking with your kids, is not to build objects. It's to help to help the children grow, help them learn, and to stay out of their way while they figure out what they have to figure out. And maybe that's the second half of the point: The children are the project, but (just like all of their really cool LEGO sets) it's not my project.  Not really. They need me to provide boundaries, and give them a basic understanding of the structure they'll be working with, but they rest of it is up to them, their nature, and their inclinations. If I do it right, I'm just a spectator/ assistant.

Ultimately, the part of my experience at North Bennet, that I want to provide for my kids, is the learning part. And it's all too easy for me to forget the vast difference between learning, and being taught. And just because I see something cool in the bones of a particular project, doesn't mean that they see it... or that they see the same cool thing. Maybe that ball and claw foot really is the leg of Optimus Prime's long-lost Cybertronian nemesis, after all. Who am I to say otherwise?

That's actually one of the great things about the pictures in his book, of the children's projects. They remind me of what it was like as a kid, building similar things, that probably looked even worse, and how the real significance at that age isn't the finished project... it's that the object itself is simply a placeholder for the imagination, while it projects all of the epic adventures and zany experiments with reality that a child's head can produce. Ninjas, dinosaurs, misguided refrigerator monsters, and a family of broken crayons who only want for a hamburger... And that process is much more important than some poor parent's need to take the kid's newly finished project into the basement to be sanded, and refinished, and made into something for the parent's imagination to project greatness upon. Who cares if it looks like something that was made by a child? It was. And that is absolutely ok. 

I was fifteen before I had my first experience with jealousy over someone else's achievements: Scott McClary made a really cool coffee table in 9th grade. I really wanted to be that guy, who could build things. But my 7 year old isn't even halfway there right now. There is nothing in his world that demands that I help him to avoid my teenage experience. (And, for that matter, there's nothing I can do with him now that would ever help me feel better about my own childhood experience.)

So, this is a woodworking book, sort of. It's a teaching book, sort of. Maybe once you blow off some of the sawdust, it's a mystical zen treatise on child rearing, sort of. (Hence the quote with which I began this post.) Or maybe it's a map to the Lonely Mountain Erebor, where we can all battle our own hidden dragons, in search of treasure.

Or, maybe it's a compass.

Am I helping them learn? Or am I trying to teach? What was it about learning fine craftsmanship, that I want to help them find for themselves, if they need it? Do they even care, yet? Am I the person in their life who is best positioned to help them with that? Is this really my shop right now, or theirs?

In my experience, when I find myself neck-deep in questions, I'm probably in the right place.

(I'm still proud to see them sitting on the bench they helped make.)

Thanks, Doug.
 

What I've been reading and doing lately, thinking round, and the curious case of Mr Schwarz

So, I've been home at this point for almost 100 days. I've lost count. I spent money on various things, including a bunch of books from Lost Art Press. (Campaign Furniture, Welsh Stick Chairs, Good Work, Ingenious Mechanics, pre-order for Kitchen Think, and...one more.) I also ordered a copy of Doug Stowe's book on working wood with kids. I can't wait.

I've been gearing up to do some chair making, because it sounds very straightforward, and more visceral than the work I'm used to doing. Quite frankly, the Welsh stick chair thing has been an interesting footnote in my understanding of Chris Schwarz, and what he's been up to: The Anarchist's Design Book has a little more depth for me than it did before. Design Book was a bell-clear call for the reader to start doing things, without obsessing, or stressing the little things. And the more I read from, and about, John Brown, the more I understood those undertones of Design Book. My understanding of Brown's 'Welsh' approach to things boils down initially to 'I'm not a classically trained anything. I needed a chair, so I made one.  It came out the way it came out.' And when he saw the chair that apparently inspired a career, he went straight after it, know-how be damned. Don't have a lathe? Grab a block plane, and 'think round.' I wonder, a little, how he'd have gotten on with Lance Patterson.

