Anyone who has taken a class at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School knows that you don’t bring a tape measure to class. It will almost surely be confiscated and returned to you at the end of the class.
Today, however, Megan Fitzpatrick needed to cut down some 12’-long poplar sticks for a tool chest class she’s assisting me with this week. And she really wanted to use a tape measure to mark out her cutlines.
So while Roy was stirring the glue pot…
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. You should see how she smuggled in a Japanese saw. Ye-ow.
The chest is built from clear Eastern white pine. The carcase and skirts are completely dovetailed. The bottom boards and battens are attached with cut nails.
The lid is a mortise-and-tenon frame with a dovetailed dust seal around it.
The carcase of the chest is painted in black milk paint (three coats) and ready to go. The lid is glued up and the dust seal needs to be leveled to the lid. Then it can be painted. The dimensions are as per “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” – about 24″ x 24″ x 40″. It’s a full-size chest, not a traveling version.
The interior is empty. No tills or dividers.
If you are interested in buying the chest and can pick it up at the school in Manchester, Conn., send an e-mail to Bob Van Dyke at Bob Van Dyke at bobvandyke@sbcglobal.net.
When Ty Black started as a shop assistant last summer, he was bemused and amused that all my hand tools were stamped with my shop mark.
“I’ll bet your kids are stamped with this, too,” he joked.
Ty’s reaction is common. Many home woodworkers and tool collectors I’ve met take a dim view of marking your tools. It is “hubris,” according to some, because you are putting yourself on the same level as the maker of the tool. I’ve been told that I should only mark tools that I’ve made. Stamping lowers the value of the tool to collectors (though that attitude seems to be changing).
I have to laugh at these attitudes. When you work in a shop with other people, marking your tools in some way is essential so you can keep track of your tool kit. Lots of people own a Starrett 12” combination square, and when yours grows legs, the stamp is the only way to ensure it’s coming back home without a fight.
I’m not worried about theft, per se (though that was a concern in early shops). But before I marked every marking gauge, chisel and hammer, my tools would end up going home with my students. It was always accidental, but is was always annoying and stressful.
Of course, one can go overboard with a name stamp. See Joel Moskowitz’s blog today at Tools for Working Wood for a great example of this.
If you are going to take a woodworking class and still think a stamp is silly, mark your tools in some manner. Add a dot with some nail polish. Add a temporary stripe of brightly colored tape. Something. I’ve seen too much confusion at the end of a class when people are trying to decide whose chisel belongs to whom.
And if you want a fantastic stamp, contact Infinity Stamps. The company’s employees will design a stamp for you based off a sketch or whatever else you have. They are fast and great to deal with.
Gotta go. I have make a crapload of try squares today. And I hope to stamp them all before dinner. That’s another thing I like about my stamp. It announces happy hour for the day.
To the relief of my family (“Hey, I didn’t know dad had a beard,”), I’m paring back my teaching schedule with a machete. However, there are several schools I have committed to for the upcoming year. Here is a partial list:
Nov. 2-3, 2013, Wortheffort school of woodworking, San Marcos, Texas
Dutch Tool Chest
This is a new woodworking school in Texas with a strong focus on the community and teaching young woodworkers. I’ll be there teaching a class on the Dutch tool chest to woodworkers of all ages. Shawn Graham tells me the class is full, but it is definitely worth your while to get on the wait list – classes always have churn.
March 17-20, 2014, William Ng Woodworking School, Anaheim, Calif.
Roorkhee Chair
This will be my first time to teach in California. The Roorkhee chair class is probably my favorite class for a couple reasons – the chair teaches you a lot of unusual skill (riveting?) and we always have time to finish and wax the chairs.
May 5-9, The Woodworkers Club, Rockville, Md.
The Anarchist’s Tool Chest
Another school (and area of the country) that is new to me.
June 9-13, Marc Adams School of Woodworking, Franklin, Ind.
Build an 18th-century Workbench
This workbench will be the full-on plate 11 Roubo workbench with its sliding dovetail joinery. I’m already working on sourcing some fantastic wood for it. This is the only workbench class I will be teaching until 2015.
And that’s about it. I have a few weekend commitments with clubs in various places – Alabama, Alaska, Michigan etc., but other than that, I’ll be shackled to my keyboard and workbench here in Kentucky.
Several readers have asked how far the students in my tool chest class at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking got on Friday afternoon.
Everyone got their lids complete. About four or five people got the dust seal on. Honestly, I think every student could have finished both the lid and the dust seal, but everyone was tired and ready to crack open a beer or try a shot of Connecticut moonshine (that is not a typo).
So we spent the last hour just yacking it up.
As for me, I had Carl “Mr. Wonderful” Bilderback assisting me this week, so I was able to finish the entire shell of the chest and get three coats of milk paint on the carcase.
At one point I asked Carl, a retired union carpenter, to give me a hand with the painting. He readily and cheerfully agreed. But then he noted that during his career he always told people he’d “rather have a rat in my mouth than paint something.”
