Though I’ve taught at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking for almost a decade, I’ve never been there after dark. It’s a bit like running into a familiar school teacher in an unfamiliar place, like the grocery store.
When I teach at MASW, I like to eat lunch in the young forest behind the school, but tonight I was tripping, fumbling and crunching across that familiar ground trying to find my students so I could make sure they didn’t poop in Marc’s lake.
I found some tents in the clearing, but they were deserted. That’s spooky. I looked out over the surrounding corn fields that were lit up by the Super Blood Moon and thought: This is going to be a weird week.
For the next five days I’m leading a class of 18 young aspiring woodworkers in a class officially called “Hand Tool Immersion,” but which I affectionately call “The Baby Anarchists.” We’ll be fixing up hand tools and building a tool chest. While that doesn’t sound extraordinary, it is.
Marc Adams graciously agreed to slash the tuition for the students to make it affordable for young woodworkers. He donated the materials for the tool chests we’ll be building. And he is allowing all the students to camp in the forest behind his house and school (I think 14 or 15 are back there now).
About 100 readers of this blog have donated tools and cash so that all of these students will end up a kit of tools they need to seriously get started in woodworking.
And woodworking friends – Raney Nelson, John Hoffman, Brian Clites, Tim Henriksen, Justin Leib – are donating their time to help the students get individual instruction.
Now we just have to feed this crew, so I’ll find out if Domino’s pizza delivers out here (just kidding; this is Papa John’s territory).
I’ll be posting photos of this class all week here and in Instagram under the #babyanarchists hashtag. I hope you’ll follow along here and on Instagram because a lot of you out there made this class possible. And I am deeply in your debt.
Author’s Note: This is the third of a three-part interview with Chris about The Anarchist’s Tool Chest. If you missed the first two conversation, you can read them here and here. As promised, this final installment was generated entirely by reader questions. A special thank you to all of you who sent in questions for Chris, including the many thoughtful queries that I was unable to work into this interview.
Jeff:Chris, in The ATC you captured my attention because you interwove your heartfelt conviction about the state of modern consumerism into a book about traditional woodworking. Do you have other convictions that can likewise linked to how or why you’re in the craft? If so, any plans for a book along those lines?
Christopher Schwarz:Aesthetic anarchism is pretty much the framework for my approach to the craft and life. It even guides the way I buy music and food.
I have lots of other things I feel strongly about, but they don’t have much to do with the craft directly. For example, I don’t believe in free will (it’s a long explanation and not a religious one), but I probably shouldn’t write a woodworking book titled: “You were Supposed to Screw That Up.” I will have to give this some more thought, however. It’s a tough question.
Leslie: Chris, I’ve come to regard your time-honored design for an English sawbench as essential in my shop. But I have difficulty keeping the saw in alignment, especially when using postures that aren’t unduly tiring on my body. I’ve tried the posture you describe in The Anarchist’s Tool Chest [pp. 285 – 286], but had little luck. Could you please explain one or two alternative (but still efficient) body stances for using the sawbench?
CS: The only other body stances I know for sawbenches involve sitting down to rip (a la French) or some of Adam Cherubini’s odd foot stylings he showed in his Arts & Mysteries columns.
If the traditional stance doesn’t work, you might try overhand ripping at the bench. That works for most (and is what I prefer, actually)For crosscutting, try clamping the work to the sawbenches and see if you can employ one leg comfortably to stabilize the work.
Turning the saw around so the teeth face away from you is another solution, as in this photograph:
You’d have to have the work secured with clamps or perhaps one leg. It also spreads out the work between both arms, which helps some people. I am sure there are other stances out there. I just haven’t encountered them. Apologies.
Jacob: Hi Chris. My question is about the relationship between construction methods and philosophy. In The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, I thought you were arguing that the dovetail – because of its history in the craft, the skill it demonstrates, the tradition it represents – is emblematic of woodworking anarchy. Yet you’ve recently done away with this joinery in the “baby” ATC, and the only dovetails I’ve noticed in the posts about your forthcoming Furniture of Necessity are the sliding dados on the table.
