I do a lot of drafting and sketching at my workbench, so I’m always swiping stools from the house and they are always underfoot in the shop.
So when Jeff Burks sent me this 1916 photo of a manual training bench designed by D.V. Ferguson of St. Paul, Minn., I immediately latched onto the swing-out seat. I’ve seen these seats before in factory lunchrooms, but it never clicked as a bench accessory. Until now.
Vintage ones are expensive ($400 or so), so I’ve got my brain thinking on MacGuyvering one from off-the-rack metal components and (duh) wooden ones.
There is great power in naming things, but there is also violence.
A few years ago I was driving to dinner with a fellow furniture maker, and he asked me this question: “Do you consider yourself a writer or a woodworker?”
I hate this question, but I also hate looking like a wanker.
I replied, “I’m a writer who builds furniture.”
“Ah!” he said. “You said the word ‘writer’ first. So that’s more important to you?” He raised the tone of his voice at the end of the sentence like it was a question. But it wasn’t.
So I bristle a bit when people tell me what I am and what I am not. At times I build cubbyholes, but I won’t be put into one. After writing “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011, a fair number of blowhards declared that I wasn’t an anarchist. Anarchists, they explained, are explicitly anti-capitalist. They seek to overthrow the government. They embrace violence.
Saying that you have to be committed to violence to be an anarchist is like saying you have to oppress Africans to be a Christian, or you have to own a gun to be an American. It’s nonsensical.
The truth is, I barely discuss my beliefs about the world in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” There might be only two or three people in this world who have heard my unfiltered thoughts on how the world works, and I plan to keep that number in the single digits as long as I live.
Do I have problems with authority – liturgical, corporate and governmental? Absolutely. Do I routinely disregard laws and mores because I think they’re at odds with human decency? You bet. Am I going to write about my behavior in a book that is already quite difficult to ship to military bases because of its title?
Do you think I’m stupid?
So if I don’t espouse the full details of my personal belief system, why bring up anarchism at all? Two reasons.
It’s the right word to describe me. I’m an anarchist and here is a book about my tool chest. Here is a second book of my furniture designs. Beyond those simple declarations, the goal of the books is to point to a path that doesn’t get discussed much in Western society.
During my training as a journalist we were urged to tell “both sides of every story.” After working as a journalist, the problem I discovered was that there are usually about a dozen sides to every story. It’s just that most of those ideas aren’t discussed at the country club.
Ideas such as: Organizations dehumanize and homogenize us. Modern production methods enslave us to a cycle of making nothing and consuming everything.
But these ideas, which I discuss in both books, are only starting points. If you have a brain it’s easy to see where the trail head leads. Like working with hand tools, it can be a difficult path to travel, but it can take you almost anywhere.
The second reason I couch these simple ideas inside work-a-day books on tools and building furniture is that I refuse to become part of the circle-jerk clique of writers who obsess on discussing Craft, its Demise and How to Fix Things.
In my 25 years of hanging out with woodworkers, I’ve never once heard someone say: “I just finished reading David Pye’s ‘The Nature and Art of Workmanship,’ and now all I want to do is carve bowls.” It just doesn’t happen.
Don’t get me wrong. Discussing craft is important. I just don’t think you should talk about it much until you have done it – a lot.
The solution to “fix” everything – for lack of a better word – is not in words. It’s in your fingers. Pick up the tools, and the answers to these questions will become apparent. Make something, and you will understand more about craft than all of the books written about its doom.
Yesterday I had a tape measure clipped to my pants pocket, and a young woman in a store asked me what I did for a living. When I told her I made furniture, she gushed at length about how that was all she’d ever wanted to do. As a child she built all of her Barbie furniture. Now she watched television programs and read books about woodworking every night, but she didn’t want to go back to school to train as a furniture maker.
“You don’t have to go back to school,” I told her.
“But how will I learn it?” she asked.
“By doing what you did when you were a little girl: Pick up the tools and use them.”
Every word I write is aimed at one thing: To make you crazy to pick up the tools. They are the answer to everything that’s wrong with our lives and with our world. With tools you can fix things. You can make things. You can escape from a job that is slowly killing you.
With tools you can build a life that doesn’t depend on your next annual review and whether or not you managed to wear out the knees in your pants while groveling for a raise.
I don’t care if you call that anarchism or not. In fact, I recommend that you don’t.
So stay tidy. Be friendly. Build things instead of buying them. You’ll know what to do next.
First a little history, then a disclaimer and then we play the moviefilm.
When I wrote “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011 I steered clear of discussing brand names of tools because I didn’t want the book to be a tool-buying guide for 2011. My hope was it would be useful to woodworkers getting started in the craft long after I’m dead.
But people asked me: What specific tools are in your chest? So we made a short DVD that had a one-hour tour of the tools in my chest on that summer day in 2011. Plus I assembled a five-minute slideshow that was an overview of the chest’s construction process. Finally, we added a document of sources for the tools and a SketchUp drawing of the chest.
We sold the DVD for a few years, but it was plagued by technical problems. Our DVD presser at the time couldn’t seem to make an error-free disc, so we switched vendors and then ultimately began giving the discs away as commemorative drink coasters/safety Ninja throwing stars instead.
So last night I loaded up the videos on our Vimeo channel and we now offer them free of charge.
Disclaimer: The tools in my chest have changed since 2011. So please don’t ask me to compare this, that or the other to then or now. We’re producing a new tour of the chest for the five-year anniversary that also will be free.
Why did the tools change? In many cases I tried to get something more accessible. I loved my Barrett plow plane, for example, but it was intimidating to beginners (especially the price tag). So I switched to a Stanley 45, which I bought for $50. (And no, I don’t know what happened to Dan Barrett and his planemaking company.)
Thursday in the Afternoon an Inquisition was taken before Thomas Beach, Esq; Coroner for the City of London, on the Body of William King, a Carpenter; it appeared by the Evidence, that some carpenters being at Work last Tuesday Afternoon, in repairing a House of Mr. Dalmaboy, on Ludgate-hill, Words arose between one John Garnett, a Carpenter, and the Deceased, in Relation to the Deceased’s spoiling some Tools of Garnett’s; that the Deceased pushed Garnett against some Sash Doors there, and that Garnett took up a Hammer, and threatened to knock the Deceased down if he pushed him any more; that King retired towards the door, but Words still continuing between them, he returned to Garnett, and lifted up his Hand, as intending to strike Garnett, that then Garnett immediately took up a plane and struck the Deceased on the right Temple, who fell down speechless, and, notwithstanding he was immediately blooded, was seized with a Stupor, and was sent to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he expired early the next morning. As there did not appear any previous Malice between the Parties, the Jury found Garnett Guilty of Manslaughter, and the Coroner committed him to Newgate, to take his Trial at the next Sessions, which begins at the Old Bailey on Wednesday next.
— from the The Public Advertiser of London (Sept. 12, 1761) courtesy of Jeff Burks
When my friend Dean and I added the 1,000-square-foot addition onto my existing house, I made all of the moulding myself from rough stock using a combination of electric routers and moulding planes.
Every baseboard, casing, shoe mould and backbend was cut and installed by me during a six-month period where I don’t recall sleeping.
Today I went to Hyde Park Lumber Co. and plunked down $800 for all the moulding at our Willard Street storefront. I’m not happy about it, from a maker’s point of view, but the numbers don’t lie. I needed more than 300 linear feet of moulding, plus specialized corner blocks to match the original Victorian interior.
By contrast, the cost of the rough stock and the tooling I needed to do it myself was more than $1,100.
The moulding I bought today is cut, sanded, primed and delivered on Thursday morning.
