It falls through the Sawing and Axe Violence,
The fresh, joyful free Forest;
What Wonder, when at last the Tree takes revenge.
And his Murderer is sawed in Pieces.
The World is inverted!
Fliegende Blätter – 1852
An illustrated weekly magazine published in Munich.
-Jeff Burks
This photo was recently sent to me by antique tool dealer Jim Bode. We were having a conversation at a local tool museum last Sunday when he mentioned a photo that was given to him by one of his customers. The image shows seven carpenters posing in a field with their tool chests circa 1910. These were full service country carpenters who could build a house from the foundation to the roof. They have the usual selection of handsaws, planes, bit braces, breast drills, augers, spirit levels, hammers, steel squares, mallets, chisels, etc.
The specialty tools reveal the range of their carpentry activities. The boring machines, framing chisels, lifting jack, and adzes show that they were still building mortise & tenon timber frames during an era when most of the country had long since converted to balloon framing. The expensive miter boxes and combination plane show that they were also doing exterior trim, cornice work, and possibly interior trim & flooring as well. The slate ripper is only used for roofing and siding.
The planes are a mixed group of cast iron and transitional. The wooden soled planes were often preferred by site carpenters because they dramatically reduced the weight of the traveling tool kit. Most of the transitional planes in this image are stock models, but one of them appears to be a user modified plane. It looks like somebody took the hardware off of a Stanley No. 26 Jack Plane and added their own custom four foot sole to make a super jointer.
As for the date, I suggest circa 1910 because the miter boxes in this photo appear to be Stanley models with patents issued in 1904. For that reason the photo can not be earlier than 1905. Several years ago I put together a research paper on miter box patents. If you need help with the identity or age of a miter box, then this document can help.
Miter Box Patents – (2812 pages – 160MB pdf) Right Click – Save As
– Jeff Burks
Today, Don Williams, John Hoffman and I wrapped up the third of what will probably be five or six photo shoots for Virtuoso: The Toolbox of Henry O. Studley. The difficulties in one of these shoots begin with scheduling – Chris, John and I all have demanding day jobs and kids at home, leaving us with few mutually available days or weekends. And unsurprisingly, “retirement” for Don actually means spending longer and busier days working on the dozens of exciting projects he has lined up for himself. So we have to schedule months ahead of time. Because Chris is in Australia, John stood in as photo assistant.
Whereas our first trip was a scouting survey of the chest and tools and our second a documentary session for specific tools and tool groupings, on this trip I was able to split time between documentary and “creative” photography. Don, Chris and I are preparing for the Studley talk at Handworks this May, where some of the work that is going into the book will be making its public debut. Chris will be speaking about the tools in the chest and their use. For this, thanks to our earlier trips, we already have more than enough photography. In addition to offering a project overview and a history of the chest, Don will be speaking at length about the vises on the Studley bench. So on this trip I spent the better part of a day shooting the bench, its vises, and all their details (there are many!) to make sure Don has what he needs for his portion of the talk.
I will be speaking at Handworks on the photographic process and aesthetic details of the Studly tool chest. And believe me – the hardest challenge of the shoot this weekend was figuring out how to capture in two dimensions just a small fraction of my favorite details. We already have many “documentary” shots, but the kind of strange camera angles and dramatic lighting I allow myself in this more artsy approach accentuates some surfaces and diminishes others, lending visual depth to some of Studley’s aesthetic flourishes which doesn’t necessarily come across in “straight” photography. Partway through this process I mentioned in passing that the Studley chest is a woodworking fractal – you can take any portion of it, look closer, and find even more detail.
Below are some shots from this trip. They are but a small number from our bucket-o-favorites; we’re saving more of our top picks for the talk in May and of course for the book. Last I heard, Handworks is already nearing “standing room only” capacity. This may actually be a good thing – when Handworks attendees become as short of breath as the Virtuoso team becomes every single time we see the Studley toolchest, it’ll help imensely to have someone to lean on. On the other hand, there will be more drool to clean up. Have fun with that, Jameel.
