Lost Art Press

The Anarchist’s Tool Chest at Age 12

Posted on by Lost Art Press
My tool chest on Dec. 15, 2010.

We receive almost-weekly requests for a current inventory of my tool chest. Usually, I am too swamped with work to take a complete inventory. Luckily, I had a couple days of downtime last week and took the opportunity to clean out my chest and take stock.

Not much has changed in terms of the chest’s structure since the publication of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011. I have nailed in a few dividers in order to corral small tools – plus I added a couple tool racks. But that’s about it. The chest continues to age gracefully, and I am just as grateful for it as I was the day I finished it in December 2010.

The tools have changed a bit as I now make more chairs for sale. In 2010, I was making only three or four chairs per year. This year I made almost 20.

This inventory is arranged first by location (the top till, middle till etc.). Then tools in that location are grouped by function (measuring, bashing, reaming, poking, slaying).

My tool chest on Dec. 28, 2022, during the inventory.

I hope this inventory is useful in some small way. I know there will be questions about why I own “particular tool A” instead of “particular tool B.” There are a handful answers to those questions. Let’s get them out of the way.

  1. This is a tool I have had for decades. There might be better/newer ones out there, but I am happy with this one.
  2. This tool was made by someone I have a strong connection to or someone I admire.
  3. We make this tool. Of course I like it.
  4. I have no clue why I own this tool.
  5. It is the ideal tool for the kind of things I build.
The communal tool wall.
My waist apron.

And I know some of you will ask: Why don’t you have a compass or pinch rods or….in your chest? The answer is likely that those tools are hanging on our communal tool wall or in my shop apron (both pictured above). The tool wall is used by me, Megan, instructors and students. In other words, I couldn’t just lock up this chest and sail to the New World to set up shop. I’d need to first throw in a few other tools. But I promise they would fit (along with my underwear).

Let’s start the inventory with the top sliding till of my chest.

The Top Till

These tools have risen to the top of the chest because I use them many times a day. Think about it: A combination square wallowing at the bottom of a chest like a catfish will just slow you down. This till also gets the dirtiest and has suffered more wear than the others. Because of the wear, I added slick plastic “drawer tape” to the sides of the till to keep it from racking.

Marking & Flesh-digging Tools

The right-hand divider contains all my mechanical pencils, my half-pencils (everyone needs them) and my “unturned pencil” for marking out rough cuts. Plus artist’s gum erasers, my M+R pencil sharpener and a Blue Spruce marking knife with a broken finial. The knife is a personal thing. An Arkansas doctor sent me the knife, which is made from a wild burl that one of his patients had dug up. The patient, a long-time reader, asked the doctor to send me the knife before the reader died. I couldn’t say “no” to that. Finally, there are my Tweezerman tweezers, which are fantastic for digging out splinters.

Cutting Tools

I was surprised at how few cutting tools are in the top till. The Ernest Wright scissors are from Sheffield, England, and are of insane quality (thank you, Matt!). The Kershaw pocket knife is inexpensive, made in the USA and damn-near unbreakable. Crucible Curved Card Scrapers – because they are the best (my boss made me write that). A collection of small drill bits in a handy case that I use constantly (get one from Rockler here). My Lie-Nielsen 60-1/2 block plane, because it is the best. And a small flush-cut saw from Lee Valley (choose “single-edge saw” on the drop-down to buy this one).

Beating & Scrubbing Tools

I know, it’s an odd grouping of tools. But here we are. The small hammer (11 oz.) is a no-name hammer that I use for driving pins and adjusting planes (yes, I hit only the metal bits with this hammer). The bigger hammer is a 16 oz. Plumb with an octagonal handle. After trying to reproduce my magical favorite nail hammer, we concluded that we couldn’t beat the old Plumbs in price or value. Get one. Plumb made millions of these suckers.

My 16 oz. Blue Spruce mallet is a long-term survivor. I chop dovetails and hinge mortises with the help of this guy. The polissoir is made by Cate Richards (I love the pink). The Lie-Nielsen brush is an essential and personal favorite for getting shavings and dust out of the mouths of planes. And the fingernail brush is used to clean the teeth of my rasps. 

