This episode was great fun to shoot, except for the 20 times I was smashed into my own tool chest with my head jammed in a dark place it didn’t want to go – a place that the haters say my head has never left.
As always when shooting “The Woodwright’s Shop,” guests are beat with a foam noodle by Roy Underhill, you throw up a little in your mouth during the filming and you will eat Bojangle’s fried chicken during the lunch break.
So on balance, a good time.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. As always, thanks to Roy Underhill for inviting me on his show. I still cannot believe it really happened.
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….
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.
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.)
