As I got ready to teach my Dutch tool chest class last weekend, I realized I was incredibly rusty as far as succinct instruction for this project. I checked my calendar, and I’m pretty sure the last time I taught this class in our shop was the weekend of May 6, 2022 – and the last time I taught it at all was at the Florida School of Woodwork in October of 2022. So it’s been two years since last I tried to cram all the instruction into just a few days.
Instead, I was busy expounding and expanding instruction in “Dutch Tool Chests,” which (if the printer deities are smiling upon me) will be in our warehouse in early November (and we’ll offer a pdf free with purchase for the first 30 days it’s on sale, just FYI, since a couple people have asked). In the book, I offer a brain dump on different ways to approach the various building steps, so that readers can choose what works best for their mindset and tool set.
Take rabbets, for example, which are cut to create a raised panel on the fall front and chest lid (and as practice for cutting a square rabbet in a low-risk decorative situation, where it’s OK if it’s slightly out of square!).
In the book, I mention the dado stack for those who liked a tailed approach, then cover at some length techniques for cutting a crisp rabbet with a skew rabbet plane, a straight rabbet plane or a shoulder plane (there are other hand-tool ways of course – but I teach what I know best).
In a short class, though, it simply isn’t possible to explore the options and offer choices/decisions. Instead I sharpen and set up ahead of time our Veritas skew rabbet planes (which are technically moving fillisters) for a 3/4-wide x 1/16″ deep cut, show the students how to use the tool (preferably without cutting myself on the corner of the blade while looking up and talking about the work instead of paying proper attention to what I’m doing), then send them off to do the work.
After filling almost 200 pages of “here’s lots of options,” it was difficult to remember to dial it back in the shop to what was possible to achieve in three days, with limited tool sets and varying skill sets among the students. But thank goodness I dusted off my in-person DTC teaching skills last weekend in our shop, where I know where to find everything. The next time I teach this tool chest will be in a few weeks in England, at the London IWF, where my own tool set will be severely limited and I’ll have no idea where to find anything.
And by the time I get back from England, I’m hopeful my book will be in the warehouse. Now I just have to not cut my signing fingers (I won’t – it’s always my left hand that gets cut by not paying attention to that pesky pokey-outie skew rabbet blade).
– Fitz
That’s great work for three days. Really nice. You should all be really happy.
I dig the choose your own adventure style of the Dutch tool chest book. The shoulder plane is probably the one I get cut on most. Just forgetting and letting my finger catch the edge of it. Always on the tip of my finger too. :(_