Lost Art Press

I’ve Got Crabs (Don’t Tell my Wife)

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While in Maine earlier this month, I was looking forward to lobster and a trip to Liberty Tool in Liberty, Maine. I wasn’t interested in buying tools at Liberty – I’ve got enough of those. Mostly I wanted to raid the store’s mason jars.

The store is chock-a-block with bits of hardware – old screws, nails, pulls, locks and the like.

I was going to drive up to Liberty Tool last Sunday, but then I found out that furniture maker Freddy Roman had beat me to it and ransacked the place.

Sigh. While I’m not much of a wood hoarder (until tomorrow, perhaps), I do pick up bits of hardware whenever I stumble on them. Good blacksmith-made chest handles can cost less than $10. A crab lock, like the one shown above, runs about $80.

While I try to give blacksmith Peter Ross all the business I can (he’s actually making a crab lock for a tool chest for me), I cannot always afford custom work. So buying old stuff stretches my hardware budget without having to buy from Home Depot.

Your best bet is to shop for the stuff in person. While you can find cut nails, hinges and locks on eBay, the prices are high. One guy was asking $7 for a nail. A bent one. Other woodworkers I know have had good luck with Robinson Antiques, especially for chest lifts and locks.

Again, you pay for the convenience. The best prices are in the scrounge market. And scrounging takes time.

I you are wondering what the heck a crab lock is, check out the video below. It’s a surface-mount chest lock that can automatically lock the lid when you close it. Of course, this is a fantastic way to accidentally lock your key in your chest. So be wary of the crab’s claws. They bite.

— Christopher Schwarz

Pictures from the Womb

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Here we have 11 more tool chests, waiting to be born.

Next week I’ll be at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” alongside the students. One of their questions will be on hardware – what to use and where to get it.

I’ve been completely satisfied with the hinges and ring pulls from Horton Brasses. But what if you want something more old school? Something like a crab lock, perhaps?

Stay tuned.

— Christopher Schwarz

Spots Open in the ‘Hammer in Hand’ Class

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There are several spots open in the “Hammer in Hand” class that runs Sept. 4-8 at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Franklin, Ind.

The class is perhaps poorly named – it’s not just about nails. Instead, the course is as much instruction on building traditional casework by hand that I can cram into five days. During the class we build three projects: A Moxon dovetailing vise, a shooting board/bench hook and the dovetailed Schoolbox from “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”

The class is open to all skill levels of woodworkers. I’ve had students who have never picked up a tool before, and I’ve had professional woodworkers who want to learn hand techniques.

The class is structured to challenge your ideas about handwork. Most people get the impression that it is slow, perhaps a little crude or that you need years of training to do basic things. Not so. Here’s some of stuff we learn in the class.

1. Sharpening. Get it done in three minutes and get back to work. It’s more fun to make tools dull than it is to make them sharp.

2. Flattening by hand. How to quickly flatten boards with planes by paying attention to only a couple key surfaces and ignoring the rest.

3. Shooting. How to shoot boards for accurate joinery with a simple appliance.

4. Dovetailing. Learn what’s important and what’s not so you focus your energy and attention in the right place. Find out where people make their biggest mistake (it’s not sawing or chiseling).

5. Traditional glues. Why hide glue is the woodworker’s friend.

6. Truing up an glued carcase without spleching the corners.

7. Nails. Why you should love cut nails. They are an important part of the hardware, like a lock or pulls.

8. Cut dados by hand. It’s a snap. No dado plane needed.

9. Make basic mouldings by hand – both with complex moulders and hollows and rounds.

10. Mitering by hand. You don’t need a chop saw.

So if you have a free week, we’d love to have you join the class. It’s the only class I’m teaching in 2012 that has any open spots. To register or get more information on the class, click here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Peter Follansbee on Hatchets

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Since the publication of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” many readers have asked what sort of hatchet they should buy to get started hewing the legs for their joint stools.

Peter Follansbee, one of the two authors of the book, took a few minutes to show me how you can do the work with either a single- or double-bevel hatchet. And he discussed several brands of tools that are available on the market now. He also showed off a hatchet that Jennie Alexander, the other author of the book, had converted to a single-bevel hatchet.

If you are curious about hatchets, this quick video will get you started.

— Christopher Schwarz

An Overdue Addition to The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

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While building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” for the book, I debated on whether to add a tool rack to one of the inside walls of the carcase.

In the end, I decided against it because tool racks were in the minority of the chests I studied for the book. Today, however, I entered the minority.

During the last 12 months, I’ve been trying out a rack that is mounted to the rear wall of the traveling version of this chest, which I have been carting from town to town in my hatchback. I have come to appreciate the rack quite a bit, even though it limits the movement of the sliding trays just a bit.

The rack I installed on my chest is 1” x 1-1/4” pine that was left over from a DVD shoot – hence the small bead moulding on the corner. I laid out the holes from the centerpoint of the rack. Most of the holes are 1/2” in diameter and on 1-1/4” centers. The exceptional holes are off to the left. These were sized to handle my bench chisels.

I installed the rack using two No. 8 x 1-1/2” screws – no glue. I want to be able to easily remove the rack and modify it in future years. On some of the racks I studied, there were also some smaller holes between the 1/2” holes so you could sneak a tool or two more into the rack.

On Monday, I’ll put the new rack to the test when I teach a class on building this chest at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking in Berea, Ky. As always, I am looking forward to my week at Kelly’s. It’s a well-equipped shop and peaceful place to work – a dream shop, really.

— Christopher Schwarz