Lost Art Press

Building (and Buying) ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’

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This week I’m in Germany teaching a class in how to build the tool chest featured in the book “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” For those of you who don’t read the Popular Woodworking Magazine blog, here are some convenient links so you can follow along as we build the chest.

• Back to Germany to See an Old Friend
• Video: ‘As Smooth as a Nun’s Stomach’
• Is There a Dominatrix in the House?

Also, for those of you who do not have access to the milk paint I used to paint the chest, there is a great little article on how to make your own from this copy of Popular Science magazine from 1940. It’s quite easy and is something I must try. Click here.

And lastly, the book “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is making its way into the retail markets. If you live outside the United States or just hate purchasing things from Kentucky, here are some links to other people who sell our book.

• Lee Valley Tools
• Lie-Nielsen Toolworks
• Tools for Working Wood
• Dictum

We have been approached by a retailer in Great Britain about carrying the book and hope to make that work. The challenge is getting it across the Atlantic at a price that is reasonable for you in the end.

— Christopher Schwarz

Rescinding a Recommendation: Gabardi & Sons

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Matt Hodgson of Gabardi & Sons makes some nice planes. No doubt about it. But after hearing from several of his customers (and one of his creditors) this year, I have to rescind my recommendation of his business.

I have e-mailed Hodgson about this and asked him to remove my recommendation from his web site, but I haven’t heard back from him.

So what’s the complaint? Since my first review of his tools appeared in the Fine Tool Journal, three of his customers and one of his creditors approached me for help in contacting Hodgson. He wasn’t returning their e-mails or phone calls. They had given him money (or goods), and they hadn’t heard from him in many months.

At this point, I can no longer recommend his business. I sincerely hope that his customers report back to me with good news on their business dealings with Hodgson.

And I apologize if my review was a factor in your purchase.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Little Sightseeing in Regensburg Before the Class

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Come Monday morning, I’ll be immersed in teaching a sawing class at the Dictum workshop at Niederaltaich. So I took off to Regensburg today with Ute Kaiser of Dictum and her partner, Stefan, to see the city.

The highlight for me, as always, involved food. We visited The Sausage Kitchen, which has sold sausages for more than 1,000 years. As we ate, we looked out over the famous bridge Steinerne Brücke. The Roman soldiers who built the bridge ate at The Sausage Kitchen, and the bridge itself carried the soldiers from the 2nd and 3rd Crusades.

While that makes you feel insignificant, the sausages make up for it.

— Christopher Schwarz

Moulding Glossary: Flutes

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flutes: A channel or furrow in a pillar, resembling the half of a flute split longitudinally, with the concave side outwards. Some authorities refer to Doric columns as “channeled” because they have a sharp arris at the meeting of the edges of each flute. They suggest that flutes require fillets between them to be real flutes.

A Very Useful Prize to Me

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“And it was after long searching that I found out the carpenter’s chest, which was, indeed, a very useful prize to me, and much more valuable than a shipload of gold would have been at that time. I got it down to my raft, whole as it was, without losing time to look into it, for I knew in general what it contained.”

— Daniel Defoe, from “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un‐inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.”