Schwarz, the editor, spent a career, publishing a magazine dedicated to all of the must-know techniques, must-build pieces, must-have tools and jigs, must-try suggestions, must-own shiny things, and on and on. So I could see why Schwarz, the anarchist, would ultimately decide that the list of must-anything should be zeroed out, and to follow that thread. And now that I've read a bit about John Brown, that notion has crystallized a bit more. Think round, indeed. And get on with it.

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Aside from that, I've also been reading the news, and despairing at how much of a boost it's given companies like Amazon, and gutted so much of the rest of the economy. Had anyone asked me, I might have justified buying the books, and a few spokeshaves, by citing my own effort to help stimulate the economy... Money should go to the small businesses, who need it.

Truth be told, I was just aching to get my hands to work. I needed space to work, so I carved out some space in my basement. Got my bench situated, and put an extension on the thing to use for homework, and such. The last piece fell into place yesterday, when the wheels started spinning on my bandsaw. With any luck I'll be writing about building things again soon, instead of just writing about reading about it.

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Schwarz bent my head the other night. He's announced plans to give away his next book electronically, for free.

Initially, I was a bit angry. As far as I'm concerned, people should be paid for their work. How dare he... but who am I to judge, really? It's his to give away. But, still... you just can't do that.

Can you?

Then I thought, maybe he's worried about legacy at this point, and what he leaves behind. This idea seemed to miss the mark, somehow. I'm sure the book will have various new observations and helpful hints, but his legacy, when it comes to bench-building, is all over the internet. He's already written a book or three on the topic, blogged (almost) ad nauseum about workbench builds and theory, and inspired a lot of workbench builds. And that experience is pretty evident in the lines of the bench that he's built. (Or, at least, the bench that he shows us a photo of. I can't imagine he'll pull the rug out at the last minute and do a big reveal of a door on sawhorses. But I'd laugh if he did.) In point of fact, it may have been easier for him to actually write a whole new book, than it would be to actually index everything he's ever blogged about.

Then this morning, I thought about his focus on Individualistic Anarchy and where that goes, and it overlaid with my frustrations about Amazon laying waste to the economy and the little guy, and wondered if that's been on his mind as well. The notion that he's distilled 20 years of bench building and offered it up for free, so people can get on with it, and get set up and start building things for themselves... Well, I can't say that it's the kind of thing he would do, because it's something he's already decided to do. But in the absence of any other meaningful gesture in the face of Amazon's gigantic money-funnel... it's actually not a bad response.

Or, maybe it's just that the pandemic has been a windfall for him, too, as the woodworking world has been left with not much to do but stay at home, and read, and build things, and he issued that missive from his yacht. I doubt that, though. It feels more like an attempt to keep the community active and engaged, and help everyone get up to speed while we're all locked up anyway, so that the seeds of more anarchists can be quietly nurtured in a soil that should be good for such things. The idea that people should stop obsessing, think round, and get to work?

Maybe it's not about legacy at all, so much as what he's trying to accomplish right now. Maybe this is his version of thinking round, and working with what he has, in the absence of whatever else he's lacking while we're all locked down. Or maybe he's more worried, in the context of this particular content, about the students than the teacher. Lost Art Press seems to be on more solid ground these days, and the catalog is expanding. Maybe this feeds the community, some of whom may be unemployed right now anyway, more than anything else he could be doing.

Maybe I've been thinking too much. I'm still on lockdown, too.

In any event, in the absence of a better response, I decided to continue to support his lunatic ideas, and ordered another book. According to my email inbox, it'll be on its way shortly.

The Intelligent Hand, the 863, and David Savage

(Cover image is linked to directly from Lost Art Press) 

As excited as I was to read and talk about The Intelligent Hand, I had to digest it for a while before I could really write anything that felt right. The recurring thought, to be brutally honest, is that this is the book that I desperately needed 11 years ago when I decided to hang out a shingle and make furniture for a living. Or, maybe even 14 years ago when I first started at North Bennet.

