Category: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

 

Editor’s note: As promised, Christopher Schwarz and I are writing a series of blog entries that explain how we have improved the construction process for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” during the last nine years (and several hundred chests).

 

Loose-tenon joinery goes back to Greek and Roman times – boats were built using drawbored loose tenons. I start with this fact so as to (hopefully) stave off slings and arrows (which go back further than Roman times).

When Chris built his lid for the first Anarchist’s Tool Chest (the one in the book), and when I built my first one (now in my basement shop at home), we cut through mortise-and-tenon joints for the lid. Now, we employ that loose-tenon joint that goes back to antiquity. Sure, we use a modern approach (the Festool Domino), but the joint is time-tested, and plenty strong enough for these lids (a theory that has been tested time and again by people triple my size sitting on the lid of my chest at the Lost Art Press shop).

If you’re building one at home and feel the urge, go ahead and cut the mortises and tenons if you like – that joint is the strongest. But also plenty strong enough are two other joints Chris tried out in classroom settings: the bridle joint (slightly easier/faster), then the half-lap joint (easier/faster still). He was on a quest to get the builds down to five days when he tried these out – and they helped to shorten the journey…but not enough.

Now, we pull out the Domino XL, because it’s the only way we’ve found to get the lids glued up before the students leave on Day 5 (and again, the joint is plenty strong). And while at the beginning of the week, we get a grumble or two from time to time when someone asks how we’re doing the lids, by Day 5, everyone is so tired and eager to be done that they embrace the change. And they all leave with the frame-and-panel assemblies done.

But the Domino XL is a $1,500 tool, so use one of the three other approaches if you don’t have or have access to one.

After running the mating grooves on the frame pieces and panel (which in all but the most advanced-student circumstances we do with a dado stack on the table saw), dry-fit the assembly to determine the layout of the two 12mm x 140mm loose tenons. We use the same setup for all students in a given class, so we then set two combination squares to the desired settings: one small (the shorter measurement) and one large (the longer measurement).

While you could perfectly align all the pieces and mark across both at once, we find it’s safer (read: fewer mistakes) if we have folks use the squares – with a reminder to always register the stock off the outside edges – to mark the mortise locations on each piece individually. Anal-retentive? You bet. Does it cut down on errors? Absolutely.

To further reduce the possibility of mistakes, we set up stops to hold the work while using the Domino; they restrain the work against the fairly significant pressure required to plunge the tool into the work, and hold the work flat to the bench. If the mortises aren’t at 90°, it causes problems, so everything we can do to help make them perfect, we do.

With the work restrained, it’s simply a matter of keeping the fence on the Domino flat to the wood, so we encourage – strongly encourage – that you grasp and push down with one hand, using your other hand to plunge by pushing on the back of the tool, but not grasping the handle. (We’ve found that grasping the handle results in folks pushing down and tipping the tool a bit during the cut.)

After the mortises are cut, make sure you dump out the sawdust in the bottom of the mortise. Though our dust collection is good, it’s not good enough to clear all the dust from the mortise bottoms.

With the mortises all cut, do a dry assembly before opening the glue.

Once everything fits together, cut a 30° bevel on the top edges of the lid (or just soften the edges, per the book) before glue-up.

Arrange the rails (the long pieces) with the mortises facing up, and squeeze in a healthy amount of glue, spread it all around and up the mortise sides with an acid brush, then stick the loose tenons in place. Put glue in the stile mortises (move quickly now, as things will get drippy) and slip them onto their mates on one rail. Slide the lid panel in place (remembering that the lid panel lips over the rails…not under), then put the second rail in place and clamp until dry.

Now, just as it says in the book, cut dovetail joints for the dust seal (one tail on each side piece) and glue the dust seal to the front and sides of the lid. Then add some nails for good measure. The dust seal will see a lot of opening and closing action.

There’s one last difference – and this one is motivated by experience, not by a classroom setting. In “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” Chris writes to cut a bevel at the back ends of the dust seal to act as a stop when the lid is open. The bevel can break off with repeated use, so now, we cut these two sticks flush with the back edge of the lid’s frame-and-panel assembly. The wall makes an excellent lid stay.

— Fitz

Editor’s note: As promised, Megan Fitzpatrick and I are writing a series of blog entries that explain how we have improved the construction process for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” during the last nine years (and several hundred chests).

When I built my first tool chests, I dovetailed the carcase and then immediately nailed on the bottom boards. My goal was to use the bottom boards to pull the case square (if it needed it) and then hold it square as I attached the skirts around the outside.

The downside to this approach is that the bottom gets in the way of clamping the lower skirt to the carcase. Once we changed the order of operations, it became much easier to get the lower skirt attached to the carcase with few (if any gaps). Here’s what we do now:

1. Dovetail the carcase, level the joints and plane off any machine marks.
2. Assemble the carcase, and work like heck to get the case square at both its top and bottom. You need to check for square at both openings.
3. Dovetail the skirts, as per the book’s instructions.
4. Nail temporary 3/4”-thick blocks to the bottom rim of the carcase. These represent the future location of the bottom boards.
5. Glue the lower skirt in place, making sure it is flush with the temporary blocks mentioned above.
6. When the glue has dried, remove the blocks and put in the bottom boards.

