Some day I will count up all the tool chests that I have built and those that have been built during classes I’ve taught.
In the meantime, here’s an important thing I’ve observed when building tool chests. I can build a complete tool chest in a white pine (Eastern white or sugar pine, for example) in about 40 hours. If I make one out of poplar, a yellow pine or worse, that adds at least eight hours to the process.
Harder woods make for harder work.
This week we’re building tool chests from perfectly clear Eastern white pine at the Furniture Institute of Massachusetts. The pine (and the two dozen doughnuts) are keeping us on schedule. Never underestimate how a mild species can make your work easier.
Some of you have noted that I am canceling classes this year. The reason is that I need to stay home to help take care of some important family members, and this trend could continue for a few years.
I have tried to hold on to a few classes this year, which has required some extraordinary measures and help from friends. One of the classes I am happy to report I can teach is a special Anarchist’s Tool Chest class at The Furniture Institute of Massachusetts June 22-28, 2015.
This tool chest class is particularly special for two reasons: It will be at Phil Lowe’s school. Phil is one of the people I admire most in the craft for his skills, teaching ability and wonderful demeanor. I have always wanted the opportunity to work with Phil.
The second reason the class is special is it will run for seven days instead of five. These extra days will allow us to get a crack at working on the inside bits of the chest.
So if you want to build the best tool-storage system I’ve encountered, this class is ideal. And I don’t have any more floor chest classes on my schedule.
You can read more about the school here. The class will be small – nine students max. And Phil said yesterday there are still three spots left.
In the coming weeks I’ll announce the few other classes I’ll be able to teach this year. So stay tuned. For those students who enrolled in classes I had to cancel, I apologize and look forward to resuming a regular teaching schedule in the years ahead.
Lost Art Press will be at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event at Popular Woodworking Magazine this weekend (April 17-18), with books, T-shirts and even some furniture to show.
We’ll be bringing the just-released “Chairmaker’s Notebook,” plus all the other titles in our catalog.
In addition, I’m bringing a finished three-legged backstool and trestle table from my forthcoming book “Furniture of Necessity.” So come take a look at these designs and sit in the chair to see if it’s stable or not (drunkards welcome). We’re also happy to sign any books while we’re there – even if we didn’t write them.
This year, we’re planning a meet-up for Friday night at one of the local breweries. We’ll have details at the show on Friday (we haven’t finalized them, yet, or I’d post them here).
As always, the Lie-Nielsen show at Popular Woodworking has a good stable of exhibitors:
And, of course, the staff of the magazine. They usually sell a whole bunch of books and DVDs at great prices at this show, so be sure to check that out.
Making polissoirs (a wood polishing tool) from local materials during a woodworking class is always fun, though it isn’t always easy. Getting the broom corn for the core of the tool is usually a snap. Hose clamps we can usually scare up. But then we need wax and something to wrap everything up tightly.
This week at the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers we made Roubo-style try squares and then made a couple polissoirs to finish them.
I conned a student to drive me to a local grocery store where we found a whisk broom and an assortment of hose clamps. The store didn’t have beeswax, however, so we had to buy paraffin. And to wrap it all up I grabbed some black 3M duct tape.
After cinching the broom corn tight with the hose clamps I mummified the thing with the duct tape, which was shockingly shiny. And when paired with the silvery metallic hose clamps, it had sort of dominatrix look (not that I know what that really looks like, Lucy).
Then we had to melt the wax to charge the polissoir. But there wasn’t a working microwave (or so we thought). So we did what any self-respecting group of nutjobs would do. We tried to melt the wax in a Coke can we perched on a Subaru’s engine block.
The Subi’s engine was surprisingly efficient, however, and the wax remained solid after 20 minutes. Another student found a sort-of-working microwave, and so he started nuking the paraffin. In the meantime, a third student remembered he had a gas camping stove in his car and brought it into the shop.
We fired it up and within two minutes we had all the hot liquid wax we could desire.
Melted paraffin migrates readily into the broom corn of a polissoir, but it doesn’t create the same sort of tool as when you use beeswax. I need to do some more experiments and reading to explain myself. But the bottom line is that it worked fine. It was just a different experience.