The book is not aimed at dilettantes, or hobbyists. Savage is very up front about that, and so is Chris Schwarz, who wrote the foreword. The book, like Rowden, (the school David founded to teach aspiring professional woodworkers) is aimed at people who are 'bleeding from the neck.' (His phrase, used to describe people who wouldn't be there if something wasn't already wrong.)  People who would have been one of the 863.

I had to edit that last paragraph, because I initially started it with "this book isn't aimed at beginners." But perhaps it is, provided they're of a certain stamp. As much as I hear about a lack of qualified tradespeople, I think there's an abundance of individuals who won't be pushed, cajoled, bullied, or bribed into doing things they don't want to do, or pretending that they're someone that they're not... and are 'bleeding from the neck' as a result. These people are blessed with a bright, potential future of swimming against the current in a brutal, callous world. They will deal with bullies, jerks, and other types of naysayers, until they realize that The Opinions of Small and Worthless People, are Small and Worthless Opinions. With luck, hard work, guidance, hard work, mentoring, even more hard work, and a Willingness to learn, these blessed children will go on to inhabit incredibly fulfilling existences.

That said, guidance and mentoring are sometimes in short supply. And so those beginners should read this book immediately, and keep coming back, because the lessons between these covers will reveal themselves over time, with repeated exposure. Some of those lessons will only make sense after your first big failures... when they will perhaps be needed most.

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The beginning of the book is incredibly approachable. David talks a bit about his life and experiences as someone with a speech impediment, and how he learns to move past it and express himself. He talks about going bankrupt, and the clients who helped him move on, and try again. He welcomes you into the experience. If that level of resilience is something you can relate to, and not something you pity, you'll get a lot out of the rest of the book.

He talks at some length in the beginning about his experiences working as an artist, about running a furniture shop that ultimately went bankrupt... and how he recovered from that with the help of some very patient and forgiving clients. He ultimately came to the understanding that the three legs of doing this whole woodworking successfully, are "Making, Design, and Business Management."

He skims the bare surface of the topic of design in a chapter that talks about drawing, and proportion, and tying together numerous threads while trying to come up with something new. All of the old ideas are there, but one has to get past them to see a new idea. That could be getting past old design styles to create a new kind of furniture. It could be getting past the ideas that follow bankruptcy, to see a path forward again. It could be seeing a way forward on any of a number of other fronts that have challenged you in the past, once you get past the baggage of your previous ideas or misconceptions. Proportion deals with the relationships of the different elements in a composition, to present a balanced, beautiful piece. This should be that long in relation to that, this needs to be emphasized here to break up the tedium... and that sense of proportion is well hidden, but present throughout the book. Whether you're designing a piece, and balancing the dimensions, or running a business that balances "Making, Design, and Business Management," (The three legs of his business.) that deliberate management of proportion needs to be developed and nurtured.

One of the other themes of the volume is that once you get started, You Have to Trust Your Ability.  Know that you are able to truthfully see, to boldly draw, to accurately build, to courageously sell, and to live such a life as this without apology or excuse.  Surviving is hard enough, and bankruptcy is always there as a backstop. Making, Design, and Business Management all go hand in hand, and in proper balance and proportion. This is not the time to commit, because once you're in business for yourself that ship has already sailed. This is the time to get real, and get to work.  There's no time left for second-guessing.

Better to know Victory, or to know Defeat. Either is better than mediocrity. Seeing and thinking and doing are all intertwined, and if you can't act accordingly, a corporate life might just be the thing for you.

It's a lesson that is mirrored in details as simple as sharpening. My take away lesson from the topic of sharpening wasn't how to sharpen... I already know how to do that. It was that even a simple thing like sharpening should be approached with the understanding that there's just no time to waste. You do need to understand how to sharpen, and what sharp is, but the point of the lesson was to get to the stones, get it done, and get back to work. When they interview makers who want to work at Rowden, one of the things that they look at is your tools... and they don't hire you if it looks like you're still fussing around with jigs.