Oh, about the orange gaffer’s tape. I put that on tools that tend to wander during classes. Thanks to the tape, I can spot my tools across the room.

Measuring & Marking Tools

At top is my Starrett 12″ combination square, a faithful companion since 1997. Below that is a Chris Vesper try square, which is the ultimate arbiter of 90° in the shop. Worth every penny. A Starrett 24″ rule fits into the combination square and helps with big layouts. The Crucible brass center square is indispensable for chair work. Yes it marks centers on the ends of sticks. But it also allows you to mark radial lines on curved surfaces. The Crucible dovetail template is a natural fit for my work. The Vesper double square (based on old diemakers’ squares) gets inside joints to check their surfaces.

Below that are two Crucible Sliding Bevels and a larger Vesper Sliding Bevel. Sliding bevels are in constant use. I want good ones that hold their settings in a shop environment. Finally, a beloved Shinwa 12″ rule. Nothing special but immensely readable and useful.

Till Two

This till holds chairmaking tools, plus a bunch of bits, punches and other small items. These are tools I use almost as much as my top-till tools. But it has sort of a “junk drawer” feel at times (such as today).

So Many Bits

At some point in my career, I decided I didn’t want to be a two-bit woodworking celebrity. I wanted to be a 142-bit woodworking celebrity. Hence, this photo. Having all this hex-shank tooling has saved my butt many times. Some of these are ground gunsmith bits. Some are cheap ones that fell into my hands and are great to loan out…. The nut drivers at top mostly get used for machinery maintenance. I once tried to epoxy all these bit holders together, but the epoxy flaked off like skin over a sunburn.

Chairmaking Tools

Here are some dedicated chairmaking tools. At top is a “dummy leg” for checking angles as I ream leg mortises. The three little dowel bits are what we call “Hinderpluggen.” We use them to assist in boring through-mortises in chair legs. And for knocking loose legs that have become stuck in chair seats.

Below that are three tapered reamers. There are three to help supply students during classes. Then a 5/8″ tapered tenon cutter, which has been beat to hell and back. The red line on it indicates the thickness of a typical chair seat. And the 5/8″ Wood Owl augers are used for leg mortises.

Miscellaneous Tools

At top is a hacking knife, made by Tom Latane, which splits small parts out for chairs, mostly short sticks and pegs. Below that is the Crucible Bevel Monkey, which is essential when describing chair angles in plans and books.

At bottom left is the Benchcrafted Skraper, a carbide scraper we use for terrible, horrible things I cannot say words about. And a Tooleypark scriber, perhaps the newest tool in the chest, which is used for scribing chair legs to length.

Punchy & Poky Tools

More “junk drawer” items that see a lot of use. The Starrett centerpunch is a constant companion for installing hardware. To the right of that are some of my “I can’t quite get there from here” stubby screwdrivers. Used mostly in emergencies.

There’s a paint can opener because we love paint in this shop. To the right of that is a Japanese cat’s paw, which helps pull headed nails. And a Japanese nail punch, which is so tough that it gets used for many unpleasant jobs in the nether regions (like the Skraper). Then we have a handful of punches. I modify these for different odd jobs, such as setting cut nails.

Below that are some extra compass points and my feeler gauges, for when I feel fancy like a machinist.

Shaves

My only two spokeshaves are from Veritas (I don’t have a spokeshave problem, unlike some chairmakers). Plus a chair devil from Eleanor Rose, which I adore for its functionality and gorgeousness. Oh, and some safety razors, which get bent to become tiny awesome micro-scrapers.

Till Three

Back in the beginning, this till was for bigger tools, such as a brace (now hanging on the wall as a communal tool) and an eggbeater drill (ditto) and auger bits (now in a tool roll). Today, this till is still for bigger tools, but mostly chairmaking stuff and all the grabby tools.

