Swartz’s Shorts (Not Short Pants)

This week I’m clearing out my notebook of short topics that never blossomed into full-blown Sunday columns. I hope you find something here that makes you chuckle, think or pet a raccoon.

Damn kids with their halos and floating balls. Bah!

Being a Curmudgeon is a Choice

I don’t know what else to say in addition to the headline. But y’all paid for this, so here we go.

You don’t have to become a bitter, calcified hermit who looks askance at young or tattooed or non-traditional woodworkers. Yup, I’m talking to the disgruntled dovetailers, the acerbic awl-ers, the splenetic sex-nut installers (I’ll admit that one was a stretch – how about splenetic sawyers?).

As I finish out my 56th year, I’ve noticed my friends ramping up their complaints about young people. Lazy, entitled, do-nothings who don’t want to show up to work, who demand trigger warnings before mildly difficult conversations and take offense at almost every joke.

I’m here to tell you that the problem isn’t them. It’s you.

Consider – always – the “fundamental attribution error.” When we explain our own actions, we think we are reacting reasonably to our environment. But when we explain the actions of others, we think their decisions were made because of a personality trait. They are lazy. Or dense. Or entitled.

Flip the equation around. Try to explain your actions based on your personality traits. And try to understand the actions of others by examining their environment and circumstances.

During the last decade, Megan and I have worked hard to bring young woodworkers into the craft. We almost always have a scholarship position in every class for a young person without means. We give away excess tools to woodworkers who are young and financially challenged. And we are committed to The Chairmaker’s Toolbox project, which helps a lot of young woodworkers who have been historically excluded from the craft.

As a result, I think Megan and I are trying to avoid curmudgeonhood. Young woodworkers aren’t lazy or entitled. They were brought up in circumstances that are difficult, challenging and different than ours. I was a Cold War kid, and that environment scarred me in odd ways (I was resistant to having kids, among other things). Young woodworkers grew up in a digital world without privacy, where making a single mistake at a young age can follow you your entire life.

There are no YouTube videos of me at 16 peeing off our town’s water tower.

Yet.

If you want to avoid curmudgeonhood, befriend a young woodworker (they are everywhere). Find out what they need to get them going (a tool, a book, encouragement, a sharpening lesson).

And maybe in 40 years they’ll remember your kindness when they feel the icy grip of old age narrowing their view of the world.

The ‘Kentucky Miserable’ Finish

This week I’ve been developing a new brown-black translucent finish to use on my stick chairs. It has been a frustrating but educational exercise.

Eventually, I decided to simply forget what I know about finishes, and I started applying stuff on top of stuff without asking myself “are they compatible?” I’ve put stain over wax. Ink over oil. Greasy wax over shellac over oil. This is how I worked when I was a know-nothing woodworker on my back porch, mixing whatever I had to achieve a desired effect.

So what is the effect I’m looking for? I’m looking for a color you find on old chairs that have been refinished a bunch of times. Sometimes the color is gorgeous, but some dipshit has coated the thing with gloss polyurethane.

I want a finish that has reddish-browns and blacks (with the blacks mostly in the pores). And is fairly low-sheen. I want this finish because I’d like to make some chairs that fit in better with a traditional household. Bright painted chairs look like a red-butt baboon in a field of edelweiss.

After five days of tinkering with different kinds of goo, I am ready to try it on a new chair. It’s going to be a base coat of Minwax Oil Stain (Provincial 211), then a single coat of India ink. Then colored wax – likely Liberon Black Bison wax in dark oak.

This photo almost captures the finish’s color on a test subject.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and what’s with name “Kentucky Miserable?” Chairmakers John Brown and Chris Williams used to finish their chairs with a dark brown they called “Welsh Miserable.” I’m simply tipping my cap to this fantastic name for a dreary color.

Stealing from Other Shops

Visitors ask how we got the idea to create our workshop and living quarters here in Covington. The answer is: We stole it from a lot of different people.

Woodworker Glen Huey (now the Donut Dude) first planted the seed in my head when he said he wanted to live above his shop, with a gallery space below and living quarters above. That was in 1999 or so.

I decided to put our shop in a densely populated urban area after visiting Roy Underhill’s now-closed school in Pittsboro, N.C. Making the shop part of the fabric of a town is somewhat unusual these days (most woodworkers flee to the country for a solitary, less-expensive life).

I decided to build a Mechanical Library after seeing the libraries at Mike Dunbar’s The Windsor Institute and the American College of the Building Arts. Our library is the backbone of everything we do.

I decided to make our classes food-oriented after working at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking in Berea, Kentucky. He brought in a catered lunch every day (which is what Megan and I now do for our classes). This builds camaraderie among students and keeps the class moving swiftly.

Small classes? I got that idea from chairmaker Dave Fleming in Cobden, Ontario, who taught two students at a time.

Good benches and good light? That’s me, actually. Most schools have lame benches.

Pastries every day? Plus a good on-demand coffee maker? I stole that from Dictum in Germany.

Croquet games every day? I got that from Pet…. We don’t have croquet here in Covington.