Though you might find this odd, a sizable chunk of my commission work is building tool chests and workbenches for people.
When customers first approached me with these jobs, I resisted. My response was: You’re a woodworker; you can build your own for much less money. But after further discussions, I realized that I could say this to almost any aspect of the craft.
Don’t have a shop? You’re a woodworker – build one.
Don’t have a handplane? You’re a woodworker – build one.
Don’t have a wooden floor?
Don’t have a dovetail saw?
And etc.
When it comes to the great Time Vs. Money Scale, some of us have more time. Others have more money. (Few of us have both or neither.) And so I started making workbenches and tool chests for customers. This also conveniently drained my supply of half-built tool chests and workbenches in my garden shed that were left over from classes.
For woodworkers who can’t afford a tool chest from me (they cost $2,000 to $3,500 depending on the options), I encourage them to buy a vintage tool chest. In the Midwest, South and East, almost every antique store has a chest to sell. You just have to tune your eyes to see them. Typically they are holding other items – plates, glassware or creepy dolls – and so they are easy to miss.
They often show up in local auctions – an Amish auction near me usually has a dozen chests each year.
And the price is right. About $200 to $400.
Most of them need to be cleaned up. The tills are worn out and need to be repaired. Mouse holes are common. Rot in the bottom boards is a frequent feature. Dislocated hinges and a pink paint job round out the list of things you’ll want to remedy.
But it is a great alternative. Most chests can be fixed up with a day of work in the shop. And you will get a gold star in woodworker heaven for saving a tool chest from its doom as another plant stand.
There are several ways to make the lid. Some work great. Some are quite stupid. Let’s start with the stupid ways first. When I built my first tool chest, I copied the construction of the lid from an original. It was a single flat panel of wood trimmed on three of its edges with narrow stock that would interlock with the dust seal attached to the shell.
If I remember correctly, I think the lid worked as intended for about a week, and it has been bockety ever since. The first problem was with the lock strike, the brass plate mortised into the underside of the lid. Because the lid was a simple flat panel, the top shrank a bit, which moved the lock strike.
One day I tried to lock the chest, and the mechanism wouldn’t engage. In fact, it just pushed the lid up off the dust seal. So I filed the opening in the strike until the lock worked again. About six months later the top expanded and the lock wouldn’t work anymore. This time, filing wasn’t going to fix the problem – I would have filed away one wall off the strike. So I resigned myself to having a chest that would lock only during the dry season.
Then the top warped.
Because the top of the lid was the bark side of the tree, the warping made things worse. The front and back edges of the top curled up. And the movement was enough that the strike couldn’t be struck by the lock mechanism.
But my troubles didn’t end there. When I built the chest, I wasn’t a total doofus on the topic of wood movement. I knew the lid was going to move, so I selected a species that didn’t move a lot once it was dry. I used white pine. And when I applied the trim around the lid, I did everything I could to minimize the problem of cross-grain construction. The trim pieces on the ends of the lid were the problem. They had to be nailed onto the end grain.
This is a problem. Nails and screws don’t hold as tightly into end grain as they do into face grain. So I wanted to introduce some glue into the joint to help things along. of course, glue doesn’t want to stick to end grain. And when you glue long grain to end grain, the end grain will try to bust apart the joint as it expands and contracts with the seasons.
There are several solutions to this problem. Some involve a sliding dovetail. others involve screws in elongated slots. The simplest solution is to glue and nail the trim on at the front of the lid and use nails only at the back part of the lid. This was the technique that the original builder had used. The theory here is that the glue and nails will keep the trim secure and tight up at the miters, and the nails at the back of the lid will bend to allow the lid to move.
It’s an interesting theory and one that sometimes works. It sure didn’t work for me, however.
The trim is barely holding on to the lid. The miters are open and flopping around like a broken finger. And the lid’s joints look like crap. I want to remove the lid and rebuild it. I should remove it and rebuild it. But I really like the way the paint has aged on the lid, and the broken joints are a constant reminder about the wily ways of wood.
So when I set out to build a new chest, I looked for other historical examples that would be more durable. The vintage pine chest I bought had the trim glued and pinned to the underside of the lid. This had the advantage of removing the end grain from the equation. All the joints were long-grainto-long-grain. But this is still a bad way to build a lid. Instead of the trim coming loose, this lid is designed to split. And boy did the lid split. There is a 3/8″-wide canyon right up the middle of the lid, which invites dust inside. It’s such a problem that the best solution was to cover the split with tape to keep the dust out.
So don’t build your lid like that.
I took a look at other chests. Duncan Phyfe (1768-1854) was a smart guy, one of the most celebrated 19th-century cabinetmakers. And his tool chest, now at the New-York Historical Society, is filled with all manner of amazing tools. But the lid is curious. It’s a flat panel with breadboard ends. While the lid worked out for Duncan, it might not work out for you. Breadboard ends definitely can help things and improve the way a dust seal will attach to it. But it still won’t help things when you add lock hardware. It’s going to move forward and back as the panel expands and contracts.