Chairmaking Tools II

At top is a scorp from blacksmith Lucian Avery, which is shaped perfectly for shallow seat saddles. Below that is a Tilt Box gizmo, which is used to “steal” angles from existing chairs or other furniture. Two travishers. The top one is a tight-radius travisher made by Allan Williams. I use it for the sharp transition at the rims of my seats. His travishers are stunning and work incredibly well. Below that is a travisher from Claire Minihan and Peter Galbert, back when they were making them together. I traded Pete a bunch of books for it and still adore it. 

At bottom is a shop-made pencil gauge that is indispensable, especially for chairmaking. It works on flat edges, inside curves and outside curves. I wish we could make these for sale.

The Grabby Things

Most of these tools are obvious. The soft-jaw pliers are for compressing round tenons. The nail pullers are for … pulling nails. And the other tools are for their normal, listed-on-the-box uses.

Machinist Tools & Bits

The Wera tool set is an emergency kit for when things go wrong in the bench room. Or when we need to go fix something on the car or in the house. The Brown & Sharpe dial caliper checks tenon sizes, tolerances when inspecting Crucible products and other machinist-like things. 

And the Snappy bits are for when we need to run-and-gun to build a screwed-together something.

Miscellaneous Tools

At top is a thin pry bar (an iron crow), which gets a lot of off-label use. Below that is the hi-viz orange tape for marking tools. A flexible protractor for doing weird angled stuff on curves. Then there’s a Veritas edge plane, an occasional life-saver. And a Lie-Nielsen small router plane, which was in the top till when I wrote “Campaign Furniture” because of all the hundreds of bits of hardware I had to install.

Name & Number Punches

The number punches stamp the year on my work. And they are used to identify parts in a complex glue-up. The other stamps are name stamps and shop stamps for a variety of purposes. Marking my work, tools and other objects that might walk. The three grey stamps are from Infinity Stamps, which does excellent work.

The Moulding Plane Corral

This area is like a little terrarium in the tool chest. It is a bit closed off from the rest of the chest because of the way the sliding tills interact with the tool racks. You have to slide all three tills all the way forward to get the moulding planes. Not a big deal, but it’s rare to go here unless you mean to. I used to have a lot more hollows and rounds. As I’ve gotten older I’ve settled into a few sizes and profiles that I like and use frequently in my work.

Do not take these tool choices as gospel for what you should own. My work varies wildly in style and period. Yours might not.

Straight Rabbet Plus Hollows & Rounds

The 7/8″ straight rabbet plane is from Clark & Williams (now Old Street Tool), which makes rabbets parallel to the grain of boards. These rabbets might be for joinery, or they might be to rough out the shape of a complex moulding.

I now have only two pairs of hollows and rounds in my chest. A pair of 7s and a pair of 9s. Both sets are by M.S. Bickford. Because I don’t make reproductions, I can usually press these two pairs into making what looks good. Also, my work is more on the vernacular side, so enormous stacks of crazy moulding isn’t my thing. I think that stuff is beautiful, but it’s not what I do.

Beading Planes

I do like to use beading planes on my casework. They produce a nice shadow line to separate a face frame from a door or drawer, for example. I have four of them, but I really only should have three. The 1/8″ beading plane is from Caleb James. There are two 3/16″ beaders. One from M.S. Bickford and one from Old Street. The 1/4″ beader is from Caleb James. If I had to own only one beader, it would be a 3/16″, which is a nice size.

Complex Moulders

I use a few profiles over and over again. Call it consistent or call it boring – I do it so that I have fewer tools to sharpen and care for. (I prefer woodworking over tool maintenance.) At top is an A. Mathieson & Son square ovolo. It was made in Glasgow, which is where the Scottish side of my family comes from (or so I’m told by my spit). Below that is a bigger square ovolo by Old Street Tool. Then a thumbnail moulding plane, which is ideal for the edges of lids and chest tops. It was made by what is now Old Street. I could make that moulding with a straight rabbet and a block plane, but this plane is just so sweet, I keep it around. Finally there’s an ogee plane by Caleb James.

