Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn’t gold.
— Leo Tolstoy’s Diaries (1985) edited and translated by R. F. Christian. London: Athlone Press, Vol 2, p. 512.
Whenever I teach at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School, I always spend a few hours at Ed Lebetkin’s tool store upstairs. (It’s even more tempting now because there is also a store selling wine and craft beer at the top of the stairs. Get drunk! Buy tools!)
Anyway, most of the time I’m in the store I’m helping students pick what they need from the thousands of tools Ed has in stock.
And without fail, I always buy something myself. Usually it’s just a piece to study and resell, such as an all-iron marking gauge I bought last time.
But this time, I picked up something for keeps for my tool chest – a set of four clamps that look blacksmith-made. These will replace the small, ugly and modern little clamps I’ve had for many years. We used these little antique guys all last week in the class while knocking stock down for the tool chest we were building. They are sweet.
Perhaps my kids will get F-style clamps in their stockings this Christmas….
— Christopher Schwarz
For many years, Roy Underhill has owned a slant-top tool chest that has a ridiculous story attached to it that involves 248 children, Greenland and, oh never mind. I should make him tell the tale.
The chest is interesting to me because it’s similar to a chest drawn in “Grandpa’s Workshop” and one I’ve seen a few times in the wild. However, I can’t recall any old books that talk about this form, and I’m away from my library this week.
I would really like to build the chest from “Grandpa’s Workshop” to see what it’s like to work out of it. But until I dig up some good historical examples to work from, we’ll just have to admire some of these details from this chest from Roy’s collection.
I call it the “White Star Line” chest because it has a label on the left end identifying it as belonging to a second-class passenger. The chest is overbuilt in almost every way. The stock used throughout the main carcase is a full 1” thick – the interior parts and base moulding are thinner.
The front and back are dovetailed to the ends with boldly sloped tails, while the thick lid is held flat with breadboard ends.
And the hardware is impressive. The strap hinges are bolted through the top and slant lid. The hasp is a massive twist of iron.
Inside the chest there is one sliding till, dovetailed at the corners, and the bottom 9” of the chest is divided into two compartments. The rear compartment is 7” from the back wall of the chest. And there is a sawtill on the lid that looks sized for a single panel saw.
Some dimensions:
Overall height: 17-1/4”
Width: 44-1/8”
Depth: 19-1/4”
If you know of chests that look like this but are a little taller (like the one shown in the illustration), I’d appreciate any details at chris@lostartpress.com. Update: One reader sent me a photo of a very similar Dutch chest from “The Toolbox Book.” So that was very helpful.
— Christopher Schwarz
For those of you who do not follow my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine, I’m in Pittsboro, N.C., this week teach a class in building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” You can follow along with the daily videos using the following links. (Warning: banjos were plucked in the making of these films.)
2. Day 2: The Shell is Assembled
Today we will attach the bottoms – tongue-and-groove, beading, nails. And we will true up the cases to prepare them for the dovetailed skirting.
— Christopher Schwarz
Everything I need for my tool chest shell.
Christopher Schwarz is literally off the grid at the moment – so he has no idea that I’ve commandeered his blog for the weekend (though I suspect he’ll soon figure it out). But it seems appropriate, because I’ve finally begun building my version of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” (ATC).
It’s pathetic that I’ve waited this long.
I watched as Chris built his first ATC in late 2010, before, I think, he’d even come up with the title. He’d leave the Popular Woodworking shop every night (you know…when he still worked for a living) to race home and make dinner for his family, then write until the wee hours. And after he was satisfied with the words, he moved on to the images and book design.
By April 2011, Chris was almost done. I distinctly recall copy editing an almost-final proof of ATC on April 15 and 16 last year. Why? Because there was a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event (and the public unveiling of Chris’s chest…so to speak) in our office/shop that weekend – so I was wielding my peacock-blue editing pen (it’s so much kinder than red) while also talking with visitors and giving tool demonstrations. And Chris wanted the book off to the printer on April 17. If you have a first edition of the book, well, that explains the crap editing.
So I read the book twice again before the second edition was published (and caught almost all the earlier mistakes) and again before the third edition (at which point I caught, I hope, the rest of them). If you have the latest edition and find an error, I really don’t want to know (but Chris does – feel free to point it out to him).
After “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was published, Chris started traveling around the world to teach classes on building the chest (like Elvis, he’d by that point left the [PW] building). And I even spent a week as his helper monkey at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School early this spring, during which I cut what I think was eleventy-billion board feet of poplar for all the students’ skirts, lid pieces, bottom boards and battens. (I’m now awfully good with a panel saw, if I do say so myself). I helped glue up cases and fit skirts, and helped a new woodworker learn to cut his first hand-cut dovetails (though he didn’t need much help).
This is all a (very) long-winded way of saying that I know “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” inside and out – both the book and the construction. Yet I’ve not actually built the darn thing.
Within the next two weeks, if all goes according to plan that will have changed. This morning, I glued up panels for the case front, back and sides (and pesky knotholes have dictated that my chest be just shy of the 24″-wide panels called for; I guess that’s my idea of anarchy?).
Tomorrow, I’ll trim the panels to final size and process the stock for the skirts (yes, I’m using the PWM power equipment for that – sue me). Then, I’ll bring everything home to my hand-tool shop and break out the dovetail saw. My goal is to have the shell, bottom, battens and skirts done by next weekend, at which time I’ll build the lid. But unlike someone else, well, I still have to go to work every day…so I hope I can stick to my plan.
— Megan Fitzpatrick
p.s. Christopher will be back on the grid – but busy teaching – come Monday. He’s back at Roy’s in Pittsboro, N.C., teaching students to build…the Anarchist’s Tool Chest. (This time, he’ll have to do his own rough stock prep.)
p.p.s. The best thing about this build so far? I needed to buy liquid hide glue, and the only place near me that sells it happens to be right next door to Graeter’s. Excellent!