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.
After Marco Terenzi completed his quarter-scale replica of my “Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” Paul Mayon of the New English Workshop conducted this short interview about the making of the chest. He interviewed Marco and then (briefly) me about the chest.
While watching the video I was struck by how Marco kept staring only at the chest. I kept thinking: Marco – look at the interviewer! Come on!
Of course, the entire time I’m on screen I can only stare at the chest myself.
This fall, Lost Art Press will add a discussion forum. The “digital pub” will be a space for readers to converse, share photographs of LAP-inspired builds and ask questions related to hand-tool skills, books and life in the craft.
When I joined Chris a few weeks ago for the Anarchist’s Tool Chest class at Phil Lowe’s Furniture Institute of Massachusetts, I mentioned my plans to launch a “fan site.” I wasn’t sure what domain name to use, but when Chris showed up at happy hour in his “Death to the Pixies” t-shirt, it was obvious: “Fu**ostArtPress.com,” I blurted out. Sometime between that outburst and the next round of beers, Chris decided to let me give it a shot.
But the forum is also an idea that John and Chris have been thinking about for a while. Over the years, they’ve received a steady stream of questions, along with suggestions for what they “NEED” to add to the web site. When Chris decided to give up e-mail, pesky readers like myself lost the capacity to ask those questions. And Chris lost one of the most treasured aspects of being an author – the pleasure of receiving feedback from engaged readers.
So the forum fills gaps on both sides. For readers, it will be a virtual pub. For authors, it revives a digital means of receiving feedback, questions and criticisms.
At this point, I bet you’re asking two questions: (1) “Who is this guy?” and (2) “What’s he got to do with the blog?” Although I hate writing about myself, here are some quick answers.
(1) I’m a woodworking nerd. I have more experience reading about wood than building furniture. But that is about to change. For the past decade, I’ve been a professional professor and a hobby woodworker. This fall, I’m reversing those roles. While being an adjunct professor of American religious history has been a fulfilling vocation, it hasn’t paid the bills. I’ve yet to find that coveted tenure-track job, and I’m fed up with the corporatization of higher education. Inspired by authors like Chris, Robert Pirsig, and Matt Crawford – and encouraged by my wife and many of our university colleagues – I’m taking the plunge into anarchy. I’m building my own furniture designs. Valuating my own labor. Refusing to accept the Ikea-fication of our world. And narrowing the gap between what I do and what I love.
(2) I’m going to moderate the forum. While I encourage constructive criticism, this won’t be a space for hate. (And I will have a really low threshold for any posts derogatory of other readers.) We want this to be a friendly pub where the whole family can enjoy bratwurst and beers, not that bar down the street where every Saturday night someone gets their head bashed in with a cue ball. (I actually love those bars – this just isn’t going to be one of them.) In addition to moderating posts, its my job to keep other blog readers and LAP authors up to date. Each Monday, I’ll write about what’s trending in the forum, including links to conversations and photographs. As the discussions build, I’ll solicit comments and responses from LAP authors.
We anticipate we’ll be ready to launch the forum by mid-September. Until then, you’ll have to keep using the lame “comments” function to tell us what you think!
— Brian Clites, your new moderator and author of TheWoodProf.com blog
When people who teach woodworking get together for a beer, there is an inevitable discussion that is about as fruitful as the pins-first or tail-first dovetail debate.
Here’s the teachers’ debate: Should woodworking classes focus on building skills or instead emphasize getting a project complete and out the door?
During the last 10 years that I’ve been teaching I have tried to see if I could do both – teach skills and “git ‘er done.” But I can tell you this: It involves a lot of yelling with a horrible German accent to make it happen.
This week I wrapped up a class with beginning woodworkers that was designed to teach 16 students a lot of basic hand-tool skills and also to build a traditional nailed-together tool chest using only hand tools. I think we almost succeeded at doing both. (Download all the plans and instructions for this chest for free here.)
The class was at Bridgwater College in Bridgwater, England, and put on by the New English Workshop. The class was offered at a very low cost (95 pounds for five days) to make it possible for young and aspiring woodworkers to afford. I think seven of the students camped during the week to save money.
Before I launch into some of the cool stuff we all learned, I have to thank Paul Mayon and Derek Jones of New English Workshop for allowing this class to happen. In the end, I think all three of us lost money on the class, but that’s OK. The students were thrilled with their new skills and their chest.
Day 1: Panel pandemonium. We had more than 60 panels to glue up for the chest but only about 20 or so clamps for the job. Solution: Spring joints. By hollowing out the edge of each joint with a handplane we could glue up each panel using only one clamp. The easiest way to do this is with a trick that Bob Van Dyke showed me: Clamp the lowest board of the panel in your face vise. Glue up the panel vertically in the vise and clamp it all up in the vise. It’s a brilliant space-saving solution.
Day 2: The day of the jack. Some of the stock we used had some variations in thickness, and some of the students had some panel joints where the seams didn’t line up perfectly. So we took a detour to the grinder to make more than a dozen newly minted fore planes with a radically curved iron.
Many woodworkers I teach are afraid of the grinder. But these students didn’t know to be afraid. It was nice to see them just step up to the machine and do beautiful work at their first go (you can do it, too).
Day 3: Rebates by saw, chisel and plane. After teaching hand-cut rabbets (rebates over here) for many years, I’ve concluded it is difficult to expect perfection on the first go. So I’ve switched to teaching cross-grain rabbets and dados using a fence, a saw and a plane to remove the waste.
This week we experimented with using a block of wood to press the sawplate against the fence. Every rebate wall was dead 90° as a result. I am quite happy with this technique. A few of us began assembling the carcase on day three but….
Day 4: I am so hammered. We nailed the chests together with hammer and cut nails. We imported some Tremont clinch roseheads for the job, but one of the students brought some interesting nails that looked exactly like a Roman nail but were machine-made. Crazy. More details on these nails after I find out where his parents bought them.
We also attached the shiplapped bottoms and learned about beading planes. Beading is a sickness. One of the students who likes modern furniture said: “I don’t want to like the bead, but I can’t help myself.”
Day 5: Finishing. Thanks to the hard work of one of the students, we were able to bring in some amazing casein-based paint that we tinted in class and applied with foam rollers. Lucky for us England has an industry that caters to the historic trades. So we bought the most amazing milk paint I’ve ever used for a small fraction of the cost I pay in the States. (I don’t have the name of the company with me – I’m in a hotel. When I find it I’ll post it here.)
The class was a bit tiring. Or let me put it this way: I’m looking forward to a relaxing time on Monday teaching a workbench-making course with hundreds of pounds of ash to throw around.