Better lid. A frame-and-panel lid with a raised panel is about as robust as you can get without adding lots of weight.
Really, the best solution is to build the lid as a frame-and-panel assembly (or use a slab of Formica). This confines almost all of the wood movement to the panel that floats harmlessly in the middle of the rails and stiles. And if you choose quartersawn wood for the rails and stiles, they will barely move at all.
So you could build the lid in the same way you would build a raised panel door. I would recommend using through-tenons on the rails. But what about the panel? You want the panel to be thick and stout because it will take a beating. So the joint between the panel and the lid frame is critical. You don’t really want to thin down the edges of the panel as you would when making a door panel. Thin edges will weaken the panel.
The old-school solution here is to plow a groove in the edges of the panel so the panel will interlock with the rails and stiles. This will keep the joint between the panel and frame as stout as possible, and the panel will be raised above the frame of the lid.
There is no downside to this approach. There are no weak spots on the lid. There is no significant wood movement along the edges or ends of the lid. So the trim around it will stay put. It is as permanent as can be.
A modern favorite. Block planes get a bad rap from the hand-tool purists, but they are the proletariat’s favorite plane. They are simple to set up and use. And they are inexpensive.
You can build furniture without a block plane. But why should you? The block plane is one of the greatest hand-tool inventions of the Industrial Revolution, in my opinion. With a block plane and a little skill you can accomplish almost any task. These tools trim end grain, face grain and whatever else you ask of them – and they do it even if the iron is a mite dull (thanks to their lower pitch). They are the most flexible plane ever manufactured. You can change the pitch of the tool with great ease and close or open the mouth with no special tools. And they are simple to set up.
Woodworking purists scoff at the tool, but I think that this is only because it doesn’t fit into their narrow tool list. If block planes had been invented in the 18th century, you can dang well bet that every re-enactor would be spouting off about how the block plane was the savior of the age.
In fact, I have to say that the block plane is one of my favorite planes because it was the first hand tool I ever used with great success.
When making my very first piece of handmade furniture, a sitting bench, I realized that I needed a way to trim the bench’s front and back pieces to the seat of the bench. I didn’t have an electric sander – much to my chagrin – so I decided to go to Walmart and buy a block plane. I don’t know where I got this idea; probably from my grandfather.
They had one block plane. It was a “Popular Mechanics” brand and was cheap and blue. I bought it, took it home and put it to work. It was not sharp. I did not sharpen it. It cut the pine surprisingly well. I can remember being amazed at the curly shavings that emerged from the mouth. I knew at that moment how powerful hand tools could be, even if wielded by a moron.
If you look at the history of block planes, you should be prepared for some enormous diversity and confusion. It seems that toolmakers made more kinds of block planes than any other kind of tool. I’m going to try to boil down the major features here for you, but be aware that I cannot cover every kind of block plane ever made.
Low Angle or Standard? Block planes come in two flavors: low-angle or standard-angle. Low-angle tools have the iron bedded on a ramp that is 12° off of the sole. Standard planes have a 20° bed. Low-angle planes make it easier to achieve lower planing angles, which are nice for end grain. Standard-angle planes make it easier to achieve higher planing angles, which are nice for reducing tear-out.
The reason I always use a low-angle block plane is two-fold.
The lower angle makes for a more compact tool that fits better in my hand. Your mileage may vary here.
With the low-angle plane you have a wider variety of planing angles available to you. You can achieve angles as low as 37°. Standard-angle planes can only go as low as 45°, if you want the edge to last more than a few strokes. Both planes can achieve high-planing angles. So the low-angle tools are more versatile.
So I see no reason to even own a standard-angle block plane. And I don’t.
Adjustable Mouth or Not? Low-rent block planes generally have a fixed mouth, though there are some nice small block planes with fixed mouths. I prefer an adjustable mouth. Why? When I am using a block plane to true end grain, I don’t want the leading corner of the work diving into the mouth aperture. When I work in tricky grain, I will use every weapon available to me to attempt to reduce tearing – including an adjustable mouth.
And when I need to hog off material, I simply open the mouth as wide as it will go. Easy. If you have only one block plane, I recommend a low-angle tool with an adjustable mouth.
Lateral Adjustment or Not? All block planes have lateral adjustment – you can tap the blade left or right to tweak the position of the cutting edge in the mouth. The question here is whether you need a lateral-adjustment mechanism, which can be as simple as a plate that shifts left or right to move the blade left or right, all the way up to a Norris-style adjuster that will control both the depth of cut and the lateral adjustment.
I find that all lateral-adjustment mechanisms that are supplied on a plane generally offer only coarse adjustments. The fine adjustments come from tapping the plane’s iron with a hammer. So to me, it doesn’t really matter if the plane offers some sort of formal lateral-adjustment mechanism. That’s because of the way I adjust a block plane:
• Sight down the sole and extend the iron until it appears as a black line against the shiny sole.
