If you have ever wanted to build a full-on dovetailed Anarchist’s Tool Chest and want it done quick, here is your chance.
Due to a slight mix-up, we have two openings in my Anarchist’s Tool Chest at The Woodworker’s Club in Rockville, Md. They are prepping the poplar for the build today and tomorrow, so if you sign up now, you can be cutting dovetails on Monday morning and your chest will be done by Friday (except the easy innards. Hmmm “Easy Innards” would be a good band name…).
If you’d like to claim that space, call Paula at 317-535-4013 or register via the school’s web site: marcadams.com.
This is the only workbench class I’m teaching this year, and I don’t have any more scheduled for 2015 or 2016 as yet. We’ll be building French-style workbenches using some awesome 12/4 ash from Horizon Wood Products.
Your bench can be up to 8’ long and incorporate any vises that you wish to purchase. The bench design will accommodate almost any vise, from the Benchcrafted products to an iron quick-release vise. The French bench is truly “open architecture.”
Warning: These classes are physical. There is heavy lifting involved. Long days. Camaraderie and brown liquor (after class) are the usual by-products of this class. I highly recommend these classes as a way to get your “dream bench” completed. The heavy equipment (a 24”-wide planer!) helps get the job done so you can get on with the task/joy of building furniture.
Hope you can join us. If we don’t have a taker, I’ll build an extra bench and sell it so I can get an extra kidney and liver installed.
When I travel, I almost never add extra time to the trip for sightseeing. I always have work to do at the bench at home, plus a book to edit and family stuff to take care of.
But during this week in Anchorage, Ak., I had almost a whole day free, and several of the members of the Alaska Creative Woodworkers Association took it upon themselves to give me a crash course in life outside Anchorage.
We drove down to Seward with Jonathan Snyder (a biologist and the famous Alaska Woodworker) and Paul Rupple (a FedEx pilot and a member of the board of directors of the Alaska SeaLife Center) serving up a fascinating commentary on the wildlife, geography and history of the scenery unfolding out the windows of our minivan.
In Seward we toured the Alaska SeaLife Center, where I pet a sea anemone, got up close with an amazing array of shore birds and saw marine animals aplenty. Ever wonder what seal tastes like? Jonathan tried to describe it. I think it would be good in nugget format.
Lunch was a landmark for me: My first piece of fresh halibut. In high school I worked for three years in a fish store, band sawing frozen halibut. That is where I developed my love of the band saw and my dislike of cleaning a meat-cutting band saw. (Wood-cutting band saws are much easier to clean.)
Oh, fresh halibut is %$#&* amazing.
On the way back to Anchorage we stopped at the Byron glacier and climbed up to it. We climbed up to a glacier. A glacier. Dang.
Then we headed back to Anchorage so I could speak to the club about workbenches.
Alaska – at least the small part I saw – is intoxicatingly beautiful. I hope I can return before too long.
The teaching job I was looking forward to the most this year was in Anchorage, AK, with the Alaska Creative Woodworkers Association. I have wanted to visit Alaska since reading Jack London’s “White Fang” as a little boy (yes, I know it takes place in the Yukon Territory).
As it turns out, the state is even more beautiful than I’d imagined. Flying into Anchorage was more like landing in an alien country than an airport. I have simply never seen so much undeveloped wildness.
The woodworkers in Alaska are, of course, just like the woodworkers I have met everywhere else in the world. They are a close-knit and friendly bunch, easy to like and drink a beer with.
The club doesn’t have a dedicated facility, per se. But they hold their classes at the shop of member Don Fall, who has an enormous and fully equipped facility that can easily handle 14 woodworking benches. The shop is on the outskirts of Anchorage, so there is a lot of wildlife.
This morning, the members were smoking ribs for a barbecue, and the No. 1 concern was luring bears in from the woods. And after lunch a moose visited the school and stripped some bark off a birch tree to eat.
This was a small moose – only about a year old – but was bigger than any horse I’ve seen. (I know I sound like a tourist. But getting 10 feet away from a moose is both stupid and incredibly cool.)
For the last two days we have been building precision layout tools – straightedges, winding sticks and try squares – and working on the finer points of sawing, planing and chiseling. Tomorrow we start building Dutch tool chests and will focus on working our butts off.
Some of the fun parts of the class:
• We built Alaskan polissoirs. We made these from a whisk broom and hose clamps. Then we wrapped the whole thing in duct tape. They worked quite well. I only wish the duct tape were camo (so you couldn’t see it).
• Tony Strupulis of Raven’s Edge Toolworks transformed a worthless chisel/rasp into something useful: a bottle opener.
To build an English-style tool chest, you don’t need a chest full of hand tools. Here is what I consider the minimum tool kit necessary to build this chest during a class or in your shop (as soon as you have your stock dimensioned).
Handplanes Block plane: for smoothing surfaces and trimming joints flush
Jack plane: for gross removal of material
Moving fillister, skew rabbet or large shoulder plane: for cutting rabbets
Plow plane: for plowing the groove in the lid
Beading plane: 1/8” or 3/16” (optional)
Saws Dovetail saw
Tenon saw
Coping saw, such as the Olson, and extra blades (10 or 12 tpi)
Marking & Measuring Cutting gauge, such as the Tite-Mark
Dividers (one or two pair)
Marking knife
Mechanical pencil
Dovetail gauge or sliding T-bevel
Tape measure
Combination square: 6” or 12”
Miscellaneous 16 oz. claw hammer
Nail sets
Hand drill with a set of bits up to 1/4”
Sharpening equipment
Depending on how you cut your dovetails, you can skip some of the equipment. If you cut pins first, you can get away without a marking knife. If you like your dovetails a little irregular looking, you can dispense with the dovetail marking gauge and the dividers. If you truly cut your dovetails “by hand” then you don’t need a dovetail saw (you ninja).
