I avoid dealing with large organizations whenever possible, and that is because I am not Chinese.
Somewhere, somehow, some nutjob in the Cincinnati medical community put a note in my file years ago that my preferred language is “Chinese (Mandarin).” While that doesn’t seem like a big deal, it’s a never-ending source of inanity when I go in for a medical test and they hand me forms so they can hire a Chinese translator to be present during the procedure.
This has been going on for years. No matter how many times they delete the reference to Chinese, it keeps resurfacing, even after we switched health insurers.
Exhibit 2: A certain percentage of the times that I fly, I am questioned about why my name on my passport doesn’t match the name on the passenger manifest.
Here’s why the names don’t match: Some computers only allow you to enter 10 characters for your first name. “Christopher” is 11 characters. “Christophe” is 10 letters and is the French version of my given name. Que the cavity search.
So I’m French. Or Chinese.
After many years as passing for an English speaker, I ran into the Chinese problem again today while scheduling a medical test. After going through the whole “you don’t sound Chinese” conversation, she asked me if this test was related to a worker’s compensation claim.
“Yup,” I said. “I was in a rickshaw accident.”
I’ve filed this entry under “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
“This was the work of my workshop dog Charlie, a curly retriever x lab. I have to admit this book not only got read by Charlie, but it may have been thrown across the backyard toward him I after I found it sans cover. Not a page loose.”
I keep every Anarchist’s Tool Chest photograph that readers have sent me through the years. I’ve seen my tool chest designs painted with flowers. I’ve seen it painted electric purple. With a Kleenex dispenser in the front wall.
But that didn’t prepare me for the tool chest of Marco Terenzi.
The story begins one morning at a hotel breakfast in England. I’m teaching a class of 18 students how to build the Anarchist’s Tool Chest for the New English Workshop. Derek Jones and Paul Mayon, who run N.E.W., are eating their eggs and toast and chatting away when I sit down for coffee. It’s a scene we’ve repeated several times that week, but today something is different.
Behind Derek’s chair is an odd-shaped Pelican case, which doesn’t enter the conversation. We finish breakfast and prepare to head to Warwickshire College, which is where the tool chest class is being held. But then Derek and Paul take a detour into the hotel’s sitting room.
They put the Pelican case down on the coffee table and Derek starts telling a story about a guy in Detroit who spent 400 hours making the thing that is in the Pelican case. Then they let me open it.
It’s a perfect (and I don’t use that word often) quarter-scale version of The Anarchist’s Tool Chest. It is built exactly like mine. The same material, the same number and slope of dovetails, the same hinges with the same clocked screws. But it is the size of a small toaster.
All of it was made by Marco Terenzi, a 24-year-old artist and woodworker from outside Detroit. It seems like I spent a good 10 speechless minutes looking at the thing. Moving the three perfect trays, eyeballing the hardware, marveling at the perfection of it all.
And then they dropped the real bomb. Marco was coming to England that weekend and would be taking a class on building a Dutch tool chest the following week.
Now, before I carry this story any further, I urge you to check out Marco’s Instagram feed, which documents the construction of the tool chest in incredible detail. Also check out his web site. Yes, that’s a quarter-scale Roubo workbench. Yes, he made those tools to make the chest and the bench.
The rest of the story is that Marco and I got to hang out a bit during and after the class and he gave me a quarter-scale version of my Andrew Lunn saw. And it works. Incredible.
The photos of the chest are amazing, but if you play your cards right, you will be able to see the chest in person. The New English Workshop boys will be displaying the chest at shows around England in the coming year. And they have promised me that I’ll be able to show it off as well.
I am hoping to get it here for Handworks in Amana, Iowa, in 2015. And I think I have Marco talked into coming to Amana, too.
So stay tuned. This story has just begun. Marco is starting to make all the tools that go in the chest – including casting the metal planes.
Asking a newly minted woodworker to build an Anarchist Tool Chest in five days is about like asking them to grow a tail.
During a five-day class, most students are working on the lid when we run out of time. This is somewhat frustrating for the students and myself because we both want the sucker done and ready to use.
One solution would be to add extra days to the course. But most students are so worn out after five days of high-pressure woodworking that the sixth day would be mostly nap time (we’ve tried it). There are other solutions I’ve pondered, all of which add time or cost or whatever. (This is my polite way of saying that I’m not looking for your suggestion to hold the class on Saturn, where the days are much longer.)