Miter Plane

With all the leftover room from trimming back my hollows and rounds, I have room for a long-time companion, a Wayne Anderson miter plane. This plane was stolen at a Philadelphia tool show. But I got it back after the thief had to sell his tool collection after it was wrecked by Hurricane Sandy (karma is a bitch, sir). It’s a long story, and one that I am not allowed to fully tell. This plane is the first infill I owned, and I love it to bits. Works great, too.

The Central Well & Small Tool Racks

This is the largest space in the tool chest, but it contains the fewest number of tools. When I peek into other woodworker’s chests, this area is usually crammed with bench planes (two No. 5s? Is one for formal outings, Biffy?). While the well looks a bit spare, it has been even more empty in past years. I finally succumbed to a shooting board plane. It’s a luxury. But I have the room, and we use it every week.

Bench Planes

No surprises here. I’ve owned these three tools since before I built the chest. There are Lie-Nielsen’s Nos. 3 and 8. And a Stanley No. 5 (Type 11). The No. 3 has the standard frog, plus a Veritas PMV-11 plane iron (my NAFTA plane). The No. 5 is on its third iron. I now have a Lie-Nielsen A2 iron in it (I had to file open the plane’s mouth a bit to make this work). The No. 8 is stock.

Specialty Planes 

I have a few other specialty planes packed away because I haven’t used them much (especially my plow and moving fillister; but that’s going to change shortly). Here are the three currently have in the central well: A Lie-Nielsen 073 shoulder plane (I have never needed an additional size than this one). A Lie-Nielsen closed-throat router plane. And a Lie-Nielsen dedicated shooting plane. 

Tool Rack Chisels & Stuff

The rack right above the chest’s central well has some important specialty tools. The flush-cut saw, a tool holder from Mattias Fenner in Germany and a Veritas mortise gauge. Next to that we have the Ray Iles mortising chisel (1/4″) and a matching swan-neck chisel for de-crapifying the floors of mortises. Then there’s a massive and beloved Barr bench chisel, which is good for all sorts of nastiness. The steel is ungodly good. Then there’s a Lie-Nielsen 1″ chisel, which didn’t fit in the top rack, and a Lie-Nielsen dovetail chisel with a bog oak handle I turned.

Front Rack & Sawtill

This is a busy area of the tool chest as these tools are pulled out a dozen times a day. As a result, this area gets filthy, especially below the saws. There’s a lot to see.

Screwdrivers

First is a full set of Grace USA straight screwdrivers (why, pray tell, is the No. 6 driver such a weird size? Must be a gunsmith thing). These are the best drivers. Ground tips. Tough as nails. At bottom is an Element’ary driver, which accepts all the hex-shank bits. And it has a locking/magnetic collar. Highly recommended. There’s a Lie-Nielsen screwdriver for tightening split nuts. It’s modified it to work with all our backsaws. And finally a Perfect Handle screwdriver bought for a $1 – perhaps the best $1 I ever spent. It is indestructible. I wish I owned a whole set (no, not the garbage ones that Garrett Wade sells).

Slicing & Poking Tools

The two Tite-Mark gauges see continuous use. I cannot imagine working without them. Next to that are three pairs of vintage dividers and the Crucible dividers. These are used for laying out dovetails, chair spindles, executing olives and other tasks. The little awl was bought at a flea market in Maine (I think it was $3). I adore it. And a Mattias Fenner birdcage awl, the best one I’ve found (if you are awl-curious like me).

Bench Chisels

I’ll be honest: I don’t use all of these chisels. I could probably boil it down to three: the 1/4″, the 1/2″ and the 3/4″. But these guys grew up together and I’d hate to break up a family.

Backsaws

In the sawtill are my personal backsaws. I also have a few on the wall for communal use. Here we have the Lie-Nielsen tenon, carcase and dovetail saws, all with apple handles (a special trade that Tom Lie-Nielsen made for me). And an Eccentric Toolworks dovetail saw by Andrew Lunn – the best saw I’ve ever owned.

