Lost Art Press

Category: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

New Review, New Press Run, New Leather Editions

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Woodworking blogger Ben Lowery has published a nice review of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” I met Ben at the Woodworker’s Showcase in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., this year. Nice guy. I don’t recall bribing him.

My favorite part of his review:

As the (soon to be former) editor of one of the more popular woodworking magazines, I think it takes some testicular fortitude to say straight out that it would be better for most folks to limit their toolset and buy tools that you only have to buy once. He does include some power tools in the margins, things that will make life easier, but not the standard table saw. The shop as described is much more centered around the workbench, not the power equipment. The powered gear exists like a shop apprentice of old, dealing with the drudgery of dimensioning rough lumber.

If you would like to read the full review, click here.

Also, we are ordering a second press run of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” today. Customer demand surprised us, and we were optimistic when we ordered our first press run. If you care about getting a first edition of the book, you should order in the next four weeks.

We also are going to order another batch of 26 book blocks and do a second run of leather editions of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” If you are on the waiting list, I’ll be contacting you shortly to see if you want the new edition. You will have first dibs on the new edition.

For the rest of you, if you want a copy of the new leather edition, hold tight for a few days. We’ll be accepting orders starting at 9 a.m. EST on Wednesday, July 6.

— Christopher Schwarz

Rated PG for Language

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I knew this letter would come some day.

Today we received a return of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” with a pleasant note from a reader. Here it is:

“Not looking for a refund. Because of my eccentricities I don’t want a woodworking book to have the tone and words like-crap, suck, idiot, moron, stupid, hell Etc. I prefer more refined and reverent attitude and language. I guess an anarchist should be comfortable with the book as written?”

He makes a good point that I should have mentioned when the book was released. “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” has some coarse language in it. You will hear worse language and see more skin on television (I know you are thinking: “Thank goodness for that”).

But readers come in all different stripes. And this book is indeed different in tone, content and approach. It is not for everyone. And if it’s not for you, that’s OK.

The best part of the letter? I could tell it was from a woodworker. When woodworkers return stuff or complain, they are always nice about it — not like the suburban mommy nightmares I dealt with at the mini-blind store when I was 13.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. We have just sent a second load of copies of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” to Dictum GmbH in Metten, Germany. When the book is back in stock we will post a note here for our European customers.

Day 4 of ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’ Class

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Before we begin: My apologies for the terrible photos from my phone. The battery in my regular camera died and I am without a charger.

For someone who is now unemployed, I sure have been working a lot.

Saturday was the fourth day of teaching the class on building the chest from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” and my sixth day of teaching at the Dictum workshop in Bavaria. I think I might be more tired than the students — and I am rationalizing that by telling myself that’s because I am building a chest along with the students, and teaching at the same time.

Or perhaps I’m drinking too much weiss beer.

Either way, I’m ready to curl into a refrigerator box beneath a highway overpass like a proper hobo.

Today we put the dovetailed skirts on the tool chest, which were a cakewalk for the students after they cut 44 dovetails for the carcase of the chest. Sunday — the final day — we’ll be making the lid and the dovetailed dust seal around it.

Then I ride to Munich Sunday night, catch a plane Monday morning and fly back to Kentucky.

Whenever I teach, I learn things. One of the most educational parts of teaching this course has been getting intimate with the wood we are using to build the chest. It’s Scots pine (pinius sylvestris). It’s a common species in Europe that is sometimes available for sale in the United States as a Christmas tree.

It is quite similar to our Southern yellow pine. It is heavy, resinous, tough and smells fantastic. The wood we are using doesn’t have the big differences in density between the earlywood and the latewood. It planes beautifully and is not terrible to dovetail.

As I was working with the wood this week I kept thinking that it would be an excellent material for making a workbench. So if you have Scots pine in your area and it is reasonably priced, I think it’s worth a look.

It’s time for dinner now. I still cannot read the menu at the restaurant at the monastery, but everything I’ve eaten has been great. As one friend put it about German food: By the end of the week I might have some blood in my porkstream.

— Christopher Schwarz

Building (and Buying) ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’

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This week I’m in Germany teaching a class in how to build the tool chest featured in the book “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” For those of you who don’t read the Popular Woodworking Magazine blog, here are some convenient links so you can follow along as we build the chest.

• Back to Germany to See an Old Friend
• Video: ‘As Smooth as a Nun’s Stomach’
• Is There a Dominatrix in the House?

Also, for those of you who do not have access to the milk paint I used to paint the chest, there is a great little article on how to make your own from this copy of Popular Science magazine from 1940. It’s quite easy and is something I must try. Click here.

And lastly, the book “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is making its way into the retail markets. If you live outside the United States or just hate purchasing things from Kentucky, here are some links to other people who sell our book.

• Lee Valley Tools
• Lie-Nielsen Toolworks
• Tools for Working Wood
• Dictum

We have been approached by a retailer in Great Britain about carrying the book and hope to make that work. The challenge is getting it across the Atlantic at a price that is reasonable for you in the end.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Very Useful Prize to Me

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“And it was after long searching that I found out the carpenter’s chest, which was, indeed, a very useful prize to me, and much more valuable than a shipload of gold would have been at that time. I got it down to my raft, whole as it was, without losing time to look into it, for I knew in general what it contained.”

— Daniel Defoe, from “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un‐inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.”