Just so you understand where I’m coming from, last year I didn’t feel confident had cutting dovetails, so I actually had to make my ATC with rabbets and screws. But that gets to the heart of my question: What is the anarchist’s joint? Does the concept of a beginner’s chest supplant any of your arguments in The Anarchist’s Tool Chest? I guess I’m wondering if woodworking anarchy is more of a skill set or a mindset? Thank you.
CS: For me what is important is that the joinery be superior to the crap that falls apart in a few years. Nails and screws that have been thoughtfully driven can last 200 or 300 years.
It also relates to the material. Dovetailing melamine will probably end poorly.
So while I love the dovetail and think it is the end-all joint, screws and nails and other well-made joints in solid material can outlast us all. Whatever joint it is, make it well and use good materials – that’s the opposite of the typical factor-made thing.
Cameron: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest is a book that had a big impact on my making philosophy. Not only because it turned me on to hand tool woodworking, but because aesthetic anarchism as it was presented tied up a lot of the ideas that brought me to the craft in the first place. It was one of those great moments when you’re reminded there are people out there who feel the same way about something, and not only that, but here’s someone who is doing it in a way that can have a real impact on our culture. OK, fanboy bit finished. Now for my question:
As someone who works in the technology sector, I’m interested to know: Have you ever come across a furniture maker who exemplifies aesthetic anarchism while using automated technology? I can imagine a future where tools like Cad, Makerbot, CNC, and 3D printing – programed to produce traditional pieces with traditional joinery – could allow individuals to make more of their own goods, and probably in a smaller home workshop than we currently need.
CS: Tools are neutral. My table saw grants me freedom by feeding my family at times. When I worked in a factory shop, the table saw was a symbol of my submission.
What is important to me is that people make things instead of buying them (if possible). So CAD, 3D printing, laser-cutting, water-jet machines and Shopbots are all awesome ways to accomplish that goal.
But why do I like hand tools so much and encourage others to try them? Everything with a cord ends up n the landfill. Hand tools last centuries. Sustainability is important to me.
Hand tools have fewer limits than machines (think chisel vs. table saw). A table saw limits your cut with a table, a fence, the size of the rails and the diameter of the blade. A chisel has almost no limits when it comes to shaping wood.
But I try not be a jerk about it. If you make stuff, you’re cool in my book.
Brian: Following up on Cameron’s vision: Chris, ever the twain shall meet? Is craft anarchism essentially about the ends of furniture quality and maker independence? Or the means through which that furniture is made?
CS:It’s both. If you don’t make it, then you can’t have an end product. If you don’t have an end product, then you aren’t making anything.
I know it seems circular. It probably is. Maybe I should write a book on turning.
Stupidity aside: The ways and the means are equally important. You can’t have handmade objects without someone making them.
Brian: Or can you?…
Ethan (The Kilted Woodworker):Chris, can you confirm the rumor that all involved with the writing, editing, and publishing of The Anarchist’s Tool Chest have a secret tattoo hidden somewhere on their body?
CS: I’m 47. I was born in an era where only criminals and sailors had tattoos. And I don’t like needles. Plus, even if I had a tattoo, you’d never be able to find it beneath my fine layer of yeti fur.
Author’s Note: This is the second of a three-part interview with Chris about the Anarchist’s Tool Chest, which is nearing its fifth anniversary. If you missed the first part of the conversation, you can read it here.
Brian Clites: Good evening Chris. I’ll try to keep my questions brief because we’ve received many thoughtful inquires from other readers. In fact, I think I’ll devote the entire third installment of this conversation to the reader questions.
Christopher Schwarz: Good evening. Glad we’re having this conversation tonight. Better than when I get back from England… in September.
BC: When I first read the book, some of the construction details perplexed me. Many of those questions resolved themselves as I completed my own ATC. But I still wonder about some of your hardware choices – particularly the wheels and the lid stay. If you were rebuilding the chest today, would you still buy your casters from a big-box home improvement store? And the lid stay – the “too twee chain” – did you ever find a better solution to recommend to students?
CS:As to the casters, I love them. Though they are Chinese-made, I have yet to find any domestic-made casters that work as well and are that compact. I found some vintage Nylon casters on eBay that I messed around with, but it’s difficult to recommend something unreliable like that to thousands of readers.
