The year that my book on workbenches came out I had a conversation with one of the editors of a competing magazine.
“Nice work,” he said about the book. “I guess you’re done.”
I must have looked confused, distressed or constipated because he continued on with his explanation.
He said something like this: Most writers in any field – be it woodworking, haberdashery or animal husbandry – get only one really good idea during their lifetimes. The rest of their lives are spent re-casting that same idea and repeating it until no one else will listen.
I was horrified.
I thought I would have perhaps two ideas in my lifetime. One on woodworking. And one on dinosaurs.
It’s been four years since that conversation. And with “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” about to go to press, that little chat is weighing heavy on my mind.
In the famous words of Westley: “Get used to disappointment.”
This week I am finishing the layout chores for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” and we are on schedule to send it to the printer on April 15. Barring a plague of locusts, that means the book should be shipping the first week of June.
I’ve spent the last 14 months writing this book, and all I can say is that I cannot discern if it’s something worth reading or a stinking turd. I’m too close to it.
I can say that during the last couple months, I’ve given three presentations about the content of the book with mixed results. My favorite reaction to the content was at the Northeastern Woodworkers Association’s Showcase in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. It went something like this:
Him: Why would anyone want to use a tool chest when you can put your tools on the wall?
Me: A chest protects tools from dust.
Him: But having them on the wall is so much better. You can get them so much easier.
Me: But they will get dusty. Dust has salt in it, which attracts moisture.
Him: A chest is a dumb idea.
Me: OK.
Him: Really. A wall rack is better than a chest.
Me: OK.
Him: Really, a chest? Dumb.
The funny thing about the above conversation (and about a dozen more like it) is that “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is not a book that is going to try to talk you into building a traditional tool chest. Yes, I cover the topic in great detail. I spent months studying traditional chests and have about 13 years experience using one.
Yes, there are complete plans for the chest. Yes, I really like my chest. And yes, I think that a proper tool chest is a great thing for your shop.
But I will be surprised if more than a handful of people actually build this chest. That’s because the tool chest is actually a metaphor for what this book is really about: Assembling a reasonable kit of tools so you can be a woodworker instead of a budding tool collector.
Oh, and it’s about cheese, craft beer and micro-farming.
But let’s say you just want to build a tool chest. Should you buy this book? Nah. In fact, I’ve boiled down the entire content of the book into a one-page .pdf that you can download by clicking here.
This June I’m returning to Germany to teach two classes at Dick GmbH, which runs a beautiful woodworking school in Bavaria outside Metten. My short course on sawing is fully booked, but there are still three two spaces left to build the tool chest from my forthcoming book “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
The class runs from June 22-26 and costs only 480 Euros, a bargain for a week-long class. The Dick facility is first-rate and very hand-tool oriented. All of the benches are massive, and each student is allotted a box of tools during the course, which are of excellent quality and sharp.
And the region itself is gorgeous. I stayed in the town of Deggendorf, a quaint river city with lots of nice little restaurants and far too much great gelato. Last year I went out to dinner with the students almost every night, a pattern I hope to repeat again this year. I learned a lot about European-style woodworking, weiss beer and venison.
For more details on this class, visit the Dick web site here.
Applying the finish to my projects is either super-simple (clear finish on the bare wood) or agonizing.
Because tool chests are supposed to be painted, I knew I was in for a dose of self-induced agony. The first question with a painted piece is: what color? Tool chests run the gamut, from dark brown to dark green, pea (pee?) green to baby-poo green. And there’s blue.
I already own a blue tool chest at work, and I don’t need another. So my first instinct was to paint it red, which would make it look good in pictures. But when it comes to painted furniture, my favorite finish is black milk paint over red milk paint, which is what I use on many chairs. To do this you paint the chair red, then you paint it black and then you let nature run its course. The black paint gets rubbed through, and the red emerges in the areas that see the most wear.
This looks great.
So I decided to paint the tool chest red and see how it looked. If worst came to worst, I could always, in the words of the Rolling Stones, paint it black.
So I applied three coats of red milk paint. I love milk paint. It’s like a mix between a paint and a stain. It doesn’t have a lot of body, so it allows the wood’s texture to show through. That’s a good thing. Unless you left too much texture behind during the construction process.
As this chest was completed by hand, I left a number of tool marks behind. In truth, I didn’t think I’d had left a lot of tool marks, but the first coat of milk paint revealed some plane tracks and saw marks on the edges of the lid’s dust seal.
A couple coats of oil and varnish over the red didn’t improve things, so I prodded my wife, Lucy, to offer her opinion. If you have been married for at least a spell (18 years in this case) then you know how this conversation works.
“It looks great,” she said of the chest.
“It sucks,” I replied, wondering how many time I had put this poor woman through this. “I can see these tool marks and it makes me nuts.”
Lucy looked at the chest for an appropriate amount of time so that one would term it a “thoughtful” gaze. Then she looked me square in the eyes.
“I guess you should figure out how perfect an anarchist would want it,” she said.
