This week at The Woodwright’s School, we had a new “first” when it comes to making Anarchist’s Tool Chests.
All 10 students (plus the instructor) had their tool chest carcases assembled by the end of the day Tuesday, the second day of class.
To what do I attribute this success?
Good help.
Thanks to Bill Anderson of Edwards Mountain Woodworks and Megan Fitzpatrick of Popular Woodworking Magazine (not to mention Roy Underhill himself), we’ve been able to keep the students on the straight and narrow. Stopping trouble before it starts. Serving them tea. Rubbing their loins with the balms of forbidden trees. And whelming them – not underwhelming, not overwhelming.
The chest is built from clear Eastern white pine. The carcase and skirts are completely dovetailed. The bottom boards and battens are attached with cut nails.
The lid is a mortise-and-tenon frame with a dovetailed dust seal around it.
The carcase of the chest is painted in black milk paint (three coats) and ready to go. The lid is glued up and the dust seal needs to be leveled to the lid. Then it can be painted. The dimensions are as per “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” – about 24″ x 24″ x 40″. It’s a full-size chest, not a traveling version.
The interior is empty. No tills or dividers.
If you are interested in buying the chest and can pick it up at the school in Manchester, Conn., send an e-mail to Bob Van Dyke at Bob Van Dyke at bobvandyke@sbcglobal.net.
Several readers have asked how far the students in my tool chest class at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking got on Friday afternoon.
Everyone got their lids complete. About four or five people got the dust seal on. Honestly, I think every student could have finished both the lid and the dust seal, but everyone was tired and ready to crack open a beer or try a shot of Connecticut moonshine (that is not a typo).
So we spent the last hour just yacking it up.
As for me, I had Carl “Mr. Wonderful” Bilderback assisting me this week, so I was able to finish the entire shell of the chest and get three coats of milk paint on the carcase.
At one point I asked Carl, a retired union carpenter, to give me a hand with the painting. He readily and cheerfully agreed. But then he noted that during his career he always told people he’d “rather have a rat in my mouth than paint something.”
The real challenge in teaching a class on “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is this: How can I make woodworkers cut dovetails as fast (and accurate) as possible?
When I first began teaching tool chest classes, we weren’t able to glue up the carcases until late, late Wednesday night or Thursday. Then it was a mad rush to get the rest of the chest completed.
Since then I have learned to put away the “encouragement whip” and get out the “punishment whip.” (I wonder why women rarely take my classes?)
Today – the second day of the course at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking – we have a third of the 15 chests glued up. The rest will be glued up on the third day before lunch. This is a frickin’ cake walk.
What has changed? Well, to be honest, I am a poor teacher at best. Honest and true. But I have learned a few tricks from some fantastic teachers. Here are two of them.
1. Teach the information is small, manageable bites. Send students back to their benches to perform one operation. Repeat. This is from Trevor Smith, a high school physics teacher in Troy, Mich. The dude is an amazing teacher. I watched him teach for one day and learned more about teaching that day than in any other time period.
2. If you say it will happen, it will happen. Advice from Doug Dale, one of the outstanding assistants and teachers at Marc Adams School of Woodworking. If you set the goal for the day as “you will finish this particular operation,” then – surprise – the students achieve that goal. Weird.
And there is one thing I bring to the table: debasing the dovetail joint.
I do not treat this joint as a holy relic – St. Christopher’s duodenum. It’s a mechanical joint that is easy to cut if you break it down into small bites (thanks again, Trevor). None of the operations in cutting a dovetail is hard. The only thing that is difficult is being consistent with every operation.
With five chests together today, and all of them looking really, really good, I feel justified in drinking a beer.
This is the only opening in a tool chest class until 2014 I believe.
If you can ditch work that week, contact the school’s director, Bob Van Dyke, via e-mail or phone: bobvandyke@sbcglobal.net or 860-729-3186. During this class we’ll be building the chest out of some outstanding Eastern white pine – Bob is a wiz at finding beautiful stock.
And we will be eating at Frank Pepe’s pizza. A lot. Perhaps until I am sick.
