OK, after a technical hiccup, we have this worked out.
The 60-minute movie about the tools in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is now available for instant download in our store for $8. The download includes all the extras available on the DVD: the slideshow of the step photos, the SketchUp file and a text document that further explains some of the tools I chose and why.
This purchase is available for domestic customers through this link. International customers can also purchase this by sending $8 via PayPal to john@lostartpress.com. You will then receive a link to download the files.
Note that this download is a big file – 700 mb – so it will take some time when you order it. The download is one file – a zipped file. After you download it, it will decompress into a folder containing the video (an .mov file) plus the extras.
On days like today, I wonder how many more times I can teach a class on building The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.
On Friday, I finished up a five-day class where I and 10 students built a tool chest entirely by hand, the only way I like to build them. It was a fantastic class. (View a Flickr set here.) They were good students – not a single jerk in the group. They worked until they dropped, and we all had a good laugh and a beer at the City Tap after class each day.
Plus Roy Underhill provided instruction, entertainment and popsicles through the week. It sounds like heaven, and it was. So what the heck is my problem?
Today I taught the first day of a two-day class at the Woodcraft store in Atlanta (in Roswell, Ga., in truth) and today we made a stick. OK, we actually made three sticks. First we made a lone stick (a straightedge), then we made a pair of sticks (winding sticks). Tomorrow we’ll make “stick in a stick” (a try square) and “stick through a stick” (a marking gauge).
No massive 75-pound carcases that needed to be lugged around. No dovetailing the end of every board that crossed your bench. No endless sharpening of your chopping chisels. No giant bowl of ibuprofen.
Instead, the 10 students at the Woodcraft focused today on removing the right shavings from the right places on these 30”-long sticks. I had to lift some shavings from the floor at one time during the day, but I’ll survive.
It’s funny how a small project, such as a wooden layout tool, can be a welcome relief after a vigorous but totally energizing and then draining project such as a tool chest. I better enjoy this while I can. When I return home to Kentucky on Monday night I’ll have 17 days to finish up a secretary for a photo shoot.
So I’m folded up inside my tool chest like an origami Sasquatch with the lid closed (don’t ask), and I can hear Roy Underhill come into the “The Woodwright’s Shop” to begin the episode.
His voice is muffled through the 7/8”-thick pine, but I can hear him introduce the program.
“And… darn it,” Roy says. “Four seconds in to the show and I cut myself.”
Somehow Roy has brushed against one of my panel saws, and the blood is trickling out. He begins the program again without the aid of a bandage. So I got a souvenir: Two drops of St. Roy’s blood on the inside of my tool chest.
I will start the bidding at $50 per drop of certified Roy Underhill blood.
For the next 10 days my blog posts will be erratic and fueled by barbecue, beer and fatigue. If you e-mail me during the next fortnight, my response is liable to be brief, odd or not forthcoming.
Why? I drive to North Carolina tomorrow to tape two episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop” with Roy Underhill, then teach a five-day class on building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” at The Woodwright’s School and then teach a two-day class at the Atlanta Woodcraft on building the essential marking and measuring tools.
Then I will take a long nap. Actually, that nap thing is a lie. When I get back from my Southern tour I’ll be unloading almost 6,000 pounds of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” books and then packing up all the pre-publication orders we’ve received (thank you, kind reader) and taking them to the post office.
Then a nap? No. Then I have to finish this Campaign Secretary that has to be completed by March 15 for Popular Woodworking Magazine.
So all this is my way of saying: If you try to reach me during the next month and I don’t respond, it’s not because your smell offends me.
Ohio Book finished binding up copies of the third printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” this morning. I picked them up a few minutes ago and will ship them out Priority Mail for all the people who ordered them.
We actually have a couple extra copies with this run. We always send some extra book blocks to Ohio Book to make sure we have 26 in the end. So if you still want one, you can order it in our store.
As always, the work from Ohio Book is gorgeous, and we are proud to support this family-run institution in Cincinnati.