Panel Saws

Also in the sawtill are these two vintage panel saws. There’s a Disston D8 filed crosscut with 8 tpi. And a Spear and Jackson filed rip with 7 tpi. The handles are different colors so you can grab the one you need without thinking too much.

Frame Saws

I have a bowsaw packed away (I use a small band saw for big jobs now). But I still use the snot out of my Blue Spruce coping saw and my fretsaw from blacksmith Seth Gould.

Rasps

The rasps and files are tool rolls that stand to the side of the sawtill. Most of these are Auriou, with a couple oddballs thrown in (including a file that sneaked into this tool roll). The Auriou cabinet rasp is a 9 grain. The Auriou modeler’s rasp is grain 15. The Auriou rattail is 13 grain.

Files

I am surprised by how many files there are. They started collecting en masse when I wrote “Campaign Furniture” and I had to file a lot of brass hardware. Then we launched Crucible Tools, and files are helpful when making prototypes. And the needle files are essential for tool maintenance. Files don’t take up much space, so I have allowed them all to stay.

On the lid of my chest is our “Woodworker’s Pocket Book” in a handsome slipcase from Texas Heritage.

The Future

We receive regular messages asking what I would change about my tool chest if I built it today. The answer is: structurally, nothing. It is the right size. Built the strongest way. From an ideal wood (pine). Since building it, Megan Fitzpatrick and I have taught hundreds of others to build this chest, and we have come up with better ways to do some of the construction steps. Some of these are honestly good ideas. Others are simply more efficient ways to work when you have to build seven chests in a week.

We also get asked if I will ever update “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” to build it with a more current tool set. An update is not a priority. Perhaps some day when I run out of new book ideas I’ll revisit ATC. But every time I pick it up and read bits of it, I’m happy with it overall. 

Yes, if I were a “guy on the internet” I would take umbrage with a few choices and rationales in the book. But all in all, the book holds up, and we recommend it to new woodworkers without reservation.

We also get messages thanking us for publishing this book. That ATC changed the way they look at tools, woodworking or rampant consumerism. To that, I say: Thank you. The book changed us, as well. After “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was released in June 2011, it sold well enough that I didn’t have to get a job at Woodcraft or Rockler after leaving Popular Woodworking Magazine (which was my true plan B).

After I left the magazine, I felt the same thing was happening to my career that happens to many other woodworking editors when they quit or are fired. My phone stopped ringing. My email tapered off. People who I thought were friends turned out to be transactional turd birds. 

But after this book was released, you were there. And you kept me from diminishing into obscurity by talking about this book. Recommending it to friends. And attending classes I taught. 

And to that I say: Disobey m…. Nah…. just thanks.

— Christopher Schwarz

Editor’s note: Here are links to those construction updates mentioned above:
• Anarchist’s Tool Chest Update 1: Dovetails
• Anarchist’s Tool Chest Update 2: Bottom & Skirt
• Anarchist’s Tool Chest Update 3: Lid
• Anarchist’s Tool Chest Update 4: Tool Rack & Sliding Tills
• Chain of Tools

Health Update on Bean the Shop Cat

Posted on by Lost Art Press

This story has a happy ending. Promise. 

On Christmas Eve, Bean the three-legged shop cat suffered a blockage to his urethra and had to be rushed to the animal hospital. He was in bad shape. His bladder was full and hard, his heart was racing and his bloodwork was troubling. 

The good vets and technicians at MedVet in Cincinnati went to work immediately. They removed the blockage and catheterized him. But his blood – particularly his potassium levels – were in the deadly range. For the next couple days they monitored him, but he was listless. 

On the third day, a switch flipped in his body. His blood returned to normal at a shockingly fast rate. And he was his normal self. The vets removed the catheter, and he immediately became blocked again. So he went to surgery and got a shiny new…hole.

He’s now home and confined to a bedroom without furniture. Downside: cone of shame. Upside: fentanyl patch.

Bean is expected to make a full recovery in the next three weeks. And he will be back to work as our Walmart greeter, smeller of new people’s shoes and lead toolchest investigator. On the other hand, our bank account’s recovery will take much longer. But this is what money is for. 