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I'm embellishing the 'hard road,' concept a little bit, because these are issues that will face anyone who wants to escape the tedium of corporate life. A small business is still business, even if you're romantically doing 'meaningful work with your hands.' I met a few of these folks at North Bennet 14 years ago: They came to school, they got out, they went into business, went bankrupt, and went back to corporate life. I met a number of long-term woodworkers who had moved into their shop at one time or another.  The importance of Business Management can't be overstated, because you only get to do this sort of thing if you can make it work and make it stick.

I've been having conversations about the real nature of this sort of work with other people lately, and one of the things that I've realized is that the work itself can be part of the problem. The idea of the "Big Job" is always really exciting, but it's a killer. Big jobs are hard. They're labor intensive. And anything that requires those long hours at the shop means you're not spending time running the business. You're not mentoring new people. You're not looking for the next job, or touching base with the clients who may very well bring you that next job. You're not crunching the numbers on what that next job will cost, or how long it will take. You're just trying to push the Big Job out of your shop. And if you're working alone, even small jobs can be Big Jobs, just because you're working alone.

David's approach of running a shop with multiple talented people, and making good use of their insights and experience, while running a small school to train still more made a lot of sense to me. Again, you don't get to do that sort of thing, either, if you don't know how to make it work, so I'm sure there's a lot more under the surface. But it made sense to me.

This is the no-BS book I needed 11 years ago when I set up shop. And it's the book I wouldn't have understood, because I was a beginner, with some romantic idea of how it was all supposed to work. It's not a question of not understanding the language, it's an appreciation of context. It's akin to someone who's never had a romantic entanglement, talking to a new parent about the challenges one faces in raising a family. If you haven't even successfully managed dating, let alone a long term relationship, you're going to have a hard time understanding the world the other person inhabits. The language may be the same, and gravity will affect you both in roughly the same way, but the lens through which you view the world will be different. And the lens I used 11 years ago is not the one that I'm reading this book through today.

This is also the book I needed 5 years ago when I took on the Big Job. But at that point I was living down 6 years of focusing on Making, with some attention to Design, and only paying attention to Business Management when I absolutely had to. No attention to balance or  proportion whatsoever. I just wanted the Big Job to work out.

I know a few people who have managed to stay in business in a creative, thinking way. I knew a lot more who didn't make it. The persistent narrative was that it's a hard road, and not everyone survives. Getting word back from the front that someone figured a way to make it, and make good, is a breath of fresh, and hopeful air. It's a book I've already started to re-read, because there's just so much experience between those two covers, and so much to think about.

There's no easy way to tie off this review, because there's so much more to the book than the little that I've written here, and trying to capture it all would be pointless. Go read the book. I heartily recommend The Intelligent Hand to anyone who wants to sink their teeth into woodworking as a business, or into opening any kind of bespoke enterprise. It's not written for everybody... but not everybody would follow this road to begin with.

As epilogues go...

One of my milder pet peeves in the blogosphere involves the sudden end of an otherwise enjoyable narrative. It's annoying when I get into a blog, and then it comes to a screeching stop, and I have no idea how the story ends. It's like having someone walk by and shut off the TV, and you miss the ending of a show. "Hey! I was watching that..." To this day, I still don't know how the series finale of the "A-team," ended.

Having now been on the other side of killing a blog, I can understand. But still, it's one of those things. Where did those bloggers go? What are they doing?

In all honesty, it took a while before I was really over this blog. There was a lot more I wanted to talk about and say,  and do... and I kept promising myself that I'd somehow go back and make good on it... And I didn't. At this point, I'm ok with that. I have other priorities. But it felt like a loose end.

I'm aware that I need to do a little bit here and there to spruce up this blog in general, to make it easier to dig through, and just to manage this part of my online presence, if nothing else. As a first step towards that, I've  added my final project, the Auto-Regulator, to the portfolio page, and given it a pretty decent write-up. It was one of the things I wanted to write more about. I'm not going to go into anywhere near as much depth as I'd intended, but I've finally put it up for all of you to see. It's pretty cool, even in retrospect.

