Lost Art Press

Another Tool on the Wall

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Our wall of tools and patterns.

While my personal tools stay in my tool chest, we keep the communal ones hanging on the wall behind my bench for students or visiting instructors to use without guilt or asking.

Our “tool wall” is made up of three panels of cherry that cover three bookcases. For most of the year, our shop looks like the photo above. But when we open the shop to the public, we remove the tool walls to reveal our selection of books behind.

It’s a little awkward, but the books are protected from dust, and our workshop doesn’t look like a bookstore.

Several internet readers have asked us about the tools on the wall. Some of them look non-standard or odd. So we shot this short video that goes over the tools on the left side of the wall (the video was shot and edited by our intern, Harper Haynes). We’ll do videos on the other two panels shortly.

— Christopher Schwarz

28 thoughts on “Another Tool on the Wall”

  1. At the end of that I really wanted the camera to turn around and see an exhausted Megan playing the fiddle.

  2. Please ditch the background music for the other videos. Your hearing aid wearing fans will thank you.

      1. I am only 56 and I have been wearing hearing aids for several years. People who don’t wear them often misunderstand. I am not deaf. Hearing aids would be useless for that. It is because my sensitivity to higher frequencies has decreased dramatically. I can only hear higher frequencies if they are very loud. If I am not wearing the hearing aids, I might not understand what you are saying to me. It’s not because I can’t hear you. You might say that human speech is not higher frequencies but you’d be partially wrong. Hearing higher frequencies is needed to understand certain sounds, like the difference between a ‘s’ sound and an ‘f’ sound. So when I say ‘what?’, it’s not because I didn’t hear you, it is because I didn’t understand you. BTW, teasing someone about wearing hearing aids as a harmless joke is rude.

  3. Thanks Chris. One year I had received a gift card for Christmas from a woodworking store. I ended up buying a 24″ Starrett blade. It really does come in handy and gets a lot more use than I would have though. Same thing for the 3′ wooden ruler.

  4. Great video. I can’t tell you how many times I have had that Bridge City multi tool in my cart and never purchased it. Though julienning my fries now makes me want it more, especially if it can make truffle fries.

    1. It’s also great for that thing with the rabbits.

      Not only does the methodology bear the Tom Lehrer seal of dubious approval, it’s SO much cleaner than the holy hand grenade…

  6. Hi Chris,
    I thoroughly enjoyed the first tool wall episode video and look forward to more of them.
    I would gratefully ask that you discontinue or markedly reduce the background music during the dialogue. Why? Because there are a number of us older woodworkers and long time customers of LAP that wear hearing aids for both sound separation issues and hearing loss. The background music forces those of us with that problem to have our hearing constantly flip back and forth between the wanted dialogue and the unwanted and distracting background music. So I kindly ask that the background music be eliminated, at least during the dialogue part of the presentation, for which my hearing would be forever thankful.
    Much appreciated and Cheers,
    Michael O’Brien
    Alabama

  7. I enjoyed the first (partial) tour, and look forward to additional segments.A tour of your (private, don’t touch me) tool chest would be interesting, too. I suspect there are wide variations in how we store and/or organize our tools, but it’s interesting to see how others approach the issue.

    1. Hi Ralph,
      If you poke around a bit on Chris’s blog, he has a multi-part blog on what he keeps in his ATC. It is good and I would also love to see a video about this as well.
      Sincerely,
      Joe

  8. What is the wavy grained, polished, quarter sawn pine stick with your stamp, and the birds mouth ends at the bottom of the first tool wall?

      1. and I thought it was a vertical level (plumbob on a stick) from the Moxon plates.

  9. I would love it if you could do something similar with the Covington Mechanical Library. Maybe a slow pan across the shelves, to see if there is a book I badly need, but didn’t know existed. And maybe point out some of your favorite volumes.

  10. Chris always enjoy the music. Keep it up . If it’s too loud I’ll turn it down..I’m a hearing aid user.

  11. There are examples of the “Durer” squares at Skokloster Castle.

  12. Hi Chris, odd question here. I love the banded collar shirt you’re sporting in the video. Can you give me the details of where you found it?

      1. Yet one more reason to hike on up to Covington! Thanks for the info Chris!

  13. Perhaps a stupid question, but you could tell us more about why the Durer (Melancholia) square is particularly useful compared to other sorts of squares for laying out cross cut lines on wide stock.

    I hope you’ll be able to keep the music for intro and outro.

    1. Wooden layout tools are lightweight and easily trued if they go out of square. This square is the least cumbersome large-scale layout square I’ve ever used. So much better than a drywall square or a framing square. And fast.

      It’s one of those tools you have to use to appreciate. Sorry I’m not able to do it justice.

  15. Hi, great video. I ended up buying a. couple of the Jose Da Cruz knives, will be comparing them to Opinels and similar.

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