Here’s a known fact about Christopher Schwarz: he enjoys beer. And here’s a little-known fact about me: I do not enjoy beer. (But I do love bourbon.)
With the 2012 Woodworking in America Midwest conference coming up in about two weeks, I suspect there might be a bar bill or three to cover. I suspect it will exceed my credit card limit. So, on eBay, I’ve up for auction two of the three copies of the long-sold-out 2008 hardcover “The Art of Joinery” I have in my woodworking library. (I’m hanging on to the last one … until I need money for a kidney transplant.) There is no reserve, and the starting bid on each is 99 cents.
Both of these books are signed by Christopher, and on one copy, Chris drew in a mustache on the frontispiece portrait of Joseph Moxon. I do not know why. There was probably beer involved.
All proceeds will be used to cover libations at Woodworking in America (and one bottle of ibuprofen). So if you win, you can be proud that your money is going to an excellent cause (Pappy van Winkle 15-year, and IPA).
Click here for the mustachioed Moxon auction. For the non-graffito version, click here.
— Megan Fitzpatrick
p.s. The image uploader at eBay is screwy at the moment; I’m told the auction pictures should show up within a couple hours.
Everything I need for my tool chest shell.
Christopher Schwarz is literally off the grid at the moment – so he has no idea that I’ve commandeered his blog for the weekend (though I suspect he’ll soon figure it out). But it seems appropriate, because I’ve finally begun building my version of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” (ATC).
It’s pathetic that I’ve waited this long.
I watched as Chris built his first ATC in late 2010, before, I think, he’d even come up with the title. He’d leave the Popular Woodworking shop every night (you know…when he still worked for a living) to race home and make dinner for his family, then write until the wee hours. And after he was satisfied with the words, he moved on to the images and book design.
By April 2011, Chris was almost done. I distinctly recall copy editing an almost-final proof of ATC on April 15 and 16 last year. Why? Because there was a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event (and the public unveiling of Chris’s chest…so to speak) in our office/shop that weekend – so I was wielding my peacock-blue editing pen (it’s so much kinder than red) while also talking with visitors and giving tool demonstrations. And Chris wanted the book off to the printer on April 17. If you have a first edition of the book, well, that explains the crap editing.
So I read the book twice again before the second edition was published (and caught almost all the earlier mistakes) and again before the third edition (at which point I caught, I hope, the rest of them). If you have the latest edition and find an error, I really don’t want to know (but Chris does – feel free to point it out to him).
After “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was published, Chris started traveling around the world to teach classes on building the chest (like Elvis, he’d by that point left the [PW] building). And I even spent a week as his helper monkey at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School early this spring, during which I cut what I think was eleventy-billion board feet of poplar for all the students’ skirts, lid pieces, bottom boards and battens. (I’m now awfully good with a panel saw, if I do say so myself). I helped glue up cases and fit skirts, and helped a new woodworker learn to cut his first hand-cut dovetails (though he didn’t need much help).
This is all a (very) long-winded way of saying that I know “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” inside and out – both the book and the construction. Yet I’ve not actually built the darn thing.
Within the next two weeks, if all goes according to plan that will have changed. This morning, I glued up panels for the case front, back and sides (and pesky knotholes have dictated that my chest be just shy of the 24″-wide panels called for; I guess that’s my idea of anarchy?).
Tomorrow, I’ll trim the panels to final size and process the stock for the skirts (yes, I’m using the PWM power equipment for that – sue me). Then, I’ll bring everything home to my hand-tool shop and break out the dovetail saw. My goal is to have the shell, bottom, battens and skirts done by next weekend, at which time I’ll build the lid. But unlike someone else, well, I still have to go to work every day…so I hope I can stick to my plan.
— Megan Fitzpatrick
p.s. Christopher will be back on the grid – but busy teaching – come Monday. He’s back at Roy’s in Pittsboro, N.C., teaching students to build…the Anarchist’s Tool Chest. (This time, he’ll have to do his own rough stock prep.)
p.p.s. The best thing about this build so far? I needed to buy liquid hide glue, and the only place near me that sells it happens to be right next door to Graeter’s. Excellent!