Lost Art Press

Category: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

An Overdue Addition to The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

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While building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” for the book, I debated on whether to add a tool rack to one of the inside walls of the carcase.

In the end, I decided against it because tool racks were in the minority of the chests I studied for the book. Today, however, I entered the minority.

During the last 12 months, I’ve been trying out a rack that is mounted to the rear wall of the traveling version of this chest, which I have been carting from town to town in my hatchback. I have come to appreciate the rack quite a bit, even though it limits the movement of the sliding trays just a bit.

The rack I installed on my chest is 1” x 1-1/4” pine that was left over from a DVD shoot – hence the small bead moulding on the corner. I laid out the holes from the centerpoint of the rack. Most of the holes are 1/2” in diameter and on 1-1/4” centers. The exceptional holes are off to the left. These were sized to handle my bench chisels.

I installed the rack using two No. 8 x 1-1/2” screws – no glue. I want to be able to easily remove the rack and modify it in future years. On some of the racks I studied, there were also some smaller holes between the 1/2” holes so you could sneak a tool or two more into the rack.

On Monday, I’ll put the new rack to the test when I teach a class on building this chest at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking in Berea, Ky. As always, I am looking forward to my week at Kelly’s. It’s a well-equipped shop and peaceful place to work – a dream shop, really.

— Christopher Schwarz

October 1951

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For him there need be no looking back wistfully to days when the toil of workshop or factory or office desk perforce kept his life filled. He will have in his skilful fingers the power to recreate his life anew so long as the power to work remains with him, something in which he can be happy and absorbed and be for ever learning, something too which will enable him to add to the attractiveness of his home and give pleasure to his friends. For woodwork is indeed a homely craft, adapting itself to all sorts of conditions. It can be plain or decorative, it can range from indoor and outdoor furnishings to a child’s toy and the humble window wedge. It can embrace both the classical elegance of an inlaid cabinet and a strictly utilitarian kitchen fitting, and each thing in itself be so honestly and truly made as to be perfect of its kind. It can give a man scope for his fancy and every kind of ingenuity. It will both exercise his patience and add to his serenity, for there is something very kindly about wood. It can keep the spirit of creation alive in him till his tools are put away for the last time, since to us all “the night cometh when no man can work.” But at least he will have lived. And who knows what new possibilities will dawn for him when the night ends?

— The Woodworker, October 1951

We Had to Sleep in a Lake

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I’ve been teaching in Germany for the last seven days – three long classes followed by four beers each evening with the students. My liver, and the rest of my internal organs, have requested a holiday. As Lost Art Press doesn’t really have a benefits package, however….

On the last night of class, one of the students named Brian Eve drove me to Munich and I helped him move his completed workbench into his shop. It’s tiny. I’ve seen bigger dust collector bags in my time.

But he makes do. After moving his bench off of the car, I took the short video above so you can see what a really small shop really looks like.

Oh, and in case you don’t read my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine, that’s where I’ve written about my Bavarian adventures this past week. Here are some links.

1. French Bench. German School. American Teacher. Day 1.
2. Mafell Chain Mortiser. Dang.
3. More Mafell Madness: Day 3 of the Workbench Class
4. My Assembly Tricks for Old World Workbenches
5. Knocking Together a Workbench

I’m in Munich now (it’s Monday, I believe). And this morning I had the best Bavarian breakfast ever with Peter Lanz of Dictum GmbH, and then he took me over to the new Dictum workshop and school in Munich. It’s a third-floor space where Peter is now teaching classes in handwork and machine work, along with another teacher.

Dictum is also planning on opening a store across the hall from the workshop, which will sell tools and be a local hangout for woodworkers. All in all, it sounds like a pretty cool plan.

I fly back to Cincinnati tomorrow and then immediately board a plane with my family for San Diego (sorry spleen, no vacation for you). Somehow day and night will resolve themselves. Someday.

— Christopher Schwarz

Dividers and Chest Hinges from Peter Ross

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While visiting blacksmith Peter Ross’s shop last week I couldn’t resist asking him to make me two pairs of dividers that are dead ringers for the dividers shown in Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” (1678) and the logo of Lost Art Press.

The dividers are, like all of Peter’s work, stunning. Their movement is smooth and sufficiently stiff. If they do loosen up with use, that can be retightened by striking the ball at the top with a flat-face hammer with the dividers resting on an anvil.

The dividers are $125 each if you are interested in obtaining some for your tool chest.

Peter has also been working on some hardware for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” Shown are the hinges, which Peter designed to merge parts of a chest hinge and a butt hinge. I’m going to install them on the chest I’m building at home now and see how they function. Next up: Peter is going to make a crab lock for the chest.

OK, if you will excuse me I have to go make some more money to pay for this stuff.

— Christopher Schwarz

Using your Tool Chest as a Sawbench

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Though some books decry the act, the archaeological record is clear: Woodworkers used their tool chests as sawbenches.

Many tool chests I’ve examined have edges that have been scarred by saw teeth. And as a woodworker, I’ve also felt the urge to saw upon the lid of my tool chest. OK, confession time: I’ve done it.

The only real problem with using your chest as a sawbench comes if your lid has a traditional raised-panel lid, such as the one on my current tool chest. The problem is that the raised field of the panel leaves some portion of your work unsupported, hanging out and vibrating like crazy when you saw.

The solution, according to Australian woodworker Phil Spencer, is the “Spratling Bead.”

This feature, named after Spencer’s grandfather, Lindsay Spratling, adds a raised bead between the lid and the dust seal that helps support work when you saw it on top of the chest. It also will help support work when you clamp it on top of the chest – something I do all the time.

Spratling was a carpenter and later a woodwork teacher at the former Caulfield Tech in Melbourne.

“I remember when he had his apprentices building their tool boxes he would have them incorporate two raised hardwood strips into the lids running along the edges of the lid,” Spencer wrote in an e-mail. “The idea of the strips was to sit proud of the raised panel and gave the owner something solid to rest a plank on so it could be cut, if the plank was rested on the raised panel it would usually rock.”

I must admit that the Spratling beads are quite clever. And if you think you might saw anything on the top of your tool chest, they would make an excellent addition.

— Christopher Schwarz