The first loads of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” are in the mail stream now, and we are all ready for a beer. Or even a roofie.
We got a few hundred orders boxed up Friday night after work (and barbecue) and spent all day boxing up the rest. Now it’s time for some tater-tot casserole and crispy pork belly. And a roofie.
If you are looking to buy this book from one of our retailers – Lee Valley Tools, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks or Tools for Working Wood – those books are on their way to their warehouses. We can’t say when the book will show up in the catalogs, but it should be soon.
We also had one walk-in customer. A local woodworker who had pre-ordered the book asked if he could pick it up.
And after promising that he wasn’t going to skin me and wear the dried flesh like a mask, we said OK.
Thanks to everyone who placed an order before we shipped. Your faith in us is heartening. And I’m glad we shipped before June, which is what we promised.
One special thanks from everyone goes out to Phil Hirz, who cleaned up the entire data base of pre-orders, and allowed us to push out these orders this weekend instead of next week.
“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” arrived via truck this afternoon. The book looks great. I, however, look like a boiled hobo and am on my second set of clothes this afternoon. Here’s the story:
The books left the Michigan printing plant on Tuesday – one-third of the press run went directly to wholesale customers. The other two-thirds came to my house.
Getting a semi-trailer – even a small one – into a dead-end street in a residential neighborhood is always a game of chicken. Literally. But I’ve unloaded more trucks than I care to remember, starting with my days in a liquor warehouse and up to my current job at Popular Woodworking Magazine. I can’t drive a forklift, but I can do everything else.
Today, my truck driver was having a bad day. I was the last delivery, and someone had pooped in his All Bran (not that you can tell the difference when someone voids in that stuff). He drove down the street and he didn’t like what he saw. Cursed a blue streak. Drove away.
He called me from a nearby grocery store and told me to come pick the books up there.
I told him he would be the first driver in 15 years who failed me. He hung up.
About 15 minutes later he pulled up and we made nice. We pulled the three pallets off his truck and deposited them on my driveway.
“I hope you have a lot of tarps,” he said as he walked back to his cab.
The sky was suddenly dark. I grabbed a knife, ripped through the plastic around the pallets and began humping boxes into my sunroom. Ten minutes later, the sky opened up. Stupid rain.
I covered what I could with tarps and then brought what I could inside – more than 140 boxes. After getting two pallets in the house, the rain was too strong to fight. I covered the third pallet as best I could and peeled off my clothes. While I waited, I cut the wet cardboard off the books and surveyed the damage.
So far, it looks like none of the moisture got into the books. Only one book and one box was damaged in transit. That’s not bad.
Tomorrow we’ll set up a shipping station in my sunroom and start signing and signing and mailing the books. Right now, I’m going to drink a beer (Pliny the Elder – thanks Nate!) and take a close look at the printing job.
There is something appealing about a chest that has French-fitted compartments for each tool. Protecting it. Cradling it. Showing it off.
In my first tool chest I built the top of the till with a bunch of French-fitted compartments for chisels, block planes, a shoulder plane and drill bits. And for the first year I was well pleased. All the tools were in the right place and easy to get.
But then I realized that flexibility was more important than permanence. It wasn’t that my tool kit changed, but the projects I was building required a different set of tools. Sometimes I needed my grandfather’s carving tools handy. Bench-building requires lots of boring operations. Dovetailing needs quick access to chisels, saws and marking & measuring tools.
But not every project has dovetails.
With the chest I built in late 2010 I decided to skip the French-fitted dividers and live with open and flexible tool storage until I concluded that a certain tool needed – deserved – a permanent holder, such as a saw till.
I now have all my tools loaded up into my chest at home – the 48 tools in my core set plus a few that are on my list of “good-to-have tools.” This short video shows what the chest looks like with all the tools in place. There’s room for everything, plus then some.
And I’m sure I will eventually put in a few wooden dividers in the sliding tray to cordon things off, but they will be added sparingly, like dog holes in a workbench.
Printing update: The pressroom made up the plates for the book on Friday and we are now on schedule to have the books shipped to us on May 23. So if you want to order “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” with free domestic shipping, be sure to do that before May 23.
You can order the book with free domestic shipping here.
