Category: Campaign Furniture

It has been two years since “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was released, and so I am an unpleasant person to be around.

During the last 24 months I have been distracted or devoted to the task of publishing books from other authors. I’ve been teaching classes on three continents. I’ve filmed four DVDs. I’ve written a dozen articles for magazines and more than 300 blog entries.

But no books.

So I’m doing what I always do when I write a book. I gather all the material I need, I ignore the world around me and I start typing.

Today was huge. I managed to gather all the wood I need to finish my book on campaign furniture with a trip to Midwest Woodworking.

I needed about 160 board feet of mahogany to build the remaining three projects for the book, which are now drawn in SketchUp and outlined on my laptop. Four 16’-long boards from the racks at Midwest did the trick. And this beautiful stock is now sitting in my basement, waiting patiently as I finish making a bowsaw and tidy up some loose ends for upcoming classes.

Why the heck am I telling you this?

Because I’m about to go underground. From now until Dec. 31, I will be slow to respond to e-mails. I’ll be blogging less (thanks in advance to Jeff Burks for picking up my slack). And I’m dialing down my teaching schedule for the next two years.

So if you have an urgent question, you might want to ask some of the other excellent hand tool bloggers out there. If you want to take a class with me, you might want to look at what’s on the calendar for the next few months (see the right rail of this blog). And if you are waiting for the campaign furniture book, know that I am forsaking all others for you. Well, really it’s for me. I don’t care if you buy the book, I’m writing it for me.

— Christopher Schwarz

Today I made the feet for my teak campaign chest. From the outside, this looks like a one-hour job: Turn the feet and their tenons. Glue the tenons into holes in the four square base blocks.

But many campaign chests have removable feet that unscrew from the base blocks. So if you want to do it right, it’s a bit more complex.

I tapped the base blocks with a 1-1/2” tap – the largest I have. Then I screwed the base blocks to the underside of the base.

I turned the teak feet – the quickest part of the day – and bored out their centers with a 1-3/8” x 1-1/2”-deep mortise. To join the feet to the case, I made maple tenons that fit snug into their feet and threaded the tops so they would screw into their base blocks.

Finally, I threaded the tenons into the base blocks and glued the feet onto the tenons – rotating them so they would show the nice cathedral grain facing front.

I turned the chest on its feet and stepped back to look at my day’s work.

Very unimpressive for six hours of futzing around.

— Christopher Schwarz

I spent the morning digging through some very old 8/4 and 6/4 mahogany at Midwest Woodworking. This material will be for my June class on building a Roorkhee chair at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking in Berea, Ky.

If you are in the class, you are in for a real treat. This material is beautiful.

And if we are cautious and quick we might have enough time and material to make a Roubo folding camp stool, too.

— Christopher Schwarz