So this summer I have designed some different chests to build in 2015. One of the chests isn’t ready to unveil because it is part of a kooky-go-nuts low-cost new class I’m developing for 2015 (Hint: I hope you like the smell of B.O.).
The other chest is designed and ready to discuss. This chest is basically the same size as the Traveling Anarchist Tool Chest, but it has some simpler joinery and an additional cool feature.
1. Fewer dovetails. Students have dubbed my Anarchist Tool Chest classes as a dovetail death march. I don’t disagree. This new chest replaces the dovetails on both the lower and upper skirts with miters.
For the upper skirt, I think this is an overdue change. The upper skirt is a component of the chest that doesn’t see a lot of wear; it’s rare to see damage to this part of an old chest. Also, the upper skirt is now a three-piece assembly instead of going all the way around the carcase. This speeds assembly up and allows me to add a built-in stop for the lid (more one that in a minute).
Alas, the lower skirt does take a heap of abuse, so I resisted using miters here. Sure, I’ve seen miters survive just fine, but I’ve also seen them fail on old chests. So I’m recommending students add steel corner brackets, another feature I’ve seen on surviving tool chests.
2. A different lid. I love the lid on my old tool chest, but it has a lot of joinery and takes more than a day to build by hand for most people.
So here I’m using a lid design shown both in chests designed by Charles Hayward and Paul Hasluck. The lid is a simple flat panel with the grain running left to right. It is surrounded on three sides by a dovetailed dust seal (just like on my old chest). The flat panel is glued to the front of the dust seal and rabbeted into the ends. Cut nails keep the ends attached to the flat panel and allow it to move, pushing the wood movement to the back of the chest.
The other feature I like is that I have extended the width of the flat panel so it will act as a stop, keeping the lid upright when open. In the current drawing I have it open at 90°, but I can lean it back by planing a bevel on the lid.
This simpler lid also provides a nice canvas for a marquetry panel.
I’m still drawing out the interior of the chest, but it will be much like the Traveling Anarchist Tool Chest. There will be two sliding trays, a rack and two sawtills – one for panel saws and one for backsaws.
3. And finally, I have thinned down some components of this chest to make it lighter in weight, but still plenty strong. The thinner components – the bottoms, skirts and dust seal – are all things I’ve seen on old chests. Nothing new here. I’ve also thinned down the thickness of the carcase so that we can use off-the-rack white pine to save expense and reduce weight.
I’ve loaded my SketchUp drawing into the 3D warehouse. Be warned. This is the metric version. I’m not switching to metric. But I’m just back from England and I’m trying to train my brain to work better in metric. When I finish the Imperial version, I’ll post that as well.
And so she asks: “What does it mean? ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest?’”
I take a deep breath and purse my lips a bit. I get asked this question a lot, especially by non-woodworkers, people who haven’t read “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and complete wankers.
The truth is, I eschew labels such as “libertarian,” “liberal” and “lemming.” While I am happy to explain my outlook on life, I do it without a whiff of political language. Instead of talking about the political landscape, I’d rather live in the real one.
So my basic response to the question goes like this: I dislike large organizations – governments, corporations, churches. When organizations get enormous, the humans in them tend to do inhumane things, such as start wars, burn each other at the stake or enslave people in factories.
I refuse to participate in those organizations as much as possible. I don’t vote. I don’t give money to churches. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart, or really any other chain store. I admit it’s difficult to be Puritanical about this. Buying a car or a computer is difficult without somehow engaging with a large organization, but I do my best.
Most of all, I try to consume less and make more – and not be an a-hole about everything I’ve said above. The world has enough of those, and I’m surprised they don’t have their own organizing body.
If you are interested in American anarchism, or the particular branch that applies to woodworkers – aesthetic anarchism – I encourage you to read the following short bits.
1. The Wikipedia entry on Josiah Warren, the first American anarchist and the founder of the Cincinnati Time Store.
2. The 1906 book on Josiah Warren by William Bailie. It’s available for free here from archive.org.
3. Buy a copy of “Native American Anarchism” by Eunice Minette. Many libraries have the book. You can buy one from AbeBooks.com as well. The book is a bit mistitled. It has nothing to do with Native Americans. It is about anarchism that took root in America.
Most of all, if you think you are an anarchist, refuse to listen to the non-anarchists who dismiss your approach to life. That’s like listening to the factory owners who laugh at hand-tool woodworking as quaint.
The best response to the criticism is to close the laptop, sharpen a chisel and chop some dovetails. As George R.R. Martin writes over and over in his books, “Words are wind.”