But back to the point... how does this thread end? What have I been doing? Well, I have news to report. And hopefully that news will provide closure for those of you who were paying attention, or were curious how things have shaken out.

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When I shut down my full-time shop four years ago, (obviously I haven't quit wood completely, and couldn't if I wanted to) I was painfully aware that a decade of making sawdust had decimated any marketable skill set I possessed that wasn't directly related to woodworking. And I decided that I wanted to do something else for a living besides just working with wood. I wanted something more interesting and educated-sounding, so that people would quit trying to 'help me' by suggesting I work at Home Depot. ("You're a woodworker! Hey, you know what you could do?") So, I decided to pursue prosthetics, and I embarked on a part-time effort to complete all the prerequisites, while also staying home full time to look after our 2 boys. (Well, it was one when I closed up shop. We had the other one soon thereafter, figuring it would be easier to have another one at the time, than it would be in grad school.) It was more than full time. It was a lot of hard, hard work, on top of the long hours that come with having a brand new, second child.

A year ago, I had wrapped up the prerequisites, and I was preparing to submit applications to two programs in prosthetics and orthotics. And out of nowhere, I got a call from a staffing agency, about a ridiculous opportunity. Two days later, I had an interview, and two hours after that, I had a new job. Two weeks later I started working at Terrafugia, in Woburn, MA, building prototypes for flying cars. Odd detail... they're basically across the street from the address of the Woodcraft store, where I worked for two years.

The job itself is as close to perfect as I could have hoped for. My overall skill set is pretty broad-ranging, but oddly well suited to what I'm doing now. I use a table saw and a band saw on a regular basis. Bonding components together, at the simpler end of the spectrum, isn't too far removed from some of the more involved furniture assembly glue-ups that I'd performed previously. There's a lot of problem-solving, and jig designing and making, which I love. And there's actually a call for good craftsmanship and hand-eye coordination: Despite our heavy investment in things like CNC machining and 3-D printing, I work in a prototype shop, and there are times when we just need to fix things in the moment, with the understanding that we'll iterate in the future. It means that skill set I worked so hard to develop wasn't a complete dead-end, and I finally have the opportunity, (if not the mandate) to learn a whole lot of other new, and marketable skills. I'm surrounded by brilliant, hard working people. I'm learning new things every day. And for the first time in a long time, I don't feel like I'm fighting just to survive.

I love woodworking, I do. Desperately. But doing woodwork for a living, and only woodwork, was brutal. And I watched that vocation destroy and/ or bankrupt more than a few people along the way.

Building flying cars is still a job, and every job has good days and bad days. But even after working there for a solid year, I just can't believe my luck.

And as epilogues go, this is a damn fine one.

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I also have other news, though probably less exciting... Thanks in part to my new-found stable job situation, I've recently moved into a new home. And, that home has a two-car garage, with just enough room in it to set up a new rent-free shop. I have no immediate plans to do full-time woodwork for a living again, but having a (really, really cool) day job will free me up to use it to make a little money on the side. I might even try to build some of the speculative pieces I'd always dreamed about taking on, but couldn't justify... when I'm not trying to cajole my 3 and 5 year old into making Anarchist Stick Chairs.

As part of the setting up process, I'm pulling the remnants of my old shop out of storage. When I shut down four years ago, it felt like I'd hit rock bottom. I rented space in that building for storage, trying to hold on to something, and the stuff I kept has been there since. When I went out the other day to start moving out of that building, I discovered something via Google Maps that's only funny in retrospect: The name of the road that goes between the two old mill buildings, in that complex, is Rockbottom road.

How ironically appropriate.

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While I may come back periodically to post an update, or to clean up the overall presentation, grateful is a pretty good note to end it on.

I'm also grateful that this blog managed to grow and get the exposure that it did, with little or no real attempt by me to self-promote. Somehow it still gets regular traffic, even after being shut down for so long, and that's something I'm proud of. I blame Chris Schwarz for a lot of that. I blame Norse Woodsmith, too, but Leif added me to the aggregator at someone else's suggestion, and i didn't find out about it until after the fact.

