I hear from woodworkers all the time who struggle with their hand saws. Usually it has to do with just getting the cut started. Starting your cut is all about taking the weight off the toe of the saw so that the teeth can glide over the wood. Some people like to go backwards first, but a starting backstroke does nothing but mangle the wood and makes your cut more about guesswork than precision.

On a recent WoodTalk episode, I answered a question about this and launched into a complex explanation of an exercise designed to improve your feel for starting the saw accurately. But describing that exercise is where the audio medium fails and video is much better. Hence this video:

There are of course things you can do to the toothline of your saws to make them easier to start—like relaxing the rake angle of the first 10-20 teeth or using a finer pitch for the first 10-20 teeth. However I can't help but feel that is extra work when all that is really needs is a little improvement in technique and a greater feel for the saw. Both of which will vastly improve your sawing accuracy across all your woodworking.

_____________

This "Hand Tool School" series is provided courtesy of Shannon Rogers, a/k/a The Renaissance Woodworker. Rogers is founder of The Hand Tool School, which provides members with an online apprenticeship that teaches them how to use hand tools and to build furniture with traditional methods.

Hey readers, here's Part 2 of the New Deal tool chest find (Part 1 is here) by guest writer Dr. James E. Price. Dr. Price is an anthropologist, archaeologist and an accomplished joiner. You'll find his bio down at the bottom. He's managed to acquire a toolbox, still filled with tools, originally issued by the U.S. Government in 1933 for the Civilian Conservation Corps (read our story on the CCC here). It's a very rare find with great American historical significance.

The rest of the entry is in Price's words, edited for length and clarity. The photos and captions below are his.

Dr. Price writes:

Each of the tools in the chest was numbered by a stamp or engraving on the tool itself and there is a numbered brass tack beside the place it goes in the chest. I promised you that I would feature the tools on this page one at a time and you can assist with the research of its manufacturer, the years it was offered, a picture of it in a period catalog, or any other information pertinent to each tool.

We start this evening with the claw hammer which is Number 32 and is secured in the top till by a brass spring clip. The manufacturer's imprint is on one cheek of the hammer and the other side is stamped "USVA". The latter stands for The US Veterans Administration. They were used at The VA Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge about a tool if you have information on it.

The subject clawhammer is in the top till.

The imprint has been damaged but it appears to read, "C. OGDEN, NEW YORK". The "C" is somewhat questionable.

You can see the original inventory number stamp, "32", on the wooden handle right behind the head.

The other side of the hammer head is stamped, "USVA".

Next I continued cleaning and stabilizing tools in the top till. Here I'll show you the three little Stanley Hurwood screwdrivers and two awls. The three screwdrivers are on the upper left of the photo below, each one in a spring clip with their tips in slots in a piece of wood glued in the end of the till. They are each marked "26". One of the awls, the one with a beech handle, marked "25" is above the screwdrivers and the other one with an ebonized handle, stamped, "48" is to the left of the hammer. All the tools in the top till are marked, "USVA".

This is a closeup of the three Stanley Hurwood screwdrivers.

The words "STANLEY HURWOOD, PAT. APPL'D FOR" are stamped on the handle of each screwdriver. The handles appear to be rosewood.

This awl is stamped "25" and the handle is beech. In small letters the wood is stamped "BUCK MFG. CO."

The upper awl has an ebonized handle with no manufacturing marks but is stamped "48".

It is likely the tools were issued in 1933 or 1934 and probably never used after the beginning of WWII. The chest and its tools gives us an intimate view of what was needed by finish carpenters in those years. To my knowledge no other complete government-issued tool chest and its contents survived from The New Deal Era so this one is a unique cultural resource that demands careful preservation and study.

Hand-tool beginners who frequently ask what tools they need, take heed. If you assemble a set of tools of the functional types found in this chest, you will have enough tools to make lots of wonderful wooden things.

The photo below shows the back left corner of the bottom of the chest. Note the three gimlets resting in holes in an upright board and the block plane secured to that board with a leather strap.

The tools were rusty from being in the bottom of the chest. Tools in the three tills above this bottom tier are not nearly as rusty.

