I admire the everyday ordinary furniture from the past, particularly from before the Industrial Revolution, what’s known as vernacular furniture. The makers are usually unnamed, often not professionals. I like it because of its directness, honesty and functionality. It tends to be kind of minimal and spare for reasons of cost. It is striking how the dictates or slogans of Modernism align with those of the vernacular or craft: “less is more,” “form follows function,” and so on. It’s ironic because Modernism typically saw itself as release from the bondage of tradition.
Richard Hubbs of Indiana is spending eight weeks at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking on scholarship this summer to learn all manner of woodworking. So to prepare for his joinery journey, he built a traveling version of the Anarchist’s Tool Chest.
He took a few minutes out from his class with chairmaker Peter Galbert to show me some of the details.
Some details to note that you might consider for your own chest:
1. His sliding tills are rabbeted on the ends and ride on narrow hardwood runners – not the wide and stepped pieces I use. This saves on material. To remove the lower till, Richard made the top runners removable by securing them with dowels only.
2. Also in the till department, he added one divider in each till, which is inserted with a sliding dovetail. It’s a nice touch.
3. The sawtill for backsaws is at the back of the chest but is one solid block of wood, which will protect the entire sawplate of each tool.
4. He attached his rack of Irwin bits to the front wall of his chest and is removable.
All in all, it’s a great chest and carried all the tools he needed for his classes.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. For a SketchUp drawing of the traveling version of this chest, visit the 3D Warehouse here.
Ron is originally from Alabama, but he now lives in Ohio and works for Procter & Gamble. His tool chest reflects “Proctoid” sensibilities – they are notoriously precise people – plus his Alabama heritage. It’s a bit like a BMW 740 painted like the General Lee.
Which is all kinds of awesome.
This short video has a tour of Ron’s chest during a class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. And it involves (as always) nipple rubbing.
People regularly ask what my favorite woodworking books are. It’s a tough question because I really love writings about dead trees that are printed on dead trees.
Most of the books I like are ones that altered the way I look at the world. Charles Hayward made the tools a thing I could master. Robert Wearing connected the dots so I could build stuff entirely by hand.
But Peter Follansbee and Jennie Alexander changed the way I look at furniture.
Their book, “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” is not just a treatise on building a joint stool. It is not just an examination of 17th-century joinery techniques. And it is not just the personal journey of two impassioned woodworkers.
While being all those things above, it is also a code of ethical conduct for building furniture from the past.
When we build furniture from the past, the ethical path is to build it true to the materials and techniques of the time. Only that path will produce a true understanding of these furniture forms that make our hearts beat faster.
Highboys built with shapers leave me utterly cold. Block-front chests built with a dovetail jig make me confused. Six-board chests built with a router and a pneumatic nailer make me want to chop down my neighborhood power lines with an axe.
All of this came into focus as I was editing “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.” I’ve read the entire text at least a dozen times, so its lessons, which I first encountered more than a year ago, have had time to seep deep into my sinew.
It seems at first to be like your typical project book, but it’s not. It should perhaps be retitled: Make a Joint Stool from a Tree Without Idiot Compromises that Will Cripple Your End Product. For Alexander and Follansbee, the tools, techniques and the end product are all equally important. Why? Because the end product will not look right unless you embrace the other two. A joint stool made with a table saw might as well have been extruded from plastic resin.
I know that some of you are reading this and thinking: Yo Schwarz, don’t you have a table saw?
Yup. I have some machines. And when it comes to building furniture from the 19th century to the present, basic machinery is required so the end product will look right. But when I build a joint stool – and I will build a joint stool soon – you can rest assured that it will be with a froe and hatchet. I might not even turn on the lights in the shop that week.
The medicine in “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” is strong stuff. It’s just a delayed-release drug. Once you read it, all sorts of crazy things become perfectly reasonable. Then they become obvious. Then them become imperative.
If you haven’t had a chance to read the book, borrow a copy from a woodworking friend or your local library. Yes, you can also buy “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” in our store.
The reason I’m not answering your e-mails or phone messages this week is that I’m teaching the “Hammer in Hand” class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking.
We’re building three projects this week – a shooting board/bench hook, a Moxon dovetailing vise and the Schoolbox from “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” book. And with the pace that this class is on, we might have to add a fourth project.
With more than a day and a half left, most of the students are working on the moulding for the piece.
That’s not supposed to happen until tomorrow.
So I think we’ll carve some garden gnomes tomorrow. Can’t have too many garden gnomes.