I'm humbled that enough of you were intrigued enough to keep reading.

Happy trails.

James Watriss, 8/1/2018

March-April Issue is here...

It's as good a way as any to book-end the last decade or so.

10 years ago this month, I walked out of the North Bennet Street School. I was mostly done. My chess table needed to be finished, which took a little doing, but otherwise, I was out, and ready to take on the world.

 

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At this particular moment, I'm blogging, as a way to procrastinate, rather than study Anatomy and Physiology. I'm in the midst of the last prerequisite that I need, before applying to grad school for Prosthetics and Orthotics. The long-arching arc of my career track still involves making things, and so, for me, it makes sense. The insurance gig may or may not be a permanent part of the picture, going forward. We'll see.

Either way, something else has been happening lately. My second kid has passed the year and a half mark, and I realized the other day that my head is starting to clear. And I started having ideas about what my next shop will look like. Nothing concrete, mind you, but it was a strong enough whiff of an idea that it's clear that I'm nowhere near being done with woodwork.

So, this showed up in the mail yesterday...

Simple Pleasures (My review of the Anarchist's Design Book)

I'd intended my last entry to be just that, my last entry. But then someone gave me this book, and, well...

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When I first read the premise behind Chris Schwarz' proposed Furniture Of Necessity, I really wasn't sure where he was going with the idea. Stripping away ornamentation usually leads to Shaker or Danish Modern, but he was citing source material that seemed more like cave drawings than draftsmanship, and I didn't see the point. Still, I was curious. Schwarz has a tendency to dig through old material, strip the big ideas down, and relentlessly discard anything that's not immediately, and efficiently useful. And he usually comes back with a nugget or three of something unexpected, and precious.

Now that I've finished this book, for the second time, I'm not 100% sure what Schwarz is up to. The book is brilliant, and the furniture is gorgeous, there are layers yet that I need to peel back. And even then, he makes it plain that there are things on his mind that are better left unsaid. 

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When I unwrapped the book, and cracked it open, the obvious things that popped out on my first flip-through were the (gorgeous) photos and illustrations, and the crackling from the painted page edges. (This settles down quickly, leaving a quieter, and very handsome looking volume.) Then I started reading.

His design methods get to the point, without making expensive/ time consuming mockups and prototypes. (A drunken monkey could put some of these methods to solid and efficient use.) He walks through building stools and chairs, using simple, functional, and efficient methods. (One of the most complicated tools is basically a pencil sharpener on steroids.) The trestle tables... Simple, functional, and very attractive furniture. (Truly awesome commentary on that here.) I don't have room for a new table, but when I start grad school, I'm thinking I might just make myself a desk. I'll be reaching for this book when I get there.

And truth be told, all I was able to think about was how cool it would be to teach this stuff to my boys, once they pass the age of 6. He uses band saws and drill presses, for the sake of efficiency, but a coping saw, hand plane, spoke shave, and a modified ship builder's auger would work just fine for smaller hands, if you wanted to build one of these chairs with a child. I don't just want to build this stuff, I want to share the experience. So in that regard, I think the author has done his job well.

Clearly there was a lot more to the cave drawings than I properly understood. 

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This quote reached out and poked me in the eye while I was reading about the 6-board chest:

"After all, if you are going to build these projects by hand and build them for the non-rich, you have got to be efficient."

After all of his years in editing and publishing, I'm sure that Mr. Schwarz is very careful when writing in the second person. It makes sense when he's walking the reader through a build, or in a comment like: "If you want to learn how to build furniture, you have to study furniture." Because his tone is so casual, a random aside like the one I put in italics wouldn't normally stick out... but I've already had a pretty solid go at this whole furniture making business once already, so it hit me a little differently than it would have a decade ago. I'm not sure if he was just assuming the reader wants to make an enterprise out of building furniture, or if he's trying to quietly, conversationally, plant the seed of that idea. Either way, it felt subtly done.