The block plane is a Stanley 220 and the blade has been hollow ground so it saw use. The japanning is near 100%. This photo shows the disassembled plane after cleaning. No attempt was made to remove stains remaining after the powder rust was removed.

The gimlets did not fare as well as the block plane. They had a rust encrustation on the steel bits. Once the rust was removed some pitting is evident. The handles are rosewood.

I was born December 28, 1944 and the chest and its tools are a decade older than me but probably ceased to be used right before I was born. Of course I had to try out the gimlets knowing that my hand was the next one to use them since they were put away in the bottom of the chest by the carpenter who last used them.

This is a photo of the gimlets and Stanley 220 block plane cleaned and stabilized before I returned them to their proper place in the bottom of the chest that has been their home for 80 years.

This photo shows the three gimlets and block plane back in the chest.

The New Deal Tool Chest and its tools are currently on public exhibition in the lobby of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways Headquarters in Van Buren, Missouri. The exhibit will go through October, 2017.

This is a photo of the top three tills and their contents on display by The ONSR Interpretative Division of this National Park.

Stay tuned as I go through the rest. As I continue to remove tools from the chest I'll describe them after I have given them a light cleaning.

________________________________

Anthropologist and archaeologist Dr. James E. Price grew up watching his father make ax handles, gun ramrods, sassafras boat paddles, cedar turkey calls and furniture. His father taught him the art of joinery. "Woodworking was important on our Ozark farm. My family owned a small sawmill which produced lumber for use on the farm. We built buildings, repaired wagons, made furniture and boat paddles, and many other objects and structures of wood."

Dr. Price, a sixth generation Ozark dweller, prizes the careful process of using hand tools to create objects that he sees as useful, functional art. "Without using any fossil fuel source, I can take a pile of boards and make them into an object of beauty. The tools are the instrument, and the piece becomes a kind of permanent music. If it doesn't burn or blow away, it can last a thousand years—it will be impossible to pull apart."

2017 is officially in full swing! For some of you, that means you're just starting up at your new job, and for others it means embarking on another year of a job you either love or hate. If you happen to fall into any of these categories, we need your help! Since 2001, Coroflot has collected and reported salary information from tens of thousands of design and creative professionals around the world. We've been able to do this with the help of our community, who we rely on to enter their own information. The Design Salary Guide is a valuable resource for your own salary negotiations or as a resource when building your team.

The Salary Guide offers plenty of benefits. For starters, it's a rolling tool, available year-round and reporting the results in real-time. We have a pool of over 65,000, with useful data on dozens of job titles from around the world. Our range includes over 50 job titles, so there's something for every creative role! All of the data is collected on a city level, allowing us to report results on a more granular, hyper-local scale (in addition to broader trends). You can even enter freelance hourly rates, and in turn we report on freelance hourly rates. We collect and report on salaries and hourly rates in local currencies around the world. Our charting tool shows the 25th percentile, median, and 75th percentile of earnings at all times. If we have enough data, we split it up into more detail. Any data you submit is completely anonymous, so there is zero risk in completing the survey.

Built by designers, for designers, Coroflot has always had a strong community of talented creative-types. We invite you to take a peek around and add your info to the Salary Guide. It literally takes less than 1 minute to participate. The more data we can collect and summarize, the better accuracy we'll have. And of course, share it with your friends!

Keep your eyes peeled for Salary Guide news as we'll have more exciting tidbits to share in the coming weeks.

Enter your data by March 14th to receive Coroflot's annual report on design salaries.

simplehuman is seeking a full-time Senior Designer with broad experience in both Print and Digital Media design. You’ll collaborate closely with the Creative Director to develop and execute multiple design briefs. This is a senior level position that requires strong project management ability and some experience with art

I came across this intriguing design for a rotating small parts organizer in a 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics.

It would be nifty to see it wall-mounted, as the ad describes, though it doesn't seem it would make much sense for it to be ceiling-mounted.

I did a quick search to see if these exist on the secondhand market, and found a photo of one in this Ithaca classified.

One thing I couldn't figure out was how to lock it in place. These are presumably meant to hold hardware, which can be heavy, and a bin loaded up with carriage bolts is going to be a lot heavier than one loaded with wood screws and gravity would have its way. But then I found this one on eBay:

In the photo below we can see a wingnut on the end of one axis. The user presumably used this to lock it in position.