Long live Bean.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Shoutout to MedVet (it’s a chain of hospitals) and everyone who works there. At every step they did everything right: communication, care, compassion. I hope we never have to use them again.

Gummy Worm Glue Update

Posted on by fitz

You may have read a few weeks ago about what happens when Chris gets bored with watching me teach. And what happens a day later when people share “advice” after said experiments. As far as I know, the bugs have not yet eaten what is now Roy Underhill’s Dutch tool chest. (And frankly, I’m a little offended that some of y’all think my dovetail joints aren’t tight enough to keep the bugs out….)

I didn’t bring the chest home, but we did bring home the test joint Chris made with Gummy Bear Glue. On Tuesday, I tried reversing the gummy glue using the same strategies one uses to reverse hide glue; both are gelatin, after all.

But first, I hit the snot out of it…again. We first tried to reverse the joint using nothing but force (a big hammer) the day after Chris glued the two pieces together. It didn’t work then, either. But you see can above that this time, the lump hammer produced the start of a split. Under extreme force, the wood is failing before the gummy glue. Just as it does with hide glue, PVA and other wood-appropriate mastics after they’ve fully cured.

I cut the test joint into three pieces before testing the gummy glue reversal with hot water, alcohol and a chisel.

I boiled water, then as quickly as possible sucked it into a syringe with an 18-gauge needle and inserted hot water into the joint on all sides. After letting it sit for a few minutes, I was able to pop the joint apart with a sharp hammer blow. Just as I’ve done numerous times to hide glue joints treated with hot water.

As you can see, it’s an almost dead-clear reversal – no wood failure in the joint (that teensy bit of failure visible at the top of the above picture is where the split was starting from the untreated hammer blow).

Next I tried inserting 190-proof grain alcohol into the joint. This crystalizes hide glue – and it did the same here. I waited two minutes or so before smacking the joint, and you can see below that the split isn’t quite as clear as with the water, with a few thin areas of wood failure visible (again, the obvious failure at the edge is the result of before-treatment beating).

Then, I used a wide chisel to try to cleanly split the joint without water or alcohol. Same as with any wood glue, there is obvious wood failure – if not as much as I’ve seen with traditional hide glue.

Is two weeks enough set-up time – and in winter, where it’s too cold for the bugs – for a proper test of the gummy glue? Maybe not. But clearly, it has some holding power. Regardless, I am 100-percent certain that Roy’s Dutch tool chest will not fall apart; have you seen the number of nails I use on those things?*

– Fitz

* Maybe you haven’t…but soon, very soon, you’ll be able to refer to a book on the subject. Just trying to head that question off at the pass…

Video: ATC Interior Design

Posted on by fitz
In the background of the stock for my next ATC class is the half-done chest I started in the last class. Mocking me.

I don’t always build a chest alongside with my Anarchist’s Tool Chest classes – after all, I already have two full-size tool chests (one at the Lost Art Press shop and one at home), and there are only so many I can sell. But during my early December class, I decided to make one…partially at least. I always end up having to cede my bench and/or tools to students. Plus once the skirts are on, I spend a lot more time walking around than cutting my own joints. I’m terrified someone is going to send a flesh-cut flush-cut saw into a hand as they trim off protruding pins on the angled bits of the skirts. (The joints are cut before the bevel, so once the skirts are glued on, the “ears” get cut off.) I’ve cut into my own thenar eminence (that fleshy mound at the base of the thumb) more than once during this very operation. (I don’t mind my own blood, but I certainly don’t want to see student blood!)

A not-great picture of an “ear,” waiting to be to trimmed.

So, I have sitting on my bench right now a glued-up carcase with the rest of the bits stacked on top. Once I finish the chest exterior (hopefully this week), we’re going to film kitting out the interior with what we consider the standard tills and racks:

• three dovetailed tills and their runners
• hole-y rack for thin pointy tools (chisels, screwdrivers and the like) – both with and without a rack behind it for hanging backsaws
• saw till on the floor for panel saws and longer handsaws
• moulding plane cubby

We might also show installing the hardware…if time allows and if I can stomach being on screen for that much longer.