At that point, the tone of the book took a left turn for me, and I started paying closer attention.

Schwarz comes clean about some of his motivations at the end of the book. He's clearly had it with idle chatter from professional moaners, uselessly rambling about the loss of the craft.* He's very much interested in making people want to get off their backsides, and do things. And so he's stripped that idea down to something that's immediately and efficiently useful. The projects in this book can be built with a set of tools that will fill a small backpack, even if he pairs them with ideas and ways of thinking about design that will help you fill your house... and maybe someone else's, too.

My observation after reading the book, is to re-examine just how over-done a lot of fine furniture really is, if you're trying to strip down to what's really useful. 

And, for myself, I can't help but want to build this stuff.

 ---

The 'Useful Stuff at the End' section feels less like an appendix, and more like a place to put a few spare parts that didn't fit in with the final layout of the book. He talks about how PVA glue has short-changed the world, and why hide glue is so much better. He talks about scrubbed finishes, and soap finishes. Simple, safe, healthy, and sustainable ways to keep a piece maintained. And other bits and pieces. But these short blurbs are also useful devices for bringing up some very serious complaints with the way things have been made in recent years. Not only are things so poorly made, they're hard to maintain, and almost impossible to repair. Between chapter 99, and this last section, my impression was that of a curtain being pulled aside, just for a moment, and getting an incomplete glimpse of what drove him to put this book together.

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Once upon a time, I was a North Bennet student, selling tools at Rockler, and then Woodcraft. And I was frustrated and pissed off about how much money it was taking people, just get into dabbling in woodworking, about how much of it either wasn't helpful, wasn't entirely necessary, or helped the aspiring woodworker to assume that they were out of their depth. I really loved The Anarchist's Tool Chest, because it stripped most of those things down for the average beginner: 'You need these things, you don't need those, and for god's sake, don't worry about that stuff. It's crap.' (That's my one-sentence summary, that does the book a grave disservice, but it's more palatable than "STFU and go read it already.") It was a great book that provided guidelines for a solid tool kit, and a good exercise or two, to help the newcomer get to understand their tools.

I feel like this book has gone a step further. Because he's now stripped away a lot of techniques that aren't necessarily needed, either. No dovetailed boxes, no rectilinear mortise and tenon work, no embellishment. The 'joinery' when there is any, is only used when structurally necessary, and it's bombproof. The finished pieces are proof that this philosophy of design can still produce comfortable, attractive pieces, even in the hands of someone who's just starting out. And nothing encourages progress like success. With luck, he'll also shoo away some of the tire-kickers who will step up to a Goddard highboy and first want to see how sloppy his dovetails were, ignoring completely the sense of proportion, or the quality of the piece as a whole.

In short, I think Schwarz has jumped from 'making it easier to get into woodworking,' to 'making it easier to build durable, useful furniture.' There are times when I'm tempted to joke that his next book will feature a series of boulders, but the truth is that Schwarz has managed to take the philosophy of 'make things as simple as possible, and no simpler,' to a long-forgotten level. A simpler tool kit, a simpler set of techniques, and furniture that, to be plain, will be easier to live with and maintain.

So... STFU and go read it, already.

JW, 7/9/2016


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*re: The loss of the craft: The rise of maker-spaces, and the upsurge in people wanting to make things, is ample proof that the spirit of craft is very much alive and well. Some of them are into woodworking. True, I find it sad to think that the world may never see the likes of the Seymours, or the Roentgen shop again. But the truth is, they were a very limited and isolated subset, of a subset of elite craftsmen, who happened to be positioned to sell amazing things to royalty, for a ransom. And there are still subsets of elites, selling remarkable things to royalty, making anything from furniture to bicycles, sports cars and motorcycles to airplanes and who knows what's next, timber frame homes or over-the-top yachts... Or even just really good food. Anyone who thinks that intelligent craftsmanship is dying, either hasn't been paying attention, or probably wants to have inspiration fed idly to them on a spoon.