On the lid stay, when I wrote the book my research suggested that most tool chests didn’t use one. And for years I’d had my chest lid propped against the wall – a traditional approach.
But some fellow woodworkers convinced me that some sort of stay was the right thing to do, and I agreed with them. I wish I hadn’t. You don’t need a chain or some sort of mechanism or fancy hinge with a stop. Use the wall. It is the only real stop that stops the lid.
CS: Actually I had hollows and rounds (and lots of moulding planes) before constructing the chest. They were stored in the front of my crappy copy of Benjamin Seaton’s chest (please don’t ask me about that chest. It hurts). I actually don’t think moulding planes are essential to woodwork. I know that sounds crazy to people who make reproductions, but most furniture forms built since 1900 don’t need moulding planes. The decorative details are the joinery or, at most, chamfers.
I love moulding planes and use them whenever I can. But do you need them to be a jedi woodworker? No.
If you don’t have moulding planes, use that space at the back of the chest for whatever strikes your fancy – chairmaking tools, marquetry tools or some rolls of carving tools.
BC: Speaking of all the tools in the chest, which ones didn’t really need to be in there? In other words, which tools could the true “naked” woodworker do without? And are there any necessary tools that you, in retrospect, omitted from the text?
CS: You can build a highboy with a knife or (given enough time) erosion, so that’s not really an answerable question. The tools in there are based on 300 years worth of tool inventories (remember the appendix I wrote on this? No one else does). The 1678 list from Joseph Moxon is the shortest list. If you are hard up, use that 1678 list as a starting point. As more tools were invented or improved, then the lists of “required” tools became bigger.
“My list” is not my list. It’s set theory from Moxon to Hayward. I’m not bright enough to come up with a comprehensive list.
BC: Over the years (and most recently in our two-day old forum), I’ve heard lots of talk about building the ATC from “better wood.” Pine – even gorgeous eastern white pine – has a reputation of being cheap, soft, and proletarian. I’ve seen pictures of ATCs built from mahogany and bird’s eye maple. I’ve heard talk of using padauk and purpleheart.
And I even once argued with you along the lines of “if strength is so important, why not 5/4 white oak?”You’ve seemed polite but unmoved by such talk. Is pine merely sufficient for the structure of the ATC, or is it also essential to its soul?
CS: If you don’t need to ever move your chest, then build it from whatever you like. But if your chest has to be moved, use pine or basswood or something lightweight. Your life will be so much easier. I can get the chest into my truck by myself, and that’s because it is pine. A dovetailed pine box is more than strong enough. So the argument for more strength leaves me unmoved.
Aesthetically, I like painted pine chests. But that’s because I’ve seen a thousand of those kinds of chests for every purpleheart abomination. Plus, painted chests just make sense. A beat-up chest that is French polished is a pain to repair. A painted chest is easy – more paint.
I don’t have any class-based attachment to the purity of pine. Wood is wood. Use what you have. Here in this area of the country we have so much black walnut that we used to frame houses with it. Is that wrong?
BC: OK. Get ready. This is my last question tonight, but its long. My favorite chapter in The Anarchist’s Tool Chest is “A Tale of Three Tables.” As a reader who had never met anyone in the book, it was the first time that I got a sense of who you were. Gone was my vague image of a clean-shaven youth tightening clamps on his $159 bench. That distant vision replaced by an actual guy, and his family, and their real tribulations in the modern world. (What married couple hasn’t spilled hot dogs and ketchup all over each other on date night?)
In addition to being able to relate to your family’s frustrations with furniture-like objects, I was smitten by your approach of designing the table based on the family’s habits. Narrow enough that you all could join hands and pass food. Short enough that it would not overwhelm you guys. This table was more than anti-junk; it felt destined to become a member of your family.
Looking back five years, I now notice even more inspiring things about that chapter. I see the seeds of the anatomical approach of By Hand and Eye. I feel the same impulse to simplify that animates your forthcoming Furniture of Necessity. And, most astoundingly, I notice the chapter’s sub-section on Josiah Warren’s Cincinnati Time Store. Wow — are you telling me you had a “ten-year plan” all along? Stated otherwise, what aspirations and values of the ATC have remained bedrocks in your life? And has anything (of that level of personal and philosophical importance) changed?