We can also see that at some point, two of the bins went missing or became damaged, and a previous owner replaced them with pine or fir dividers attached to hulls made from what looks to be veneer. (At first I thought they were sheet metal, but you can see grain.)

The 1948 ad up top indicates it's designed for hobbyists. But this much older wooden version that I also found on eBay, dated 1882, is labeled as belonging to a hardware store.

There's no guarantee it is, of course, but the fact that it's patented and the organized numerical markings would indicate it was.

As for how it works, here we can see that knobs A are used to rotate it, while lever B locks it into place, presumably by registering an unseen protrusion into slots C.

I do wonder what it held. It seems obvious they were fasteners, with the first number indicating the fastener's length; you'll notice the first number for each bin corresponds with the distance between the dividers (i.e. the dividers get further apart from the "1 1/2" row to the "1 3/4" row and so on).

I figured the second number indicated the screw size number that we use today to indicate diameters (i.e. a #8 screw is 0.164" in diameter, a #10 screw is 0.19" in diameter and so on). So that the section saying "1 3/4 - 9" would contain #9 screws that were 1 3/4" long.

However, something didn't sit right here so I looked it up. While the case is clearly branded "1882," ASME—the American Society of Mechanical Engineers—didn't standardize screw dimensions until 1907, some 25 years after this case was patented. (Prior to that manufacturers used whatever dimensions they found convenient.) I suppose it's possible that the designers of this case just happened to be using the dimensions and numbering convention that ASME eventually adopted.

Anyways, here's the funny part. I spotted another of these cases on LiveAuctioneers.com:

It sold for $500 back in March of 2016. The one on the eBay listing above is currently selling for a whopping $6,400. 

Then I realized, by comparing the photos: They're the exact same case.

I understand that the person who bought it for $500 had to pay for shipping and perhaps his/her own travel, but man, what a racket! That's almost a 1,300% markup!

Global Prime Healthcare was looking to add an innovative thermometer to their product line to cater to infants and children, particularly sleeping babies. Our design integrates a digital LCD screen onto the ergonomic device, complete with an intuitive guidance system to secure positioning and confirm accurate results. Our vision was to have an approachable, straightforward design with the benefits of being non-contact to reduce the spread of germs. Simply press the button to engage the harmless infrared light onto the child’s forehead, providing parents and physicians with a fast and no-fuss method of taking temperature.

Halfway between my obsession with over engineered mundane products and my hardened vulgar-marxist heart, is an overriding appreciation for satire. And somehow McDonald's has my number—probably yours too.

Whether you enjoy their disgustingly sweet slurries or shy away from that corporate BS maaan, this new video (and yeah the product) do a great job of nailing the breathy designer videos we love to love. And make. 

The straw itself seems like a fun campaign to tap into slick product packaging and design trends while addressing trivial milkshake-straw dilemmas. But the brilliance of the Suction Tube for Reverse Axial Withdrawal is in its willingness to pitch a shot for shot simulacrum of design language at the general public. 

I guess that means we've made it. Or totally lost it? You tell me.

Even if you don't live in a hip neighborhood, art might be in the air. The designers behind the Kaalink pollution filter want to keep airborne carbon out of the atmosphere and back in your sketchbook. Their project, called Air-Ink, is a result of several years of research at MIT's Media Lab, where the team investigated ways to harness and repurpose particulate matter caused by daily combustion. Even with required filters the world's cars, stoves, and fires send out loads of extremely harmful pollutants that contribute to smog, environmental degradation, and poor health outcomes. Is it possible to reuse some of that mess before it hits the air?

After a lot of tinkering their solution was the Kaalink filter. It's an add-on chamber that catches particulate leaving an exhaust pipe without creating dangerous back pressure. The unit catches carbon and other bits left over from incomplete combustion, the particles of which are just one or two micrometers across, and small enough to easily lodge in your lungs for nasty surprises later.

