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6 days ago | 
christopherschwarz.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
We interrupt your regular Sunday-morning shitpost with some actual woodworking instruction. When I wrote “American Peasant,” I was happy with my engraving skills – but not with the way I was teaching them. I’ve since taught a couple classes in engraving, which helped me become a better instructor with this tool.
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1 week ago | 
christopherschwarz.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
Publisher’s note: Welcome to Earlywood, a free weekly excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes, it’s from a magazine article. Or a book. Or (in this case) a blog post published in 2013. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. Enjoy!A “Robo” bench I built with the help of “Lee-Nelson” planes.
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1 week ago | 
theanarchistsapprentice.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
One of the aspects of Kale’s apprenticeship that is important but not obvious involves “Catbus” – our 1996 Mitsubishi Minicab. It’s a Japanese import, right-hand drive and has a manual four-speed transmission. The little truck is invaluable for gathering and moving materials around the city. The back flaps of the truck all fold down, offering a low flat-bed truck. When we need to move books, T-shirts, lumber or tools, Catbus is almost always my first choice.
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2 weeks ago | 
christopherschwarz.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
Publisher’s note: Good morning! Once again, it’s time for Earlywood, a free weekly excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes, it’s from a magazine article. Or a book. Or (in this case) a blog post published in 2022. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. Enjoy!When I worked for a woodworking magazine, we had a formula for the sorts of projects we printed in its pages.
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2 weeks ago | 
theanarchistsapprentice.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
One of the informal “rules” of traditional apprenticeships is that you don’t take your own children on as apprentices. Of course, we’re already breaking a lot of apprenticeship rules (for the better) with Kale, so why not break the nepotism rule as well? On June 16, my daughter Katherine will join Lost Art Press as an associate editor. And she plans to sign apprenticeship papers to do the same program that Kale is close to finishing.
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2 weeks ago | 
christopherschwarz.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
I have learned to try not to be too clever – nor too ambitious. “Half of something is better than all of nothing.” How many of us have unfinished projects that seemed like a good idea at the time? Better to have made, finished and used a simple bookcase in relatively cheap pine, than to have a half completed, oak, breakfront set, taking up room in the workshop. Ambition can be a terrible force. Most worthwhile accomplishments are a “brick on brick” operation.
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3 weeks ago | 
neversponsored.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
Most new wooden yardsticks are garbage. They use crap wood and the simple stick is poorly made, printed and finished. We’ve looked for decent U.S. manufacturers for several years with no luck.
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3 weeks ago | 
christopherschwarz.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
Publisher’s note: Welcome to Earlywood, never a mistake, and a free weekly excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes, it’s from a magazine article. Or a book. Or (in this case) a blog post published in 2022. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. Enjoy!We all have a list such as this. Here’s mine.
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3 weeks ago | 
neversponsored.substack.com | Christopher Schwarz
For the last couple months, I’ve been stewing about the Taylor Toolworks Bed Rock-style planes we purchased and reviewed. In all, we examined four smoothing planes (three No. 4s and a No. 3). One of the planes was good to go. The other three had problems that would vex a beginning woodworker. This morning, I packed them up in my satchel for my morning walk. I was going to hand them over to the metal recycling company a few blocks away (they take a lot of our steel scraps).
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3 weeks ago | 
theanarchistsapprentice.substack.com | Kale Vogt |Christopher Schwarz
Kale VogtMay 12, 2025Three nights ago I rolled up to my apartment around midnight after having driven more than four hours from Hendersonville, Tennessee. I was utterly exhausted but the feeling of accomplishment I felt from the chair lying upside down in my passenger seat made the drive all worthwhile. I spent last week at Greg Pennington’s workshop building the George Peddle chair with Jon Grant, a talented and knowledgeable chairmaker from Tasmania.
