Readers frequently ask for a list of tools I have in my chest with brand names, tool sizes and short comments on the efficacy of each tool.
I hesitate to do this because a lot of my tools are dictated by the type of work I do. Most people don’t need three sliding bevels. I wish I had six because chairs. But despite my instincts, here is a snapshot of what’s in my chest right now.
Note that this list doesn’t include some specialty tools for chairmaking – a scorp, travisher and spokeshaves – which I keep elsewhere.
One of the significant changes to the interior of the tool chests I build for customers is how the sawtill is constructed. The original from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was built like a few chests I had observed with a solid wall between the sawtill and the area for the bench planes.
I have replaced that solid wall with two horizontal rails. This change allows more light to enter the sawtill so you can find objects that have fallen down there or you have stashed there. And it reduces the overall weight of the chest.
I’ve also reduced the height of the sawtill to 9-1/2” so the three sliding tills float above it without interference.
Finally, I now add a bit of moulding to the components for the sawtill and the moulding plane till. In this case, I used a 1/2” square ovolo. These are decorative – spats on a sloth.
All of these components are merely nailed and screwed together so they can be removed for repair or when your heirs decide to store blankets instead of tools in your precious tool chest.
The half pin on the right did not have hide glue applied to the end grain. Note that this photo was taken after the glue had dried but before the joint had been cleaned off.
While at David Savage’s shop, Rowden, a couple years ago we assembled a bunch of dovetailed tool chests using hot hide glue. That’s not weird. What was weird was how some of the students applied the glue.
They brushed the glue on the interior surfaces, knocked the joints together and then brushed glue on the exterior surfaces of the joints.
That was weird to me.
I’ve been in shops all over the world – traditional and modern. And the only time I’ve seen hide glue applied on the outside of a joint is during hammer veneering.
It was a whirlwind two weeks in Devon, and I didn’t get to ask David about that process. But when I came back to the United States, I started fooling around with it myself. During the last couple years I’ve gone back and forth between the two methods both with hot hide glue and liquid hide glue.
In talking with David, he called it the “Juicy Lucy” school of gluing. Sometimes at Rowden, David said they also use the “Sahara”method. This is where you have been successful if a small bead of glue comes out bearing evidence that glue has been used in the assembly.
I’m not a glue scientist, and what I have been doing is not a properly controlled experiment. It’s building furniture. What I have observed is that applying hide glue to the outside surfaces of a joint – especially the end grain – can make a good joint a wee bit better. It’s not a dramatic difference. But the end grain seems to soak up the adhesive and swell a tiny tiny bit.
But wait – doesn’t this affect finishing? Not with hide glue and traditional finishes. Hide glue is transparent to most finishes. So I plane off the exterior surfaces like I normally do (usually a swipe or two with a smoothing plane) and it’s done.
Should you change your gluing technique? Not if you are happy with your results. But if you are a curious person, give it a try and decide for yourself.
You might look at the photo above and say: “Schwarz is a slob. Look at the mess of tools piled in his tills.” I don’t see things that way – open tills allow you great flexibility. The only problem is if you’re someone who doesn’t like their gravy to touch their peas.
Public service announcement: Gravy is good food.
When I look at the photo above I see something different that makes me crazy. Look at the soiled and oily area in the middle of the tills. Here’s a closer look.
Yup, those darkened bronze pulls on the tills are like lederhosen on a lizard – totally useless. When you work in a chest with tills you grab them by the middle to move them. Why? Because after a few months of use, your tightly fit tills begin to rack. It’s almost impossible to prevent. Each till is 8” wide x 36” long, so it doesn’t take much for them to jam if you grab them by one pull or by a corner.
(Duncan Phyfe had a novel solution to this problem, which I’ll discuss some day.)
Go you grab the till with one hand to move it in place and use your other hand to grab the tool you need. The pulls are for show.
But that doesn’t mean you should do a crap job of fitting your tills in the chest.
I fit the till bottoms first, then I build the dovetailed tills a smidge smaller than the perfectly fit bottoms so I don’t have to plane anything to fit.
Today I fit the six till bottoms for these two chests. It’s fussy shooting-plane work. A shaving too far results in a rattling, trembling bottom. Strive to get the bottoms moving forward and back with just a finger and without the aid of wax. That’s when you can call it done.
And here ends the worse SEO’d article I’ve written in a long time. Sorry in particular to the people who were referred here from termblingbottom.com.
During the last five years, I’ve made considerable changes to the innards of the tool chests I build for customers. Most of these changes are details, really, but they are informed by the fact that I work out of a tool chest every day.
The most significant of the changes is in the runners for the three tills. On the original chest, the runners for the lower till didn’t extend all the way from front to back. They stopped at the saw till (see above).
The reason for this was to imitate several historical chests that also had a door to the lower parts of the chest. After building the chest with the door, I found it silly. So I removed it. But I was stuck with the runners.
Now when I build a chest, I make all three runners run from the front to the back.
The other change to the runners is that I now bead the top edge of each runner. It looks nice, and the rounded edge prevents the runners from splintering in service.
This is quick work with a 3/16” beading plane.
Next up: The sawtill. It’s smaller and has less room for your weed stash.