Taking the produced schmutz out of the filter, the team decided to strip out the carbon from the more harmful heavy metals, and convert it for creative use. The carbon is crushed, refined, and processed with traditional solvents to create a deep ink useful for illustration, lettering, and painting. 

The Air-Ink produced is freshly up on Kickstarter and already well over goal for a first production of markers, paints, and screen printing kits. The current campaign is offering 2mm, 15mm, 30mm and 50mm chisel and thin tip markers, as well as a 150ml screen printing ink set, with sights set on oil based paints, fabric paints, and weatherproof options in the future. 

Though the output is averaged, they estimate that going through 30ml of Air-Ink would use 45 minutes worth of pollution output. Bit vague metric, but that's probably a bit of a gram saved from the city air and streets.

The ink and their markers are said to be safe, refillable, high-quality, and water resistant. While artists tend to have strong feelings about their material choices, they also tend to believe in creative problem solving, and these idealistic pens seem to have breathed some life into green material solutions.

Core77's editors spend time combing through the news so you don't have to. Here's a weekly roundup of our favorite stories from the World Wide Web.

Animagraffs—Animated Infographics About Everything

A collection of 3D animations exploring the inner workings of mechanisms and systems. Each object is explored in detail, using detailed cutaway, animated, 3D visualizations. Each animation can be rotated through 360 degrees and zoomed in and out for detailed observation. The Anima Graff team works extensively in the transportation field, but also examines musical instruments and other pieces of technology.

—Stuart Constantine, publisher and managing partner

Nike HyperAdapt Teardown

Here's how self-lacing sneakers work because I'm a sneaker addict can't stop staring at this. 

—Emily Engle, assistant editor

Sorry, Nobody Wants Your Parents' Stuff

An article about how family heirlooms and possessions aren't being passed down and retained these days; the "Ikea and Target generation [doesn't] have the emotional connection to things that earlier generations did." Old furniture get tossed and antiques prices are dropping to the point that PBS's "Antiques Roadshow" has even revised the appraisals on their re-runs!

—Rain Noe, senior editor

The Unexpected Ways Sounds in Movies are Made

Just a fun Friday video for you here featuring the Foley artist John Roesch, who has worked on films like "Back to the Future" and "E.T." engineering Hollywood-quality sounds with the help of a warehouse full of mundane objects.

—Allison Fonder, community manager

Kitchen Knife

Jimmy DiResta needs a new kitchen knife. He could go buy one, or he could make one—from scratch. The way that he marks the centerline of the edge of the bar stock, and uses an out-of-square length of wood to grind the blade angle, is very clever:

Triple Tenon Joined Lumber Rack

Matthias Wandel engineers a very atypical and space-efficient structure for a lumber rack:

Push Stick Saw

Frank Howarth gets artistic with his push stick design:

"Goodbye Shop"

This is kind of a shocker! After all of the work April Wilkerson put into kitting out her shop and improving her home and property, she and her husband are selling the place. I did not see this coming.

Epoxied and Sandblasted Live Edge Slab Coffee Table

You might think creating a live edge table is just a matter of throwing the slab on the legs. Not so. Here Marc Spagnuolo shows us how to epoxy voids in the wood, use a sandblaster to clean up the live edge, and goes over in detail the crucial finishing process:

Finishing Experiments

Finishing seems like such a black art that I'm always glad to see people giving tips or doing experiments with it. While the first three minutes of this video is the Samurai Carpenter turning bowls, he then explains how he's using epoxy resin (as Spagnuolo did above, to repair voids) and experimenting with some "Turbo Cure" and wax. At the end he announces he's got a trio of new Japanese saws for sale on his site:

DIY Coffee Table with a Concrete Top

Ben of HomeMade Modern uses his plywood/reinforcing mesh/concrete technique to create a coffee table:

The Guardian has an obituary here, and The Telegraph, here.  See some of his non-Miffy graphic work here.