• Use your fingers to shift the iron left or right until the black line protrudes consistently from the mouth.
• Retract the iron to take up the screw-feed mechanism’s backlash. Then extend the iron a bit and use a small hammer to tap the iron left or right into its final position.
So do what you want to here. You don’t have to have a lateral-adjust mechanism. But it won’t hurt your efforts either.
This week I had to spend two hours in the dentist’s chair. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was “Clockwork Orange-d” into watching two hours of a TV program about creative storage solutions for the home.
Some of the examples I remember over the whirring of the dental Dremel:
Hinge your steps and create trap doors on the landings of your stairs to make small bins in the wasted space between your stringers.
Find stud walls that are used for utilities and turn them into built-in chests of drawers.
In attic spaces, create sliding racks on the interior of a high-pitched roof. You slide giant plastic bins into the racks – it’s a bit like a top-hanging drawer.
Through the entire program I wanted to throw up – but that was mostly because I have a sensitive gag reflex. But it was also because these “storage solution” programs neglect to mention the easiest way to control clutter: Get rid of it.
Take your excess clothes, books and nicknacks to a worthy charity so the items can plague the homes of others. Give your excess tools away to Habitat for Humanity’s Re-Store or a local tool-sharing co-op. Burn your scraps for heat. List your excess machinery on Craigslist. It can all be done in a day, which is easier and better than building some lame hidey-hole in your house that will require three trips to the home center, four screaming fits and five bad words to complete.
Possessions are like fingernails – they need to be constantly trimmed (or else this).
In “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” I tried to show how woodworking journalists are treated like geese being prepared for foie gras. During my 15-year tenure I was force-fed tools, jigs and meaningless innovations (see also Bench Cookies) to fill the great void that is the autumn issue.
What I didn’t get to explain in that book were the market forces behind this Golden Corral of injection-molded garbage. Why does this happen? And more importantly: Why does it work?
Some of you won’t believe me, but that’s because you are probably a beginner and therefore an indiscriminate sponge.
When people begin woodworking, most go through a phase (I did) in which they soak up every single piece of information they can find. Many will subscribe to multiple woodworking magazines, buy astonishing numbers of woodworking books, seek out catalogs and advertisements for woodworking tools, and buy anything they can afford that looks remotely useful.
This is when people are vulnerable. They need guidance. Unfortunately woodworking is a mostly solitary pursuit. And so we spend incredible, astonishing and shocking amounts of money on equipment, books and instruction. And most of it is of questionable worth.
Because of this phenomenon:
The woodworking magazine business had a glut of magazines. When we ran the numbers in the 1990s, we surmised that there should be three magazines serving woodworkers. Instead, there were more: Fine Woodworking, WOOD, American Woodworker, Woodsmith, Shopnotes, Workbench, Popular Woodworking, Woodworker’s Journal, Woodshop News, Woodcraft, Weekend Woodcrafts, Woodwork and a host of specialized magazines. What propped up these magazines? Beginners. Eventually, most woodworkers winnow their subscriptions down to one or two magazines. But the spendthrift beginner made it possible for many magazines to survive.
The woodworking book industry produced a glut of books. In the 1990s, my mailbox was stuffed with new woodworking books every week. It wasn’t unusual to see seven or eight new woodworking titles in a month. That’s coo-coo. Why did this work? New woodworkers wanted the latest information. New books are better than old books (duh!). And so publishers churned out books that had an 18-month life cycle before disappearing forever.
The woodworking tool industry thrives on new SKUs. After covering woodworking tool manufacturers for two decades, it’s obvious that they introduce new products every year to goose sales. That’s why you have a new crop of cordless drill/drivers every year. And it’s also why you have a rash of odd products that seem (on the surface) to be innovative – silicone glue brushes, painter’s pyramids, many router table jigs, marrying a chisel with a rasp, aluminum squares, putting a laser on everything, oddball and worthless sanders (the Black & Decker Mouse; Porter-Cable Profile Sanders), and battery-powered clamps and tape measures. The list is endless, and it’s not a modern phenomenon. When my grandfather was woodworking in the 1970s, he was charmed by a jig that let you cut dovetails with a corded drill. The only people who are dumb enough to fall for these products are beginners and woodworking journalists. Beginners don’t know better, and journalists need copy to fill the empty space between the covers.
Some of you might be thinking I’m exaggerating my experiences. I’m not. The good news is that the Internet did a Half-Nelson on most of these stupid business practices. When people now go through their “indiscriminate sponge” phase, they do it on YouTube and soak up as much ridiculousness as they wish.
Eventually they will be able to ignore the tool-chugging nincompoops and focus on what’s important: Building basic skills using simple and robust tools (and maybe a few well-built machines).
Honestly, it’s a good thing to be a bit jaded about the woodworking tool and publishing industries. It makes you a better consumer and encourages them to do better. So please, for the sake of the future of the craft, don’t buy the Bench Cookies.
