So here’s what I came up with.  Over the next six months, I’m resolving to crosscut exclusively by hand.  I own a few crosscut hand saws, and I know how to sharpen them. Along the way, I’ll build a pair of saw benches to get the work down to the right height, and I’ll build a better saw vise to speed up sharpening.  I’ll experiment with more saws: coarser teeth to go faster, finer teeth to get closer to a final finish with less planing of end grain.  With six months of focused, intentional practice, I should get pretty good at it.

I'm a couple of degrees away from my line by the end of the cut, and I was a couple of degrees off from plumb. Those inaccuracies left me with some planing to do to get a nice finished surface.

Since this will be the tail board for blind dovetails, I didn't need the edge grain to be perfect, so there are a few marks from the saw remaining.

I suspect the saw benches will make a significant difference.  I’ll get to those once I clear out a backlog of other projects.

One bright, shining exception was Chris Schwarz’s move this year to leave his role as Executive Editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine and focus on his side venture, Lost Art Press. This move was inevitable: Schwarz simply has too much to say to be beholden to a corporate definition of success. Magazines must court the advertising dollars of tool makers, and that extension of consumer culture–upside down in its assertion that artisans are first and foremost consumers–is in direct conflict with the soul of Craft.

In that vein, Schwarz’s new book, The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, is a must-read, a call to arms for furnituremakers. There is an edge to this book, not in the “pitchforks and torches” sense of tearing down governments, but in it’s assertion that artisans in wood must be the masters of their tools, not slaves to tool conglomerates. There is a broader critique too of mass-produced furniture, which may be preaching to the choir; nevertheless, even the choir needs a sermon sometimes.

Schwarz challenges us to break out of our consumer mindset when we think about our tools, proposing that each tool must pay its share of the rent in our workshops. A central premise of the book is that for the joiner focused on casework, there is a basic set of hand tools that will get us pretty far, and that we should look to machines as apprentices. If they don’t save us significant labor, they’re making a mess and taking up space.

There is an intellectual spirit to Schwarz’s writing that I appreciate, though not every woodworker will. Schwarz does his research, and quotes sources from the entire written history of the craft, much of it pre-industrial. He takes that research into the workshop, and comes back with confident assertions that, yes, there is a better way. This is challenging to readers accustomed to the pandering of the magazines, but there is a healthy way to interact with Schwarz’s assertions. It takes an open mind and a willingness to question our skills and methods.

For example, early in the book, Schwarz details how he sold off much of his tool collection, paring down to essential tools that “paid the rent.” While some of these moves would be gut-wrenching to the average home putterer, Schwarz is not sentimental about it. Out goes the miter saw and the router table. He even questions the supremacy of his table saw, the true sovereign of most home shops. “Once you foresake plywood,” he says, “your shop can change.” He moved the table saw against the wall, which “opened up a dance floor in the center of my shop.”

This got me thinking about my own workshop, a one-car garage I (hypothetically) share with my wife’s car. The car hasn’t fit in there for several years, pushed out by my big machines. Car aside, it’s cumbersome to make furniture out there, it’s so crowded. The two biggest beasts in my shop are the table saw and the radial arm saw. The table saw is a 70s-era cabinet saw with extension rails ideal for plywood sheets. I’ve taken to breaking down plywood with a circular saw, though, because I find it safer to move the tool than to move a full sheet of plywood. If I don’t use the table saw for breaking down plywood, can I shorten the rails and reclaim some space?

The radial arm saw, a 50s-era machine set up on a platform at the back of the garage, takes up every bit as much real estate as the table saw, and the only operation I use it for is crosscutting to length. I began to ask myself, “what would I need to do–what skills would I need to develop–to allow me to get rid of my radial arm saw?” More on that later.

I’d come to the book curious to learn what Schwarz’s short list of tools would be.  I wasn’t quite so ready to accept his assertion that a traditional tool chest was the best way to store them.  That’s great for him, I thought to myself. He’s working out of his basement, and it’s probably harder to hang cabinets on the walls.  It’s floor space that’s a premium in my shop. Slowly, the tumblers began to fall into place.  The more I thought about what I could remove from my workshop, the more I realized that the tool chest may in fact be the ideal storage method.

Suffice it to say, I plan to take up Schwarz’s latest challenge, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be a better and happier craftsman for it.  If my wife can park in the garage again, she’ll be happier too.

Ah, the irony. As I was composing this post, the power went out, further taunting me to reduce my dependence on machinery.

Don’t get me wrong–I see a definite a place for that kind of blog. There are a lot of great conversations going on out there, conversations we couldn’t have had a generation ago, conversations enabled by technology.

But there’s also value in another approach, one that doesn’t get quite so caught up in the noise of minute-by-minute blogging. The approach that seems right to me–for me–is one that lets those seemingly interesting ideas hang around a while. Like a poem that you write that you think might be good; if it’s really worth reading, it’ll still be worth reading six months later.

Editor of Fine Woodworking, Christiana posted this piece in the FWW editorial blog in response to a recent interview with Tom Loeser in American Craft.

Loeser is the head of the Woodworking department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  His series, Flotilla, was featured recently in Woodwork.