Photo by Rob Noble

DIY Leather Bracelet w/ Magnets

Linn from Darbin Orvar creates a functional wearable that ensures screws are always on hand during a build:

Custom Wood TV Remote

David Picciuto creates a wooden TV remote control using a CNC mill and a laser cutter:

How to Make an Ocean Table

Bob Clagett uses concrete and epoxy resin to create a tabletop that looks like a cross section of the ocean:

Star Key Spinner

Laura Kampf creates a DiResta-inspired "star key," this one equipped to spin:

DIY "Zig Zag" Sofa

Ben and Jess of HomeMade Modern create a couch with a countertop for seating people behind it:

Setting Up an Automatic Indoor Garden

Super cool! Ben and Jess create two types of space-efficient indoor gardens using a Click and Grow system:

Custom Designed 3D Printed Pens

Ben Brandt designs and 3D-prints his own pens, showing you most of the CAD work that went into it too:

Linn from Darbin Orvar is back with another three-person, three-video tips series, this time featuring Laura Kampf and Cris from Get Hands Ditry. In the first video Linn covers measuring tools, Cris demonstrates a drawer installation fix and Laura shares masking tips:

In the second Cris tals about what motivates her and can motivate you, Linn talks magnets and Laura offers marking tips:

And in the third Laura covers lifehacks including a quick-and-dirty sketchbook pen holder and her safety glasses alternative, Linn talks about the effectiveness of shellac for finishing and even sealing out bad smells and Cris offers a tip for how to easily create a larger hole, as a countersink, around a smaller hole.

ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY We are a design/build innovation startup looking for an Industrial Designer inside our Seattle area design office. This is an opportunity to join a rapidly growing company on the ground floor and to influence the development of an innovative modular building product for housing. We work

W.E.B. Du Bois is famous for both his powerful academic research on race and class in America at the turn of the 20th century and for attending and teaching at some of the most prestigious and racially segregated universities of the day. Born in 1868, his degrees from Fisk and Harvard and his work on history, economics, and sociology broke ground for Black folks and for the whole next century of civil rights leaders. His name is attached to some of the most beautiful and cutting descriptions of racial progress in the nation, and some of the most inspiring calls for civic engagement. What he's less known for are his hand lettered infographics.

After several years of exhaustive field work around the Southern states, polling and recording demographic data on the Black population, he released a hefty economic and sociological study of the African-American people of the region. Much of this was destined for a beautiful and comprehensive presentation at the First Pan-African Conference, and then the Paris Exposition, clarifying the current state of African-American affairs. In a tale as old as human recording, this research was brought to life with his own hand-lettered illustrations of data collected. 

While the data collected were dense and exhaustive, Du Bois had a decidedly modern eye for simple presentation and clean lines that predated the American modernists by a few decades. 

We might have flashier auto-playing videos to go with our infographics these days, but people just respond well to data in images. It's likely that you know the name of Du Bois largely due to Black History Month publicity in recent decades or, if you're lucky, thanks to a comprehensive American history course. 

Give his collection of photos and data documents a spin over at the Library of Congress, and you might also think of him as a great-grandfather of graphic design.

All images from W. E. B. Du Bois's 'The Georgia Negro: A Study' (1900), via the American Library of Congress online archive.

Jumpstart your week with our insider's guide to events in the design world. From must-see exhibitions to insightful lectures and the competitions you need to know about—here's the best of what's going on, right now.

Monday

Brexit Passport Design Competition (Unofficial)

Dezeen has launched an unofficial competition to redesign the document that all UK citizens carry when traveling abroad. They are looking for designs that present a positive vision of the post-Brexit UK to the world, and that represent all its citizens. The winning designs will be published on Dezeen and exhibited at the Design Museum in London. A wider selection of entries will be shown at Clerkenwell Design Week in London in May 2017.

Online competition open through March 24, 2017.

Tuesday

Workwear

Some time ago, clothing was the direct representation of our role in society and of our relevant image. Nowadays, clothing has become, above all, the expression of individuality. Once clothing represented the image that the world gave us, but now it represents the image of what we want to portray to the world. Workwear explores the relationship we have with our clothing, featuring the work of 40 Italian and international artists, designers and architects.

Toronto. On view through April 23, 2017.

Wednesday

404 Not Found

Since their inception in 1994, Artnode have explored the potentials and problematics of the Internet and the opportunities to expand the aesthetic field through formal, institutional and social means. The exhibition 404 Not Found is a manifestation of this exploration, with a focus on the development of the Internet and its current effect on the digitized human being and society.

