“Open Wire” is your bi-monthly opportunity to pose to us any and all woodworking questions, and we’ll do our best to answer (if you ask on other days, we’ll tell you to please wait for Open Wire). It’s simple – we post a blog entry on the scheduled Saturday mornings (usually at around 7:30 a.m. Eastern) and readers can post questions in the comments for us (and other readers) to answer. Comments close at 5 p.m. Eastern.
The Open Wire Dates for 2025 are:
February 15 April 19 June 14 August 9 October 25 December 13
– Fitz
p.s. We sometimes answer with links to posts we’ve already written (e.g. What wood to use for a workbench. What’s the best angle for dovetails. What jack plane to buy.), so if you can’t wait for one of the 2025 Open Wire dates, try a Google search at site:lostartpress.com – after 15+ years of entries on this blog, odds are decent you’ll find an answer.
Kate Swann, founder of the Florida School of Woodwork, grew up in England – so not only is there big woodworking fun to be had, there are guaranteed tea breaks!
Every year Chris, Lucy and I give what we can to a variety of charities. And we are picky. We do our research. And look at the records that charities file each year (here’s a primer).
The following woodworking organizations are ones we have supported with both money and time. If you are interested in supporting charitable woodworking organizations, here are some to consider.
There is no political message in these choices. We do our best to help those who want to enter the worl of woodworking. The best way to ensure the survival of our craft is to widen the net.
Chris has supported this foundation, which is affiliated with the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, for more than two decades. The foundation funds a variety of scholarships, from strictly need-based to military to young woodworkers.
Based in the U.K., Pathcarvers offers hands-on training for a variety of students, including those in drug and alcohol rehabilitation, those using mental health services, low-income families and prisons. You can help fund their work through the Kieran Binnie Fund for Craft, a fund that we helped launch with the oraganization.
Run by Rob Cosman, the Purple Heart Project provides woodworking training to wounded veterans. You can donate via this page. All donations go 100 percent to help veterans.
A Baltimore-based workshop program that provides training and support for woodworkers who are women or non-gender conforming. WOO offers a wide variety of courses and Open Shop Hours. You can donate here.
This Los Angeles-based organization provides training and work for people experiencing homelessness or poverty. People in the program make a variety of objects for sale in the Would Works store. You can donate here.
This organization helps support new chairmakers and toolmakers who have traditionally been excluded from the craft because of their gender, race or other factors. We have sponsored multiple scholarship classes at our shop, and will hold two more in 2025. You can donate money or tools here.
If access to wood (or lumberyard anxiety) is what’s holding you back from making a stick chair or Dutch tool chest, here’s an excellent solution: Alexander Brothers is now offering full kits for several types of stick chairs (in a selection of species), as well as blanks for legs, seat and more. Plus, there’s a new kit for the Dutch tool chest in pine, cherry or walnut (and the parts come ready .
We’ve ordered from Alexander Bros a number of times now, and are always impressed with how carefully Shea Alexander and his employees pick the chair stock for straightness of the grain and overall beauty. And I am impressed with how lovely the pine was for a recent Dutch tool chest class. In other words, you can trust that you’ll get good stuff.
NB: We do not receive any royalty or kickback on the sales of these kits – we’re just happy Shea is willing to do them. It’s a nice service for those who need help sourcing/choosing/milling wood. (Heck – I’m buying DTC kits from Shea for my February 2025 class, because I’m not going to have time to make them myself – one less worry for me. Thank you, Shea!)
Update: Comments are now closed (we will answer any unanswered questions tonight or tomorrow).Thanks all!
If you have a woodworking question, now is your chance to ask it! Post it in the comments below between now and 5 p.m. Eastern and will do out best to answer everyone (in between working on chairs and a dovetailed blanket chest).
– Fitz
p.s. We’ll announce 2025 Open Wire dates soon…if you think we should keep doing it? NB: We’re thinking about charging for every question that has a word count of more than 50 😉
Order “Dutch Tool Chests” (by me!) by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 11, to get a free pdf with your book order. Until then, the book and pdf is $39. At midnight on Wednesday, the pdf will cost $9.75 extra if ordered with the printed book.
“Dutch Tool Chests” gives you the in-depth instruction you need to build your own slant-lid tool chest (in two sizes) – from choosing materials, to the joinery, the hardware, the interior parts that hold your tools and the paint. Plus, plans for a mobile base that provides more storage and helps you move the chest around your shop. (Oh – and a brain dump on how to cut through-dovetails – the thing I most often teach.)
My goal in this book is to not only help you make a place to put your stuff, but to help make you a better hand-tool woodworker.
But my favorite part of the book is the gallery, which includes 43 chests from other makers, with ingenious ideas for using the chest’s tool bay (or bays). Clever rolling bases. Oversized (or undersized) chests. Imaginative uses of the back of the fall front and or/underside of the lid. And other unique storage solutions and uses that set them apart.
Like all Lost Art Press books, “Dutch Tool Chests” is printed in the United States. The pages are folded into signatures, sewn, glued and reinforced with fiber-based tape to create a permanent binding. The 192-page interior attached to heavy (98-pt.) cotton-covered boards (blue cloth, of course!) using a thick paper hinge. The cover and spine are adorned with a foil die stamp (which won’t help you build a tool chest – but it looks pretty nice, if I do say so myself!).
– Fitz
p.s. If you buy “Dutch Tool Chests” from Lost Art Press, you might wonder about that scribble on the half-title or title page. That illegible scrawl really is my signature – I’m signing every copy that ships from our Covington warehouse.