I expect we’ll have the video available sometime in February.

Yes, I need to clean out my chest bottom and tills – but yes, I know where things are, thank you very much.

Also, I’ll have a full-sized ATC for sale soon-ish – shoot me an email if you’re interested. (I’m thinking of painting it blue.)

– Fitz

How Hardware is Made

Posted on by fitz

The following is excerpted from Chapter 3 of Christopher Schwarz’s “Campaign Furniture.”

For almost 200 years, simple and sturdy pieces of campaign furniture were used by people all over the globe, yet this remarkable furniture style is now almost unknown to most woodworkers and furniture designers.

“Campaign Furniture” seeks to restore this style to its proper place by introducing woodworkers to the simple lines, robust joinery and ingenious hardware that characterize campaign pieces. With more than 400 photos and drawings to explain the foundations of the style, the book provides plans for nine pieces of classic campaign furniture, from the classic stackable chests of drawers to folding Roorkee chairs and collapsible bookcases.

Few things separate a piece of campaign furniture from ordinary furniture as much as the hardware.

In fact, antique dealers (and the clueless) will pretty much call anything that has brass corner guards a “campaign” piece. You see this especially with writing slopes, a common piece of furniture for a couple centuries that every literate citizen used – not just military officers and colonists.

I consider this a minor mistake and gladly overlook it. After all, most of these writing slopes (which some people call lap desks) were built as tough as a campaign piece, using nice woods, hardware and leather. So they were designed to be taken on “campaign,” even if that was just to the park.

What is less forgivable is when an unscrupulous dealer calls screwed-together plywood pieces “campaign furniture” because someone has tacked on some corner guards or rectangular brass pulls. The truth is that the campaign style has had some minor revivals over the years. So you can find “campaign chests” (and end tables, coffee tables and entertainment units) from the 1970s.

So while authentic campaign furniture is something that goes far beyond its hardware, the brasses are a critical part of evaluating a piece. And for a maker, the brasses are one of the major expenses when building a piece. When you shop for hardware, it’s tempting to buy pulls that look OK from 10′, but feel like tin foil in the hand.

This short chapter is designed to introduce you to the different kinds of hardware and the ways they are made – cast, extruded, bent, welded and die-cast. And to teach you a bit about the strategies for installing inset pulls, corner guards and the other inset plates common on campaign pieces.

How Hardware is Made
Like your tools, the brasses for your furniture can be made in many different ways. The process affects how the hardware looks, feels in the hand and costs.

A lot of campaign brasses I’ve studied have been cast. There are several ways to cast metal; the three most common methods for making hardware are sand casting, die-casting and investment casting (and their variants).

While all these casting processes are different in their details, they are the same in their basic idea: There is a mold made in the shape of the hardware and it is filled with molten metal. When the metal cools, the casting is finished and assembled.

All three types of casting have advantages and disadvantages for you, the furniture maker, and I’ll be covering them in some detail here. Most woodworkers are woefully uneducated about the way hardware is made and as a result make bad decisions. As you are about to see, a little education about metal casting can go a long way toward improving the quality of your projects. Let’s start with sand casting.

Fig. 3.2 Rough behind. One of the sure marks of sand casting is a rough surface finish left from the sand itself. On the backside of a pull, this is not a problem.

Sand Casting
Many handplane bodies (and woodworking machines) are made using sand casting. It allows a maker to produce castings in an economical way. The downside to sand casting furniture hardware is that the surface finish is never nice enough to use as-is. The manufacturer usually needs to finish the visible surfaces and touch points. This can be labor- or time-intensive.

But what is more important for a furniture maker is that the finishing process can make the parts non-interchangeable, especially if the pieces are finished by hand. The upside is that hand-finished hardware with small variations can be beautiful.