Denmark. On view through March 5, 2017.

Thursday

Displacements_People: Designing for the Global Refugee Crisis

The first event in AIANY's Global Dialogues series will focus on how design can impact the refugee crisis the world is currently facing. This current moment of unprecedented migration urgently demands a response from architects, planners, artists, and policy makers. 

New York, NY. February 23, 2017 at 6:30 PM.

Friday

Typography Day

The event will feature a day of workshops on Typography and Calligraphy followed by two days of conference dedicated to "Typography and Diversity". The international conference will be devoted to addressing issues faced by type designers, type users and type educators.

Sri Lanka. February 23-25, 2017.

Saturday/Sunday

How to Start a Career in UX Design

The School of UX Design is offering a short, practical & affordable weekend course on how to start a career in UX run by professional designers. The course covers what a day of a UX designer looks like, how to create portfolio, finding a perfect job, startups vs big companies, interview tips, market rates and more.

London, UK. February 25, 2017 at 2:00 PM.

Check out the Core77 Calendar for more design world events, competitions and exhibitions, or submit your own to be considered for our next Week in Design.

Happy President's Day! Today we'll take a look at what's been unofficially dubbed White House North, President Trump's New York residence that maintains a Secret Service detail due to members of his family living there.*

The Trump residence is a triplex that's reportedly 30,000 square feet. I couldn't find a floorplan of the actual penthouse, but did find a floorplan for what an average floor of Trump Tower looks like. Assuming the Trump residence spans the entire width of the building over all three floors, this will give you an idea of its scale:

Now let's have a look at the inside. Here is the receiving room, where there is rather a lot of gold. 

Gold can be heavy, very heavy. But if you hold it up with marble columns it's no problem.

This recessed marble area can be filled with chips and a variety of delicious dipping sauces.

One issue with gilded rooms is that sometimes chandeliers, recessed cove lighting and floor-to-ceiling windows do not provide enough illumination; for this reason a candelabra is always within reach on the coffee table.

The room is decorated symmetrically. This mirrors our country's perfect levels of equal respect between the left and the right. 

Here is an informal meeting area. Favored guests sit in the chairs with the black pillows. Unfavored guests get no lumbar support, but they are offered their choice of either staring at a framed portrait of Trump Senior or being served an enormous martini.

This table is held up by golden babies with well-defined calves.

You know how if you brush your teeth, then drink orange juice it tastes disgusting? That can be offset by drinking the OJ from a gold-rimmed chalice.

This cabinet is where President Trump, an avid DJ, stores his turntable and all of his vinyl (mostly mid-'90s hip hop).

Here is one of the staircases leading to one of the upper floors. Rumor has it that one of the President's advisors lives beneath this staircase, behind the ferns, but this is a respectable blog and we don't print unsubstantiated rumors.

There is a painting on the curved wall lining the staircase. I found two different photos with two different paintings, and judging by the other elements in the photos it's the same staircase, so apparently he gets bored and swaps the paintings out every so often. But the theme remains the same: Both of these are images from Peter Jackson's popular "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

There aren't any publicly-available photos of the upper floors, so I'm afraid our tour ends here. But one thing I want to mention:

*Some folks are angry that it is costing taxpayers $1 million per day to guard White House North, arguing that Trump's wife and child should live at the White House, relieving New York City of the financial burden. However, the Trumps have decided that their son should be allowed to finish the year at his current school.

We can all criticize Trump for his policies and views, but we oughtn't question whatever decisions are made for the sake of his own family. And we should not, and must not, criticize a schoolboy for matters that are well beyond his control.

We can, however, criticize his parents for giving him a stuffed lion that may or may not have been shot by a dentist.

SGW Designworks was engaged by “GIR: Get It Right” to develop and prototype a mobile smart grinder for coffee enthusiasts. Primary challenges included development of a small, efficient drive able to manage the high torque required for grinding, as well as development of an intuitive user interface with rotary encoder. This project required a lot of iteration and testing from our mechanical team as well as our embedded systems group. The addition of cloud connectivity and freshness detection in the late stages of development made this a classic IoT device development effort.

