New Classes: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest at Roy Underhill’s School

Next year I’ll be teaching how to build “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” twice at The Woodwright’s School, Roy Underhill’s fantastic hand-tool asylum in Pittsboro, N.C.

Without further ado, here are the dates:

Feb. 18-22 and Oct. 6-10.

Roy says he’ll open up registration for these 2012 classes as soon as he can finalize the rest of the year’s classes. So stay tuned to his site at woodwrightschool.com.

And if that doesn’t fit your time schedule, I’ll be teaching the same class at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking on July 30-Aug. 3, 2012.

This tool chest class is one that I ran in Germany this year as a milk run. I was terrified that the whole thing would self-destruct. Luckily, it went very well. Here are some videos of the class throughout the week:

• Back to Germany to See an Old Friend
• Video: ‘As Smooth as a Nun’s Stomach’
• Is There a Dominatrix in the House?
• None of your American Cowboy Tricks
• Building a Tool Chest: Day 5

While I was happy with the class, I have fine-tuned it over the summer to make it better. Instead of everyone in the class building a full-size chest, students will have a choice. They can build the full-size chest as featured in the book “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” Or they can build a slightly smaller version that I call “The Traveling Anarchist.”

This smaller chest is based on an example that I purchased from Thomas Lie-Nielsen this summer. You can see photos of this rough-and-ready chest in this entry. I took the basic design and improved the joinery so that it is the same as on my full-size chests. Yet it will still hold a pretty extensive kit of tools. It really packs them in.

Why would you choose the smaller chest? Well you might have less room in your shop. Or perhaps you operate with a smaller tool kit. Or maybe you are a slower dovetailer and want to ensure that you keep up with the class. Whatever the reason, you will end up with a chest designed to last lifetimes.

Students will begin with prepared parts – all the panels will be glued up. And we’ll dive into dovetailing within moments of the class beginning. If this scares you, don’t let it. Most of the students in my class in Germany were dovetailing amateurs (some were definitely not!). But by the end of the week they were all very competent and confident when it came to this joint.

I remember that on the last day of the class we had a lot of visitors to the school at Dictum who were admiring the dovetailing while the students were struggling with the massive through-mortises in the lid.

“Dovetails,” one of the students scoffed. “That’s easy stuff. Try mortising.”

If you are interested in building a tool chest I hope you can join us this year. These should be fun classes.

— Christopher Schwarz