While Christiana quotes only a snippet (in bold, below), I think we get a better understanding of Loeser’s argument by understanding the context in which the offending statement was leveled:

Loeser has been taking full advantage of this creative license. As an academic, he recognizes himself as a subversive in the field. “I think the woodworking world is too small, too limited and too defined by Fine Woodworking magazine. There is a slightly anti-intellectual slant to it. I am more interested in the ideas behind it and opening things up. I am interested in where we overlap with design and where we overlap with art.” Loeser has always worked from historical objects and sources, but he plays with ideas of function by deposing the users’ operational expectations. These days he welcomes escapes from his studio furniture oeuvre to explore other systems of generating form.

What is troublesome is that Christiana’s rebuttal sets Loeser up as a straw man, showing pictures of his most challenging work with no context, making him out to be some ridiculous figure, rather than a daring and courageous individual.  As with all straw man attacks, Christiana sidesteps the earnest (and earned) criticism Loeser offers to FWW, that it is parochial (my word choice) and anti-intellectual, serving a focus-group audience.

Not surprisingly, Christiana’s followers, who like FWW just as it is, rally round the flag and take pot-shots at Loeser’s more challenging work.

This parochial and anti-intellectual stance within woodworking has made American furniture stagnant.  We get really good at mimicking Stickley or the Shakers, and maybe we stretch a little to make these styles serve our 60″ widescreen displays.

Not enough of us are concerned about the direction of American furniture.

Studio furniture makers play an important role within the larger ecosystem that includes the magazines, the designer-craftsmen, tool-makers, amateur woodworkers, reproduction craftsmen, educators, and much more.  Loeser and other studio makers challenge us to see beyond period styles, to remove our self-imposed constraints, to shake up our notions of how furniture should look and what it means.  They challenge us to grow.

Notice, too, that I consider it an ecosystem, not an economy.  This is an important distinction.  If we reduce our craft to an economy, then we are merely consumers whose only role is to buy new machines with granite tops.  By seeing woodworking as a larger, more varied endeavor, with broader (and maybe even loftier) goals, we can stimulate a creative renaissance.

It is Christiana’s loss, and ultimately a loss to FWW’s readers, if he fails to make room in the tent for studio furniture.

As an intellectual and a maker, I would hope Christiana might see an opportunity to bring Fine Woodworking out of stagnation.  He has given us a taste of the intersection between design and woodworking with some great contributions by Michael Fortune.  If only it were enough.  Clearly we miss entirely the intersection between woodworking and art, the intersection at which Woodwork, by comparison, has done its best work.

While I hold out hope for a bigger tent for woodworking, it feels as if Christiana has come down on the side of the focus groups and the advertisers.  I expect more tool reviews and a continuing disregard for daring, challenging, and thought-provoking work.

Meanwhile, I’ll cross my fingers that Tom Caspar won’t turn Woodwork into another American Woodworker.  Maybe I should be reading American Craft…

The Fall issue of BlazeVOX 2008 is out today, and it features several of my poems.

Happy reading!

So last week, on impulse, I bought a Moleskine notebook.  (Who could resist? I mean, it is the notebook of Hemingway, right?)  Over the next few days I fell in love with it, taking notes from what I saw around me and composing two new poems.  It offered the romance that my Circa notebook lacked, and it was infinitely more portable.  Plus, as a southpaw, I liked not having the disks under my hand as I write (They’re not quite as bad as a spiral bound notebook, admittedly).

The Moleskine introduced me to a new way to work, especially on poetry: once I’ve inked up a version of a poem enough with editing, I simply rewrite it on the next page (you can kinda see the two versions of a poem here).  I can see the evolution better now, and I’ll always be able to go back and see where things went right or wrong.  I found that a year and a half with the Circa notebook had allowed me to work through any fear of “messing up” a notebook.  I can record thoughts and ideas in a stream-of-consciousness style, and follow up with those ideas at will.

Just wanted to toss out a plug for Present Magazine, covering cool stuff in Kansas City. They’re celebrating their 3rd anniversary tonight with live local music at Crosstown Station, 1522 McGee.

Sonic Spectrum’s Robert Moore calls Present Magazine “The best source for Kansas City culture.” Moore is creating his own legacy as a Kansas City institution. His radio show and podcast, Sonic Spectrum, is an education in great indie music, and often highlights local musicians. His indie music label, Oxblood Records, promotes the work of Kansas City-area musicians.

Present is wrapping up a redesign of the website, but this link takes you to the archive of five of my poems published there last month.

Unlike the Brookside Art Annual (held in May) and the upcoming Plaza Art Fair, Art Westport distinguishes itself by consisting solely of Kansas City-area artists. Come out and get a taste of KC this weekend!

Present Magazine of Kansas City has published five of my poems.

If you haven’t checked out Present yet, you should.  Featuring art, culture, and music, it’s a great place to keep up on what’s going on in Kansas City.  It’s also the home of the Sonic Spectrum podcast.  Present is co-published by Pete Dulin and Pam Taylor.

Happy reading.

My hat is off to Armand Frasco for putting together such a fun site.