Did you know that the Presidential limousine travels with two pints of the POTUS's blood type?

Over the years, the Secret Service has had to do the grim math of what procedures to have in place should there be an attack on the Presidential motorcade. This has led to a fascinating array of offensive capabilities, defensive countermeasures and tactical plans. The crazy logistics--which can get the President from the door of the White House to the UN building in New York City in just one hour--are staggering. First off, check out the features of the "more tank than car" Presidential limousine--and its 11 decoys:

The second video is even more interesting, and I'm a little disturbed that this information is public knowledge. This is the breakdown of the motorcade, detailing all of the specialty vehicles and their offensive/defensive roles, then goes into the Presidential aircraft:

This article originally appeared on Coroflot, Core77's Design Job & Portfolio site. Visit their new blog for more insight on working, and recruiting, in the creative professions.

This month marks the beginning of a time most of us in the creative freelance world dread: tax season. 

Back in my first year as a bona fide freelancer just out of school, I simply totaled up my invoices for the year and lumped them onto line 21 of my form 1040 ("other income"). It took two years for the IRS write me a sternly worded letter about this not quite cutting it, but when it finally arrived, the accountant I hired to help me sort things out took a look at the documents and uttered the sort of sigh usually reserved for 6-year-olds who try and bake a cake from scratch. I'm sure it was all he could do to refrain from going "Tsk, tsk" as well.

The problem isn't that there's a lack of information about filing taxes in the U.S. —on the contrary, a quick online search will turn up more tips, pointers and official instructional documents than any of us could consume in a lifetime - but since pretty much everyone in the country has to file, sorting the useful information from the completely unrelated is daunting to say the least. Freelancers new to their Self-Employed status have a lot of concerns and responsibilities that typical salaried workers don't.

So as a favor to you, and to all the accountants fighting the urge to groan at your mistakes, I've compiled a few basic pointers for the (unincorporated) self-employed, that I wish I'd had back then. It goes without saying that I'm not a certified accountant, nor do I work for the IRS, so if this is your only reference when doing your taxes, you're...hmm...foolish. If you're worried or confused about how you're going to accurately and successfully complete your taxes, these tips may serve as a good starting point:

W-2 vs. 1099 - This is the most fundamental difference between the typical freelancer and the typical staffer - at the end of the year, you get a stack of 1099 forms from your clients, rather than a W-2 from your boss. Since no taxes were removed at the time of payment, you have to pay up everything you owe when you file, and it can be quite a lot. Above a certain amount, you can also be penalized for waiting until tax time to pay (the government likes their money sooner rather than later), which is why Quarterly Estimated Tax was invented. If you make a significant fraction of your income from freelancing, and estimate you'll owe more than $1,000 at the end of the year, you need to set up quarterly payments; the forms are here.

Schedule C and Schedule SE - Assuming you're working as a sole proprietor (not a partnership or corporation), and you make most of your money as a freelance designer or other creative professional, these are the two main documents you'll need to complete in addition to your 1040. Schedule C is where you report the income from those 1099s, as well as your business expenses, resulting in a net income (or loss...but this is unusual for designers, who typically have a fairly low overhead). You then take the results of this form and use them to calculate your Self-Employment Tax on Schedule SE. When you're done with that, your net business income and Self-Employment Tax go on lines 12 and 57 of your form 1040, respectively. Got all that?

If you decide that freelancing is something you're going to stick with for the long haul, it's worth examining options other than basic self-employment. Bryan Engel, a New Jersey-based accountant with a sizeable roster of freelancer clients, suggests that "forming a corporate entity such as an S-Corporation [can] minimize your total tax liability by not having to pay self-employment tax."

Business Expenses - This is one area where you can really save some money. Filling out everything correctly can potentially save you a ton of money. Sites like Quickbooks offer helpful tips for freelancers and it's definitely worth your time to do some more research, but to get you started here are five deductions that are absolutely essential for the self-employed:

Deduction #1: Mileage expenses

Do you realize that every mile you drive for your business can result in approximately a 55 cent deduction? This is especially big if you work from home, because having a home office basically means your "commuting" mileage is non-existent and any use of your car for business, whether it's to meet clients or attend a conference, is deductible.

