OK now, before we get started here I want you all to gather around there behind the bench. Like a family photo. We are going to gang-cut all the dovetails on all your tail boards with this one saw from Lie-Nielsen.
Yup. One cut. One and done. And you are going to be amazed.
Yup. Look amazed. Chris, drop your left hand there so we can see the saw in all its awesomeness.
Now remember folks this is amazing. Look amazed. Ready?
The first project that young Thomas builds in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker,” is a packing box, which was meant for a customer who was taking some books to the countryside.
Most modern-day readers skip building the packing box and move right on to the second project in the book, the schoolbox. And that’s too bad, because the packing box is great fun and has some good lessons in working entirely by hand.
One reader came up with a great use for a packing box. I love it. The box mimics the box on the cover and in the book. Great idea.
— Christopher Schwarz
I’m not afraid to pull down my pants, turn my head and cough when it comes to discussing workshop practice. And after reading this very interesting bit on treating wounds with French polish, I decided to discuss some of the stuff I do – advisable or not.
When I cut myself in the shop and it’s not ER-able, the first thing I do is wash out the wound in the sink with running water and soap. Then I put some Neosporin or some such on the wound.
But how do I close the wound so that I can continue to work? That depends.
If it’s real minor, I use fabric bandages from the drugstore. Yawn, I know. But these bandages – no matter how much money I spend on them – are usually wrecked when I move my joints. Most woodworking wounds are on the hands, so most bandages don’t last long.
So if it’s a bleeder, I take some other steps that have worked well in my shop for 15 years without any problems. First, clean the wound. Clean it. Clean. It. Then:
1. Blue tape and a clean paper towel. Yup, make your own custom dressing with these two common shop products. Why do I do this? It’s a much more “adaptable” dressing. Even good fabric bandages don’t last the whole day in the shop. Blue tape sure does. And the tape resists dirt. Fabric bandages absorb it.
2. Cyanoacrylate with accelerator. This is my favorite wound-closer. After cleaning things out, I’ll press the wound together, apply some cyano over it and squirt it with accelerator. If it’s a wound on a joint, I’ll usually add a second coat of cyano to make a tough skin. I follow that up with the blue tape/paper towel as noted above to keep the dirt out, and I am good to go.
3. Recently, I’ve made some bandages from clean strips of cotton (old T-shirts) soaked with hide glue. You make the bandages beforehand so they look like light brown strips of dried bacon. But they work. You wrap them around the wound and they tack pretty quick. I still prefer cyano over all the other methods, but this is a good field solution.
I know that the doctors will likely cringe at my methods. But I have had far fewer problems with infection once I started actively closing the wounds with cyano and blue tape.
— Christopher Schwarz
Everything I need for my tool chest shell.
Christopher Schwarz is literally off the grid at the moment – so he has no idea that I’ve commandeered his blog for the weekend (though I suspect he’ll soon figure it out). But it seems appropriate, because I’ve finally begun building my version of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” (ATC).
It’s pathetic that I’ve waited this long.
I watched as Chris built his first ATC in late 2010, before, I think, he’d even come up with the title. He’d leave the Popular Woodworking shop every night (you know…when he still worked for a living) to race home and make dinner for his family, then write until the wee hours. And after he was satisfied with the words, he moved on to the images and book design.
By April 2011, Chris was almost done. I distinctly recall copy editing an almost-final proof of ATC on April 15 and 16 last year. Why? Because there was a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event (and the public unveiling of Chris’s chest…so to speak) in our office/shop that weekend – so I was wielding my peacock-blue editing pen (it’s so much kinder than red) while also talking with visitors and giving tool demonstrations. And Chris wanted the book off to the printer on April 17. If you have a first edition of the book, well, that explains the crap editing.
So I read the book twice again before the second edition was published (and caught almost all the earlier mistakes) and again before the third edition (at which point I caught, I hope, the rest of them). If you have the latest edition and find an error, I really don’t want to know (but Chris does – feel free to point it out to him).
After “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was published, Chris started traveling around the world to teach classes on building the chest (like Elvis, he’d by that point left the [PW] building). And I even spent a week as his helper monkey at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School early this spring, during which I cut what I think was eleventy-billion board feet of poplar for all the students’ skirts, lid pieces, bottom boards and battens. (I’m now awfully good with a panel saw, if I do say so myself). I helped glue up cases and fit skirts, and helped a new woodworker learn to cut his first hand-cut dovetails (though he didn’t need much help).
This is all a (very) long-winded way of saying that I know “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” inside and out – both the book and the construction. Yet I’ve not actually built the darn thing.
Within the next two weeks, if all goes according to plan that will have changed. This morning, I glued up panels for the case front, back and sides (and pesky knotholes have dictated that my chest be just shy of the 24″-wide panels called for; I guess that’s my idea of anarchy?).
Tomorrow, I’ll trim the panels to final size and process the stock for the skirts (yes, I’m using the PWM power equipment for that – sue me). Then, I’ll bring everything home to my hand-tool shop and break out the dovetail saw. My goal is to have the shell, bottom, battens and skirts done by next weekend, at which time I’ll build the lid. But unlike someone else, well, I still have to go to work every day…so I hope I can stick to my plan.
— Megan Fitzpatrick
p.s. Christopher will be back on the grid – but busy teaching – come Monday. He’s back at Roy’s in Pittsboro, N.C., teaching students to build…the Anarchist’s Tool Chest. (This time, he’ll have to do his own rough stock prep.)
p.p.s. The best thing about this build so far? I needed to buy liquid hide glue, and the only place near me that sells it happens to be right next door to Graeter’s. Excellent!
… then they would have had joints that failed suddenly instead of slowly and gradually – like a mortise-and-tenon does. I know this after dropping an anvil on a lot of joints.
If they’d had a router, they would have used it – unless they didn’t want to sand out all the machine marks on the mouldings.
If they’d had a dovetail jig, they would have used it – unless they didn’t want the jig to dictate the height of their drawers.
If they’d had a random-orbit sander, they would have used it – unless they were skilled with a handplane, which would make them faster than the sander. And they might not wanted to spend the money on sandpaper, which has always been expensive.
If they’d had PVA, they would have used it – unless they wanted their joints to be reversible and unless they wanted to dial in the gram strength and open time of their adhesive.
If they’d had dowels, they would have used them – unless they preferred a joint that wasn’t mostly end grain.
If they’d had a table saw, they would have used it – unless they wanted zero grain runout on their stock (which is what you get when you rive your wood) so it was as strong as possible.
If they’d had a drill press they would have used it – unless they wanted to drill a hole at any other angle than 90°.
If they’d had a chop saw they would have used it – unless they wanted to saw something angled or compound.
OK, I’m sure you’re sick of this line of thought. I am. Truth is, I dislike talking about this sort of stuff. Work wood the way you want to. But when you get assaulted by people who say that power tools would rule if they were sent back in time through some wormhole, I have to laugh.
I have access to a CNC machine. I would never use it for building furniture.
I have access to fancy word processors that will correct my grammar, spelling and punctuation, but I never use them. They slow me down, try to correct things I don’t want to correct and generally get in the way of good writing.
I could buy a car with an automatic transmission, but it would interfere with the amount of control I want when I drive.
I prefer vinyl over digital music. Et cetera.
We all make choices about the technology we employ in every task we do. So why would we assume that the people of the past would like to do things the way we do? I sure as heck don’t want to “print” a piece of furniture using a 3D printer. Trust me, that’s coming.
When that day arrives, then maybe all woodworkers will stand united. Until then, let’s allow the woodworkers of the past rest in peace.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Be sure to read Peter Follansbee’s take on this topic on his blog.