Lost Art Press

While teaching my first class on building a tool chest at the Dictum workshops in Metten, Germany, this June I had a group of students that were nothing short of spectacular.

They were from all over the world: New Zealand, Chicago, Austria, Great Britain, the Netherlands and yes, Germany. And their woodworking experience was as varied as their nationalities. For some of them, this was their first significant woodworking project. And I had two professional woodworking instructors and a professional cabinetmaker from Dictum.

Despite – or perhaps because of – this diversity, it was one of the most interesting classes I’ve ever taught. I got to see European hand-tool techniques I’d only read about. I learned different ways of gluing up a dovetailed case from the Germans. And I was fascinated by the way the school puts all its flat panel stock in clamps overnight (like a giant sandwich).

Then there was the singing.

A father-son pair from Denmark took the class, even though neither had any business being there. The father was a long-time woodworking instructor. And his son, Jonas, could have taught the class himself. Jonas, a locomotive marine engineer, was both fast and accurate.

Jonas and his father would sing (in various languages) as they worked. In two-part harmony. And I cannot even whistle while I work.

If you want to see some videos from this class and hear them sing our National Anthem, read some of my posts on my blog at Popular Woodworking here.

Anyway, Jonas recently sent some photos of his completed tool chest. He was determined to make his own milk paint for the chest, which will be used as a blanket chest in his house.

“I tried to make some milk paint, but I couldn’t make it work,” Jonas wrote. “I am not sure whether to use slaked lime, lime fruit, powdered lime, Jura lime, hydraulic lime or maybe some other form of lime.

“But I found a recipe for egg-oil-tempera that even I couldn’t screw up: one egg, the equivalent volume of boiled linseed oil and the equivalent volume of milk. I did manage to mix a disastrous color though, so could you please issue a warning not to mix one batch of egg-oil-tempera with 8 tablespoons of zinc oxide (white) and 4 tablespoons iron oxide (Bordeaux red). the result is as you can see not a pleasant sight.

“It was intended to be used as a primer, so I am hoping that I can fix it by mixing some light grey paint to cover most of the purple.”

Jonas promised to send photos of the chest in its finished color.

I know this will sound corny, but classes like this give me hope for the future, of both the craft and humanity. That no matter how impersonal, hierarchical and technological our world will become, there will always be a class of people who are bound together by the work our hands produce. There will be parents who teach their children. And for those people, I can report that our similarities are more significant than our differences.

— Christopher Schwarz

“You can have art in your daily life if you want it, but you don’t. You prefer fountain-pens and motor cars.”

— Eric Gill, the creator of the Gill Sans typeface, as quoted in “Country Craftsmen” by Freda Derrick (1945)

“Alas,” me thinks, “deluded people, you are doomed for a season to turn the grindstone for a booby.”

— Charles Miner, “Turning the Grindstone” in “The Fourth Reader” (1872)

The first two words of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” are the most important ones to remember: Disobey me.

It’s a Russian absurdist saying that I learned from Prof. Gary Saul Morson, the single-most influential teacher in my life. You can take those two words at face value – don’t do what I do. Or you can enter the hall of mirrors if you think for a moment about the impossible task set before you by those two words.

In the same way, you can take the tool chest I built at the end of the book at face value – it’s a place to store tools. Or you can scratch the paint on its surface and see that it is also a symbol of a way to approach our craft. Every tool you need to build furniture is contained in this box, and everything else you need (outside of raw material) is something you cannot buy: skill

Since “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was published in June 2011, I’ve received letters from woodworkers who don’t have the space, skill or desire to build a dovetailed tool chest and they are wondering what they should do. My answer: Disobey me.

A traditional tool chest is not the only way to manage your tools, though after trying many other methods I think a chest is best. But if you boil down the principles of a tool chest, you can create a tool cabinet, a wall rack, a system of open shelves or a German-style rolling and folding box.

What are these principles? Here is what I think is important.

1. All your hand tools should be only one hand motion away from you putting a mitt around its grip. That’s why the tool chest has staggered and sliding trays.

2. You should be able to see the core set of hand tools all the time. And nothing important is in drawers. In fact, I think drawers are the enemy of efficiency. I have worked with a wall cabinet with drawers, a workbench base with drawers and a tool chest with drawers. What I remember most about those systems is rooting around in the drawers for a countersink.

3. Your tools should be protected from dust. Dust has salt. Salt absorbs water. Water rusts steel. Wipe down your tools after every use with something oily (not from your glands, please). When you aren’t working, the tools should be covered so they don’t get dusty, salty and rusty.

4. Your system should hold your core set of tools, and little else. A 10’-long shelving system might hold everything, but you will spend more time walking back and forth than is necessary.

5. Your system should adapt as your work changes. A chest with undivided tills allows you to move your carving gouges to the top till when you are making a shell. Then you can move your hammer and nailsets to the bottom till. A system that has one place for every tool is great – for that day. Tomorrow you will be a different woodworker, even if you keep the same tool kit.

But like I said before: Disobey me. Think for yourself.

Or, as John Brown once wrote: “By all means read what the experts have to say. Just don’t let it get in the way of your woodworking.”

— Christopher Schwarz