Many freelancers don't make full use of this deduction because of the burden that comes along with keeping records. The IRS requires that you provide documentation for each trip - your destination, the purpose of your trip, and the number of miles driven. Historically, tracking mileage meant keeping a log of odometer readings. However, with modern mapping software like Google Maps , you can simply enter your starting and ending address and have the driving distance calculated for you. So go back through your appointment book or calendar and find those business trips you neglected to log and get that 55 cent per mile deduction.

Deduction #2: Meals

If you schedule a lot of lunch and dinner meetings with clients, make sure you keep those receipts. So long as you're discussing business (and that you pick up the tab), half of those expenses are deductible. Why only half? Because the IRS knows you need to eat anyway, so they won't give you the full write-off.

Note - you need only discuss business before, during or after the event, so don't feel the need to talk with your mouth full.

Deduction #3: Reimbursable expenses

Reimbursable expenses are costs you incur on behalf of a client that you then bill back to them. Normally, these expenses are not deductible since you end up getting paid back, rather they are a deduction for your client.

However, you should look out for this interesting case. At the end of the year, your client should send you a 1099MISC form, showing how much they paid you. Make sure to compare the amount on that form with the actual invoices you sent to the client. Sometimes, clients will just add up the total for all invoices paid, even if those totals include reimbursable expenses. If that happens, they are basically reporting those payments as income for you, in which case you need to make sure to include those reimbursable expenses as deductions for your business.

Deduction #4: Depreciate your equipment unless you make a lot of money

Unless you buy a lot (as in more than $128,000 worth) of equipment, you can write off the full purchase price for that equipment in the year in which it's first used. However, if you aren't making a lot of money, you might be better off saving part of this deduction for future years, when business is better and you are in a higher tax bracket. You can do this by "depreciating" the item, which means writing off the cost over multiple years.

Most freelance equipment gets depreciated over 5 years (computers, copiers, fax machines, etc.) Office furniture gets depreciated over 7 years. So, see how your overall profit and loss is looking for the year before deciding which way to go—it can make a difference down the road when you might be earning more.

Deduction #5: Bad debt (as in, clients who don't pay)

Ok, you probably won't like this, but this won't be a deduction for most freelancers (I know I'm breaking from the theme, but it's important.) Why isn't this one a deduction? Because most freelancers pay taxes based on money they actually receive and deduct money they actually pay. This is called the "cash" method of accounting.

In the case where a deadbeat client simply doesn't pay, you never really got the money to begin with, and have nothing to report as income from them. Therefore, no deduction.

You could choose to use the "accrual" method of accounting, in which case you could write off deadbeat clients—but then you'd have to pay taxes on money anyone owes you, even if they haven't yet paid. As you can imagine, most freelancers don't choose this option.

There are of course thousands of other deductions to be had, and every freelancer's situation is different, which is why doing some research is both necessary and tedious. A few others to keep an eye out for include: a fraction of your utilities and rent or mortgage payments if you work primarily from home; travel expenses to conferences, vendor visits, or research trips; stock photos and artwork; the cost of hiring out work to other freelancers. Note that if your total business expenses come to less than US$5,000 you can use form C-EZ instead, which doesn't require you to itemize them (though you do need to keep documentation on hand should the IRS come knocking) - any more than that and you'll be using the long form, which requires you to list out deductible expenses by category. And that is lots of fun.

Back on the main 1040, there are a few other lines worth extra attention from freelancers. Line 27 is where you get to deduct half of your Self-Employment Tax from your overall income, line 29 provides a deduction for those of you who pay for your own health insurance, and line 33 lets you deduct interest on student loans—together these can make a sizeable dent in your taxable income, so be sure to read up on them.

Other resources

If examining the list above has you thinking it's all too much, you're not alone. For many freelance designers, hiring an accountant or engaging some other form of tax assistance is as integral a step in setting up shop as buying the latest Adobe Creative Suite. When I mentioned on Twitter a few days back that I was researching this article, Kenneth Wong, a San Francisco-based CAD and technology writer responded: "Tax tips from a freelancer: Find an affordable accountant."

Note: This article was originally written by Carl Alviani.

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