When I was hired by Popular Woodworking Magazine in 1996, we had only two columnists: R.J. DeCristoforo and Bob Flexner. Both men shaped my life in significant ways.
R.J., or “Cris” as he was called, showed me that you could have a long and wonderful career as a workshop writer. And that you could avoid the bitterness of old age that grips so many people.
Every conversation I had with him was delightful. Even at the end of his life he was happy to be making things and sharing what he knew with others.
Bob, on the other hand, propped me up as a journalist – probably without even knowing it. When I traded in daily newspaper journalism for woodworking journalism, it was a shock. Ethics that had been burned into my fingers at journalism school were easily discarded (or mocked) by the magazine editors around me.
Everyone around me accepted gifts and free tools from manufacturers. It was just part of the job: Free stuff landed in the mailroom every day. And so you wrote nice words about the free things.
Not Bob.
I was his editor for many years, and Bob was fiercely independent. He didn’t take free stuff from finishing manufacturers, and he didn’t take their BS, either. Bob spent most of his life demystifying all the garbage we are fed about finishing by the makers of our finishing products.
Most of the names of the products (such as Danish Oil) are meaningless. Most of their claims (“it finishes wood from the inside” and “feeds the wood”) are nonsense.
Bob taught himself chemistry at his local library, and he spent years learning how finishes really work and then explained it in ways that non-chemists could understand. The manufacturers of finishes despised him. I loved him.
Bob could be caustic. He could be iconoclastic. But he was doing it all to help the woodworker at home. He would never fudge or lie or back down from what he thought was true.
Because of Bob, it was easier for me to keep my journalistic practices and ethics intact. And I’ll always be in debt to him for that.
Also, Bob was a hoot.
The first time I met him, we picked him up at the airport in Los Angeles, where we were both attending an industry trade show.
Bob got into the car, shook my hand and said: “Let’s go the liquor store.”
He bought a small bottle of Jack Daniels and said, “Every professional finisher I know has a relationship with alcohol. You have to chase the bad chemicals with the good.”
All that weekend, Bob regaled me with tales of rag pickers1 and historical finishing techniques, which were what got him interested in the chemistry of finishing.
As we walked around the trade show together, Bob was frank about all of the finishing products on display there. It was enough to convince me that I should become serious about it as well (which is why I have banished most volatile organic compounds from our finishing cabinet).
As Bob told me: “I know a lot of professional finishers who walk out of the spray booth one day and just drop dead. It’s a toxic profession.”
Last week, I learned that Bob had died in December (how did we not find out sooner?). The woodworking world has lost a giant. If you don’t own his book “Understanding Wood Finishing,” this is a good time to remedy that.
“Rag pickers” were people who collected materials for high-quality rags – a much-needed staple in a finishing shop. They knew how to evaluate used clothing items and sort them to make rags with different properties. It is all but a lost profession.
I’m so sorry to hear about Bob’s passing. I consulted Understanding Wood Finishing just last week. We can’t get denatured alcohol in California so I read his section on shellac flakes and found out that methyl, ethyl, and isopropyl alcohols all work fine. The only difference is drying time. (Obviously you don’t want to use methyl because it’s toxic.) I got a quart of 99% isopropyl alcohol and it worked great.
On a personal note, reading about all these people dying who were born in the same year as my father is kinda freaking me out. The other big one recently was Phil Lesh (the Grateful Dead’s bassist). My dad was a bass player in the San Francisco music scene at the same time that the Dead was in their infancy. He played in The Great Society in 1966 until the band broke up, Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane, and my father went to India to learn sitar. He became a sitar master and still plays out and practices daily. I didn’t grow up with him and there are still a lot of stories I need to hear.
I’m toasting Bob with a glass of good chemicals right now.
Your footnote on rag pickers made me remember this life-size painting of one:
https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/F.1968.09.P
I didn't know it could signify people literally looking for rags.