Day 2: Origin Work Jeans Made in Maine I’m always looking for good domestic-made workwear, not the stuff peddled for hipsters who wear Carhartt WIP. During the last year I have been wearing Origin Work Jeans, which are made in Maine. I have been unable to wear them out.
First, the inseams are triple-stitched. Yes, it looks overdone. Because it is. The denim is exceptionally strong – I have yet to rip the legs or tear the knees. And the pockets – oh, the pockets. They are lined with denim and not some tissue-thin cotton drill that disintegrates in a few months. The pockets last and last, even when filled with keys, knives and what-else-you-got.
The cut is forgiving for the woodworker’s physique (Body by IPAs). Your thighs will not be squeezed. Your “other organs” will also avoid the Denim Constrictor on fashionable jeans. These are real work jeans, and you can even order them with a double knee if your work is especially gravel-based. The jeans are available in three cuts: straight, boot cut and relaxed. I wear the straight cut.
The jeans normally cost $129. But you will find them on sale regularly for $99.
I honestly think I prefer the Origins to my Grease Point jeans, which are much more expensive. The Grease Points look nicer (I am constantly asked where I got them), but the Origin jeans have been more durable, especially the pockets.
The Anarchist’s Gift Guide – comprised only of stuff we have bought and used in our shop – starts today and runs over the next 13 days.
Chris started this “gift guide” years ago (read past recommendations here) after watching a woodworking TV personality’s “gift guide” for one of his sponsors. Clearly, he’d been given a list of worthless stuff that they wanted gone.
Chris thought: What if some poor spouse/child/friend actually took this crap advice?
This gift guide is – as always – unsponsored. Toolmakers who ask to be included in the guide (and they sometimes do) are automatically excluded from it. We don’t make money from these recommendations – there are no affiliate links. We paid full price for these items. And we’ve sought out at least a few things that your children could afford to buy for you.
Here goes.
Chairmaker’s Non-redneck Pencil Gauge
Last summer we made a batch of Redneck Pencil Gauges, which we still use here today. We started with a basic Marples marking gauge. Then we added a metal fence that allowed the gauge to be used for inside and outside curves. And we added a friction-fit hole so you could add a pencil (included) to the gauge.
It’s an ideal tool for marking out mortises and the spindle deck on a chair, plus dozens of other operations where a knife line or scribe line is undesirable.
After making one batch of gauges for sale, we never got around to making more. But now Marples has picked up the ball and created its own gauge, with three improvements.
They use a brass fence instead of a steel one (it looks classier)
They use a brass locking knob instead of a yellow plastic one (again, classy)
And they made the pencil clamp adjustable, a nice upgrade from ours.
The gauge is available through Workshop Heaven in the U.K. for £20.90, and they ship to the States. If you weren’t able to purchase one of our Redneck Pencil Gauges, this will definitely fill that need.
(You can, of course, make your own gauge using “The Stick Chair Book,” a free download.)
The post-and-rung chairs found in the final chapters of “Backwoods Chairmakers“ were printed without dimensions. This was by design; it was not an omission or mistake. The intention is for the chairmaker to make decisions – to determine rung heights and slat locations – that are common considerations when making a chair. The choice was not to hide the info or discourage the chairmaker, rather I followed a path similar to those of John Brown (“Welsh Stick Chairs“) and Jennie Alexander (in the first edition of “Make a Chair from a Tree”). Brown’s and Alexander’s books are not recipe books; the one making the chair is encouraged to make the decisions.
There’s another reason the dimensions were not included. The book’s focus is on the chairmakers and their chairs, their lives, their stories. The chairmakers’ traditions, approaches and methods varied greatly. Some used green wood, the drawknife, and the span of their hands for measurement. Others use a moisture meter, powered machinery and calipers. The tradition welcomes variety, and there is vibrancy within it. The last chapters of the “Backwoods Chairmakers” record a way to build post-and-rung chairs, with all the preceding chapters sharing the methods used by the Appalachian chairmakers.
With that said, I could have made my thinking more clear within the final chapters. The issue was in providing a significant amount of detail and dimensions without providing all of them.
Here’s the remedy: The dimensions will reside here on the LAP site, as a supplement to the book. We’ll make note in future editions that the additional details are available, should the reader desire more. I hope this will still encourage woodworkers to discover the details (and decide upon their own) when making their chair’s story sticks, while removing the frustration for those looking to replicate the three-slat or rocker as it is shown in the book. They can be downloaded below.
Update: Comments are now closed. Join us again on Dec. 14.
If you have a woodworking question, post it in the comments below. Chris and I are holding Open Wire today between now and 5 p.m. Eastern and will do out best to answer everyone (in between finishing a chair and a tool chest – guess who’s doing which…).
This one has been a long time in coming. On May 31, 2020, I announced here that I was writing a book on Dutch tool chests. Today, November, 8, 2024, “Dutch Tool Chests” is finally in our warehouse and available for order. (Surprise! – the cover is blue.)
Inside the book, you’ll find in-depth instruction to help you build your own slant-lid chest, from soup (choosing the wood) to nuts (and bolts – which I suggest you use to attach the chest handles). There are plans and cutting lists for two different chest sizes, as well as for a rolling base that adds storage and convenience for moving it around the shop.
I love these chests – and have built more than a few! I find them to be great additions to the workshop and for hauling tools hither and yon when I drive somewhere to teach. (And, thanks to the fun of the “hidden” bottom compartment, these also make excellent toy chests for kids!) But more valuable in the long term (if I do say so myself) than the chest are the detailed lessons on some fundamentals of hand-tool woodworking: dados, rabbets, through-dovetails and more. My intent is that in building this chest, you’ll learn skills that will serve you well in all your hand-tool projects to come.
The chapter on through-dovetails, for example, includes just about everything I know about cutting (and teaching) this joint.
Plus, you’ll find a foreword from Roy Underhill, and a gallery of chests from 43 other makers (my favorite part of the book) that shows clever interior (and a few exterior!) modifications. Unique solutions that set them apart, and can be adapted for your own tool storage needs.
“Dutch Tool Chests” is 192 pages and is printed on 8-1/2” x 11” #70 matte-coated paper in Tennessee. The pages are folded into signatures, sewn, glued and reinforced with fiber-based tape to create a permanent binding. Enclosing the signatures are heavy (98-pt.) blue-fabric-covered boards. The cover and spine are adorned with a silver foil die stamp.
The book is $39 and comes with a free pdf if you order it from us by December 11. And all copies ordered direct from us will have my illegible scrawl of a signature in the front of the book. (We don’t know which of our retailers will carry it; I and my cats sure hope they all do! For complete information on that, click here.)
Note: Orders placed today (Friday, Nov. 8), will ship on Tuesday, Nov. 12 because of the holiday.
A bevy of brand-new DTCs (lids still to be attached) from a recent class in London.
Table of Contents:
Foreword 1
1. Let’s Go ‘Dutch’ 5 2. Materials 11 3. Parts Prep 23 4. Dovetails 29 5. Dados 49 6. Shelves 57 7. Top Angles 61 8. Assembly 65 9. Lock & Batten Notches 71 10. Bottom Lip 75 11. Front 79 12. Fall Front 83 13. Backboards 91 14. Lid 97 15. Hardware 111 16. Paint 121 17. Interior 127 18. Mobile Base 133 19. Gallery 139
Acknowledgments 185
– Fitz
p.s. Because someone always asks: Fully loaded with my tools for any given class, my white pine chest weighs less than 50 lbs. For now, I can still get it into the back of my car by myself (though it was easier for me four years ago when I first began writing “Dutch Tool Chests“).