As always, we gave away the polissoirs to the students after everyone polished up their squares. By the way, Oregon oak (Quercus garryana) takes very well to the burnishing from a polissoir.
A common bit of advice on building tool chests goes like this: “You should build the chest to fit your tools.”
I’d like to amend that melba-toast statement to this: “You should build the chest to fit our tools.”
Woodworking tools come in standard sizes, and the standard tool kit hasn’t changed much since Joseph Moxon laid it out in “Mechanick Exercises” in 1678. So if you are in the craft to build furniture, your tool kit probably looks a lot like mine. If you are in it for type studies and patented tools, ignore the rest of this blog entry.
When I started studying tool chests (several years before writing “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest”), I noticed that they were built in some fairly standard sizes. Most of the outliers were actually for other trades or specialists. In truth, there are more than three basic sizes of chests, but I’d like to discuss three sizes I have found most compelling.
The Floor Chest This is the massive tool chest I built for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and have subsequently built more than 20 times for classes and customers. It is the Denali of tool chests. It’s bigger than it has to be, but it’s still not big enough.
It is roughly 24” x 24” x 40”. And if you can’t fit a tool in this chest, then you don’t need it. This chest will swallow full-size handsaws, over-sized jointer planes, 18th-century tenon saws, straightedges, a full set of hollows and rounds and all the other tools you need to build furniture.
The standard model usually has three sliding trays, though I have seen them with as many as eight.
During the five years since I built this chest I have modified small sections of it, but it is still basically the same design as when I drew it out in 2010.
What’s the downside to this chest? It is a floor hog, taking up as much square footage as a table saw. If you have a small shop, this chest might be too much for you. But after working out of a chest this size since 1997, I decline to downsize.
The Traveling Tool Chest If you need to move your chest frequently, the full-size chest is a heavy burden. Moving that monster by yourself is difficult but doable – if you first remove the trays and heavy tools. If you need to be mobile for work or to attend classes, a scaled-down chest might be the answer.
I just finished building one of these chests for the August issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. I built the carcase and Jameel Abraham built the marquetry panel for the lid. This chest’s design is based on the length of a panel saw, one of the longer tools in a furniture-maker’s tool kit.
While full-size handsaws are more than 30” long from toe to tote, a panel saw takes up less space – 26” give or take. That’s not much longer than a standard jointer plane. This chest can be 20” x 20” x 30”. That might not seem much smaller than the full-size chest above, but I can tell you that the slightly smaller dimensions allow you to move the chest easily by yourself.
The downside? You can still pack a standard toolkit in the chest if you omit the moulding planes. (OK, that’s not entirely true; you can build a removable tray that holds moulders thereby squeezing every cubic inch of storage out of the chest. It’s just not convenient to work out of.)
These chests typically had two sliding trays for the small tools. And the tool well below held all the bench planes, saws and joinery planes.
The other advantage to this chest is it will fit in the back seat of most passenger cars. The full-size chest will not (unless you first remove the door).
The Tallboy The other curious chest I’ve been toying with is a mix of the full-size chest and the traveling chest. While I’m sure this chest was made all over the Western world, I’ve encountered most examples of it in North America.
It is generally a nailed-together carcase that is designed to hold full-size handsaws, a full set of bench planes, joinery planes and lots and lots of smaller tools. Like the traveling chest, moulding planes are rarely provided dedicated storage space in this variant. But they still can hold a handful of moulders if need be.
So the defining characteristics of these chests are they are long, shallow and tall. The one I’m building now for a series of classes in 2015 is 15” x 17” x 34”. This chest will easily fit into the back seat of a car. It will accommodate the (less expensive) full-size handsaws and is super simple to build. It’s all rabbets and nails.
All three forms have their charms. But their dimensions depend more on how you live than on what sort of stuff you build.
Disobey Me If you want to design your own chest from scratch and ignore the historical patterns, here’s how to do it:
Measure your longest saw. That (plus 2”) is the interior length of your carcase.
Group your bench and joinery planes together into a tight formation that is the same length as your longest saw. Measure the depth of that pile. That is the interior depth of your chest.
If you have moulding planes, add 5” to that depth.
Take the interior depth of your chest and make that the interior height. Most tool chests are square in profile view.
My guess is you will end up with one of the three sizes above.