We’ve also changed the bevel we cut on the skirts. In the original book I planed a 45° bevel on all the skirts. That’s fine, but a steep bevel looks much nicer. Now we use an approximately 30° bevel and leave a flat at the top of the bevel that’s about 3/16”. That flat area allows us to miter a 3/16” bead moulding around the skirt (if the customer wants it).

Bottom Boards

For many years, we made our own bottom boards for the chests and used shiplap joints or (my preference) tongue-and-groove joints on their long edges. Now we purchase ready-made tongue-and-groove pine boards from the home center. It’s cheaper and saves time.

The material is sometimes sold as pine “carsiding” in 1×6 or 1×8 sizes. You can find it in different grades. I suspect they are No. 1 and No. 2 grades, but they aren’t always marked that way in the store. You’ll know when you find No. 2. It looks like No. 2 (yes, that’s a scatalogical joke).

Rot Strips

On the original chest, the rot strips were installed flush to the bottom edge of the lower skirt. Now we make the bottom boards flush to the bottom edge of the lower skirts. And the rot strips are proud of the skirts. This new arrangement prevents the skirts from getting wet and rotting. And the rot strips are now easier to replace when they get funky.

Finally, we now plane a 45° bevel on the long edges of the rot strips to make it easier to slide the finished chest across the shop floor.

— Christopher Schwarz

Editor’s note: As promised, Megan Fitzpatrick and I are writing a series of blog entries that explain how we have improved the construction process for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” during the last nine years (and several hundred chests).

First, let’s get this out of the way: When I wrote “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” I didn’t think many people would build the damn thing. The chest was intended more as an idea. I love using floor chests, but I thought they would be a hard sell with readers. I was wrong.

When I started teaching classes on building the chest – the first class was in Germany before the book even came out – I struggled to get the students with a finished chest and lid after five days (never mind the interior tills and trays).

That forced me (and later Megan Fitzpatrick, who now teaches the tool chest classes) to rethink the process and see if we could make a chest in five days without using the “punishment whip” on the students. The first change I made (which saved a whole day of work) was to change the dovetails.

In the book, I used 13 dovetails at each corner – that’s 52 dovetails for the basic shell. And it is overkill. Nowadays we use seven dovetails at each corner. The chest is – in my opinion – just as strong. And most students assemble the shell by the end of the second day.

The second change was to eliminate the shallow rabbet I cut on the ends of the tail boards. The shallow rabbet assists in transferring the tail shape to the pinboards. In the book I show how to cut the rabbet on a table saw and with a rabbet plane.

When I started teaching this method, I found that most students had never used a rabbet plane. And so all their rabbets sloped down. Horribly. Chaos and gappy joints ensued.

Now I have the students temporarily tack a yardstick to the baseline of the tailboard (I call this the “Other Ruler Trick”). This helps everyone make the transfer with ease. No sloping rabbets. And no one locks themselves in the bathroom sobbing (not even me!).

— Christopher Schwarz

We now have “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” back in stock in our Indiana warehouse. This is the 12th printing of this little 6” x 9” book, which allowed me to quit my corporate job and has helped fund all of the books in our roster in some way.

I owe thanks to all the readers who have bought copies – for themselves, friends and relatives. I’m told that the book has helped people quit their jobs, renewed their love of woodworking and shown them a path in the craft that doesn’t require a warehouse full of machinery.

And I also tip my hat to the critics, many of whom never read the book, but were so turned off by the book’s title that they foamed at the mouth. Your rabies made other people curious.

The Bad Idea
Earlier this year I went to Chicago to visit my friend Narayan Nayar, who took some of the beautiful photos in the book, and we went out for tacos (one of five meals we ate that day). As the snow fell outside of the Oak Park taco joint, I laid out some of the book ideas that had been brewing in my head for the last 12 months.

Narayan is a good listener and lets me wind it all out without interrupting. Some (OK, many) of my book ideas are daft. And when I pitch ideas to other people they come in with the long knives before I can explain myself.

One of the book ideas was a 10th anniversary edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” The front of the book would get some mild updates. The back of the book – on building the chest – would be completely redone. I’ve built so many of these chests that I’ve come up with many simpler ways to do some of the operations. I’ve made small changes to the skirts and lid. The chest is now easier to build and looks better.

Plus, the new edition would also contain plans for the Dutch tool chest. It was my original goal when writing the book to have two tool chest plans. Just like I had two workbench plans in “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use.” But “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” got so lengthy after building one tool chest that I decided to omit it.

I published the Dutch tool chest in Popular Woodworking Magazine in a short article. And lots of other people have built it – it might be my most successful project. But I’ve never gotten to fully explain the design (there was no room in the magazine article), its origin and its many variants.

After I pitched all this to Narayan, he asked me a question. That question made something click in my head. Narayan joked that he actually could hear the click from across the table.

The anniversary edition will have to wait – maybe for the 15th or 20th anniversary. Narayan’s question set me off on another book idea that has consumed all my evenings since.

— Christopher Schwarz