CS: When I was about 12 years old I can remember sitting in my family’s living room and looking at a hand-hammered copper lamp my family had owned for a couple generations. The lamp had been converted from some weird piece of maratime equipment and had an iron hook on it. And a paper shade. I fell in love with that lamp. (My wife HATES it.)
Before I knew crap about building furniture, at that moment I became smitten with the handmade world. Metal, wood, glass and leather.
Since that weird crystal-clear moment I have tried to surround me and my family with things that were made by human hands. Nothing is more beautiful or reassuring to me.
As Lucy and I struggled to build a life for ourselves we had to make compromises by purchasing ugly, awful and sub-functional things – like the first two tables in that chapter. But the goal was always to have the table that we still use today. And the Morris chair where I drink my coffee in the morning. The Welsh chair where I drink a beer every night.
When I was caressing that lamp 35 years ago, did I have a vision for Lost Art Press, mutualism and some sort of mechanical society? No. But I wanted to make things so badly that (at times) it physically hurt.
So where we are headed now is the only logical path for someone who has those ridiculous feelings – plus the energy to never lay down my tools.
As to the final question: Has anything philosophically changed since I wrote the book? No. I’m still the same person. But what has changed is that I know I’m not alone.
My chest has become dirty, dinged and faded from daily use. I love it.
You weren’t supposed to build the tool chest in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” It’s a metaphor. A conceit. A Trojan something or another.
I did my homework before I built it. I still have all that research piled into folders upstairs. But when I started writing the book, the physical chest became less important than the ideas it represents.
So it’s not perfect. It’s a prototype. When I build a chest today for customers or a class, here’s what I do differently.
Install the lower skirt before attaching the bottom boards. This allows me to clamp the living pee out of the skirt where it meets the carcase. The result: Fewer gaps between the carcase and the lower skirt. If I still have a sliver of a gap, I’ll miter a 3/16” bead around the skirt.
Here’s the existing 45° profile. It looks fine and is plenty strong. But I prefer the look of a steeper slope.
Change the profile on the skirts. I use a 45° bevel, which is fine. After messing about, I prefer a bevel that is 1” high and leaves a 1/8” flat at the top. (The exact angle depends on the the thickness of your stock. Don’t worry about the exact angle.)
Here’s where the chain liberated itself from the carcase. Good riddance.
Nix the chain for the lid stay. More on that in an upcoming article with Brian Clites, our moderator.
Here you can see the tool rack and the lower runners that stop at the sawtill.
Reconfigure the sawtill and runners. OK, this is complicated to explain and I’ll be brief. My chest had a hinged panel between the sawtill and the lower tray. It acted as a door to the lower section of the chest and as a stop for the lower tray. In traditional chests, the panel was a shelf to put the stuff you needed every day in the shop – your apron, hat etc. In use, I hated it. It really got in the way of my work. So I removed it. And that is why the runners for the lower tray stop at the sawtill. Don’t imitate me. Make the runners for all the trays run the full depth of the chest.
I still have the panel – it’s a nice piece of work. This morning I put it in place so you could see how it works. It looks nice but makes working out of the chest more difficult.
Add tool racks. I like a tool rack pierced with 1/2” holes on 1-1/8” centers. My favorite one is on the front wall of the chest.
I’ve had about 100 people suggest other changes, from making the dust seal surround the lid on four sides and hinging the seal (not a bad idea), to adding a tissue dispenser (a bad idea). Feel free to discuss these amongst yourselves in our fetal forum.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. When I return from England next month, one of the things on my list is to update the complete list of tools in my chest and post it here. And to get the “Anarchist Tool Chest” T-shirt live in our store. So stay tuned.
Author’s Note: During the next 10 months, Lost Art Press will mark the fifth anniversary of The Anarchist’s Tool Chest. As the quinquennial approaches, John and Chris might even have a few surprises up their sleeves. But before everyone gets all teary-eyed, Chris thought it would be more fitting to have someone grill him about everything that could be better about the book. I volunteered.
