For the last six months, an unfinished version of the Traveling Anarchist’s Tool Chest (download a free SketchUp drawing here) has been sitting in the corner of my shop – mocking me.
No more.
Today I dragged its sorry carcase to the bench and fixed its plinth, which has been bugging me since the day I glued it on. The bevel on the plinth was 1/2” x 1/2”, and it just looked wrong. Too abrupt. Too router bit-y.
So I changed the slope to a 5/8”-wide x 1”-tall bevel, and what a huge visual difference it made. So I cleaned up the rest of the plinth and am headed back to the shop to work on the upper skirt.
Typically, we don’t accept a shipment of books at Lost Art Press unless there is a tornado in the area – or at least a thunderstorm or torrential rain.
But this morning a truck dropped off the fourth printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in my driveway. The sun is shining. My tarps are all put away. My insides are unsettled.
We have now printed 12,000 copies of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” and – thanks to our customers – this book has made quitting my job at Popular Woodworking Magazine an easy transition. So thank you.
We should be getting our shipment of “Mouldings in Practice” next Monday. The forecast shows only a 10 percent chance of rain. Weird.
A quick reminder: Free shipping for “Mouldings in Practice” ends at midnight Wednesday. So if you want to save $6, order before then.
I’ve been completely satisfied with the hinges and ring pulls from Horton Brasses. But what if you want something more old school? Something like a crab lock, perhaps?
While building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” for the book, I debated on whether to add a tool rack to one of the inside walls of the carcase.
In the end, I decided against it because tool racks were in the minority of the chests I studied for the book. Today, however, I entered the minority.
During the last 12 months, I’ve been trying out a rack that is mounted to the rear wall of the traveling version of this chest, which I have been carting from town to town in my hatchback. I have come to appreciate the rack quite a bit, even though it limits the movement of the sliding trays just a bit.
The rack I installed on my chest is 1” x 1-1/4” pine that was left over from a DVD shoot – hence the small bead moulding on the corner. I laid out the holes from the centerpoint of the rack. Most of the holes are 1/2” in diameter and on 1-1/4” centers. The exceptional holes are off to the left. These were sized to handle my bench chisels.
I installed the rack using two No. 8 x 1-1/2” screws – no glue. I want to be able to easily remove the rack and modify it in future years. On some of the racks I studied, there were also some smaller holes between the 1/2” holes so you could sneak a tool or two more into the rack.
On Monday, I’ll put the new rack to the test when I teach a class on building this chest at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking in Berea, Ky. As always, I am looking forward to my week at Kelly’s. It’s a well-equipped shop and peaceful place to work – a dream shop, really.
