Lost Art Press

Category: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

Anarchy in the Schwarz Household

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Having tools does not make you an anarchist. It’s what you do with those tools that is the proof.

I want to warn you before you read another word, this blog entry is not specifically about woodworking. I hesitate to even write it. But I feel the need to explain myself a bit, and I promise to keep it brief. I also promise that I won’t stray into these waters much in the future.

There are many flavors of anarchists out there. My flavor is Individualistic Anarchism, specifically “aesthetic anarchism.” What does that mean to me?

I intensely dislike large institutions: governments, religious institutions and large corporations. But it would be an error to say I am not political, spiritual or capitalistic. It is my belief that institutions are the cause of most problems – not the solution.

I dislike many laws – gun laws, drug laws, sex laws to name a few. But mostly I dislike how laws are used to enslave us – they favor corporations over individuals, and the continual growth of government and its encroachment on our lives.

I don’t vote. I don’t go to church. I don’t employ people – and I never will. I view rent as theft. When I buy things, I always try to buy from individuals – the maker if possible. When I have to buy something manufactured, I buy from companies that aren’t exploiters. I buy Pointer jeans from Tennessee. My jacket was made by Schott in New Jersey. My wool sweater was knit in Ireland.

But most of all, I like to make the things I need. I do all our cooking, and every night (except pizza night) I cook dinner from scratch. We buy our meat from the butchers, the Finke family. The produce? The Finkes grow some of their own; the rest I try to buy from Findlay market or Loschavios. I like to keep everything very personal.

Making furniture for yourself and others is indeed a radical act. It removes that part of your life from the continuous cycle of purchasing, consuming and repurchasing. The Morris Chair I am sitting in will be the last easy chair I’ll ever need to build. And it was my hope when I wrote “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” that once you saw that this was true, it might seep into other areas of your life, like it has into mine. You might even quit your corporate job.

Which brings up money. Isn’t it difficult to walk away from a corporate job and a steady paycheck? Yeah, it’s like trying to force yourself to dive into Lake Michigan in February. But if Lucy and I can do it, I think many families can – if they are willing to eschew debt.

Lucy works only part-time as a writer, and I have just this silly little business – no trust fund here. How do we do it? We don’t have any debt. Zero dollars – zero cents. Once I realized how much I had to work to service our mortgage, student loans and car payments, we shifted every resource to pay off everything. In May 2008 I paid off our last debt – our mortgage. And that’s when anything became possible.

Even anarchy.

— Christopher Schwarz

Classes on Building a Tool Chest

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Several readers have asked where I’ll be teaching classes in 2012 on how to build a tool chest, so here is an update.

A couple notes on the class itself. If you don’t like cutting dovetails, you might want to reconsider. A good chunk of the class is a Bataan Death March of sawing and chopping. But by golly, you will be able to cut dovetails in a coma when it’s over.

It’s absolutely OK if this tool chest class is your first project. You’ll do fine.

If the class is filled up and you really want to attend, please sign up for the waiting list. Classes always have “churn.” Some people drop out because of a family event (marriage, surgery, divorce, graduation etc.). Others misread the class description (“I thought it was the ‘Anachronist’s Tool Chest,’ and I wear my +1 chainmail to bed”). So if you get on the waiting list for the class, there is a good chance you’ll get in.

And lastly, you will have a choice as to which chest you build: the full-size chest illustrated in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” or the traveling-size chest I posted in this blog entry.

So here’s the line-up:

Feb. 20-24, 2012, at The Woodwright’s School. Roy’s calendar shows slightly different days, but he hasn’t updated his online calendar yet.

July 30-Aug. 3, 2012, at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking. This class is listed as full, but get on the waiting list if you are serious. Trust me on this. “I thought it was ‘The Atavist’s Tool Chest.’”

Sept. 6-10, 2012, at The Woodwright’s School.

And if your year is already full, I’m working on my 2013 schedule and already have plans to teach this class in Connecticut and am negotiating with some chaps/blokes in Australia.

— Christopher Schwarz

Anarchy in Denmark

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While teaching my first class on building a tool chest at the Dictum workshops in Metten, Germany, this June I had a group of students that were nothing short of spectacular.

They were from all over the world: New Zealand, Chicago, Austria, Great Britain, the Netherlands and yes, Germany. And their woodworking experience was as varied as their nationalities. For some of them, this was their first significant woodworking project. And I had two professional woodworking instructors and a professional cabinetmaker from Dictum.

Despite – or perhaps because of – this diversity, it was one of the most interesting classes I’ve ever taught. I got to see European hand-tool techniques I’d only read about. I learned different ways of gluing up a dovetailed case from the Germans. And I was fascinated by the way the school puts all its flat panel stock in clamps overnight (like a giant sandwich).

Then there was the singing.

A father-son pair from Denmark took the class, even though neither had any business being there. The father was a long-time woodworking instructor. And his son, Jonas, could have taught the class himself. Jonas, a locomotive marine engineer, was both fast and accurate.

Jonas and his father would sing (in various languages) as they worked. In two-part harmony. And I cannot even whistle while I work.

If you want to see some videos from this class and hear them sing our National Anthem, read some of my posts on my blog at Popular Woodworking here.

Anyway, Jonas recently sent some photos of his completed tool chest. He was determined to make his own milk paint for the chest, which will be used as a blanket chest in his house.

“I tried to make some milk paint, but I couldn’t make it work,” Jonas wrote. “I am not sure whether to use slaked lime, lime fruit, powdered lime, Jura lime, hydraulic lime or maybe some other form of lime.

“But I found a recipe for egg-oil-tempera that even I couldn’t screw up: one egg, the equivalent volume of boiled linseed oil and the equivalent volume of milk. I did manage to mix a disastrous color though, so could you please issue a warning not to mix one batch of egg-oil-tempera with 8 tablespoons of zinc oxide (white) and 4 tablespoons iron oxide (Bordeaux red). the result is as you can see not a pleasant sight.

“It was intended to be used as a primer, so I am hoping that I can fix it by mixing some light grey paint to cover most of the purple.”

Jonas promised to send photos of the chest in its finished color.

I know this will sound corny, but classes like this give me hope for the future, of both the craft and humanity. That no matter how impersonal, hierarchical and technological our world will become, there will always be a class of people who are bound together by the work our hands produce. There will be parents who teach their children. And for those people, I can report that our similarities are more significant than our differences.

— Christopher Schwarz