Hence, the conversation below is the first of what I anticipate will be a three-part interview. I focused on what I perceive to be some of the most challenging aspects of the book’s “anarchism.” The second interview will focus on the chest itself. In the final interview, I’ll ask Chris what major changes he would make to the book, if he was starting it all over again from scratch.
For the subsequent interviews, I’ll incorporate as many of my favorite reader inquiries as possible. So, if you’re dying to grill Chris about the ATC, please email me your questions.
Brian Clites: Good morning, Chris. Five years ago, you said that you disliked the word “anarchist.” Now that the term has become synonymous – at least among woodworkers – with your approach to the craft, are you less frustrated with it? Or, perhaps, has that made you hate it all the more?
Christopher Schwarz: Good morning. I still dislike it, but I have embraced it nonetheless because it tends to get people talking about what it means. Like, “Here’s a middle-aged man with no tattoos or piercings. Conservative haircut. Horn rims. He’s an anarchist?”
Once you explain what aesthetic anarchism is (a tendency to avoid large organizations and embrace DIY and self-reliance), and what it’s not (violent; an effort to overthrow governments), then a real conversation can begin.
BC: Do you think, as a whole, U.S. society is more or less consumptive of chip-board crap than it was five years ago? In other words, irrespective of your book’s philosophy, have things gotten better or worse for the furniture most people buy?
CS:I am an eternal optimist and am happy to see more Americans interested in well-made things created in their communities – bread, cheese, beer, leather goods, clothing, even flasks. I haven’t seen much interest in craft-made furniture, however. And that interest might be a long way off. What I do see, however, is an overall increased interest in “making” things, furniture, robots, jewelry, whatever.
That is where it will begin: People making things for themselves that clearly outclass the mas-manufactured junk. Then your friends see it and ask: “Will you make me one?”
My personal focus is not on society as a whole. I think my best hope is to train makers and get them to a very high level quickly – and that’s what “Furniture of Necessity” is all about. In some ways it is more radical than “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
BC: Does the readership of LAP satisfy your mantra “disobey me”? Do you worry sometimes that too many of us – particularly novices – want you to be their guru?
CS:We all need some help at first – I sure did. So I’m not bothered by beginners who ask endless questions. That’s totally natural.
What I don’t like seeing is people who cannot cut the umbilical cord. Even after years of bench work and building dozens of great projects, they still want someone to validate their decision to buy a particular brand of 3/16” chisel. Or worse – for me to do the research for them.
BC: You described the ATC as a chest for the tools you really need, and proclaimed that you should probably throw away any tool that doesn’t fit in the chest. The ATC represented for you a moment of enlightenment, a breaking free from the endless cycle of tool attachment. Setting aside for the moment stationary machinery, how would you grade yourself as a tool consumer over the past five years?
CS: I’ve added only two tools to the chest since I finished building it in 2010: a shooting-board plane and a large specialty square for laying out compound angles. I’ve replaced a few tools, but those have actually been downgrades in terms of expense – a simpler coping saw and a Stanley 45 instead of my Barrett plow, for example.
I have bought several tools to review them for Popular Woodworking Magazine – but then I have given those away or sold them. I’m doing those reviews as a favor to Editor Megan Fitzpatrick. I am a reluctant reviewer.
BC: Stated a bit differently, what would you say if someone suggested that perhaps you’ve merely substituted hand tools for power equipment, and that you remain firmly wed to the joys and challenges of tool lust?
CS:Let me put it this way: When I go into a general woodworking store (or the tool crib at the home center) I feel a little ill and upset while surrounded by all those jigs, tools and accessories you don’t need. So I just put my head down, pick up the shellac flakes or glue that I came for and head for the cashier.
My attitude toward tools has seeped into every aspect of my life, as I suspected it would. I beg my family not to get me gifts for holidays. I’ve given away all the cooking gizmos that people have bought me over the years. When I buy socks, I buy the best darn socks I can find.
One thing I want to add, however, is this: I don’t expect or ask anyone to behave like I do. I don’t ask my family to eschew consumer goods. Our household is not “The Mosquito Coast.” Everything I do is by example only.
BC: Thanks Chris. I look forward to our next conversation about the book.