Hardware made this way is called “sand cast” because a sand that is moistened with oil or chemicals is used in the casting process The casting begins with a “pattern,” which was traditionally wood, but is now typically aluminum for pieces of hardware. Then either the pattern or a matchplate or some other representation of the finished object is used to make depressions in two boxes of sand – one is called the cope and the other is called the drag. These two bits of sand are put together and the cavity is filled with molten metal via tubes called “sprues” in casting parlance. Gates are put into the matchplate or simply cut into the sand itself to allow the metal to flow completely through the part and out the other side. This helps the metal completely fill the cavity and helps prevent shrinkage (which is a cause of surface pitting).

Fig. 3.3 Not the same. These two pulls were made by the same maker in the same year and even sold in the same box. But they require completely different recesses. None of the curves (or even the straight lines) match.

After the metal hardens, the sand is removed (and reused) and the resulting metal shape is finished – by grinding, filing, polishing, machining or some combination of these processes. After grinding and/or filing, all cast parts are put into vibratory tumblers filled with a variety of different medias to get the surface finish smooth. The tumbling is the key process that turns a very rough casting into a smooth finished part. Machining typically takes place after tumbling.

Sand casting produces hardware that typically has a substantial feel. Its components are fairly thick. The unfinished faces of the hardware will typically be a bit coarse – like sand. (Proper tumbling eliminates this rough surface.)

Fig. 3.4 You get the idea. The level of detail with sand casting isn’t as fine as with some other methods, but it has served well for thousands of years.

These qualities are the nice things about sand-cast objects, but there are some downsides with sand-cast hardware. The level of detail isn’t as good as with other casting methods. So a sand-cast lion’s face will look a bit “blurrier” than one cast by other methods.

Also, the sand-casting process can result in some variance in dimensions. This is not a big deal at all if you install your hardware piece by piece. But if you want to have one router template for all your inset sand-cast pulls, you might want to closely examine the pulls first and see how close in size they are to one another.

Believe it or not, sand casting (the oldest form of casting, by far) can be done at home or even on the beach. Peter Follansbee once showed me ring pulls that he and other researchers at Plimoth Plantation made on the beach. And Thomas Lie-Nielsen fondly recalls how his father – a boatbuilder – would cast the keels of his boats on the beach.

Investment (Lost Wax) Casting
Investment casting is a more complex process than sand casting, but it is suited for small objects and short runs, and results in some fine details that might not require additional finishing.

Fig. 3.5 I can read that. Investment casting allows a much higher resolution of detail straight from the mold, such as the manufacturer’s name cast onto this pull.

The process is complex (and can be more expensive than sand casting), but it starts with a pattern that goes through several stages of production involving creating a wax mold of the object that is then covered in a ceramic material.

Investment-cast pieces of hardware have few downsides, other than the fact that they are typically more expensive than a similar sand-cast object. They allow much finer detail than a sand-cast piece, can have a much thinner cross-section and have the presence of a sand-cast piece.

Orion Henderson, the owner of Horton Brasses, says that investment casting can be pretty economical for very small parts. He says the downside to investment casting is that the metal suffers from greater “shrink” – when the metal cools it gets smaller, leaving pitting; the part gets so small that sometimes the part is not usable. The molds need to be oversized to account for this. Because of this shrinkage, Henderson says, investment casting is fine for small parts but not as suitable for big pieces – a bed wrench for tightening bed bolts, for example.

Die-cast Hardware
Die-cast objects get a bad rap. And that’s because die-casting has been used with lightweight raw materials to produce lightweight (sometimes featherweight) pieces of furniture hardware. They are inexpensive and look good from across the room. But once you grab the hardware, it can feel insubstantial.

Fig. 3.6 Die-cast. These die-cast pulls are perfectly consistent and inexpensive, but lightweight. One of the advantages of die-casting is that it is easy to cast in threads and other details that might otherwise have to be machined in a sand casting or investment casting.

Like all casting processes, die-casting has a mold – in this case a two-part metal mold called a die that is machined with hollow areas. Molten metal is injected under pressure to fill the hollow areas in the die. Then the two pieces of the die are mechanically separated and the finished part is ejected.

Die-casting produces parts that require little or no finishing. The parts are remarkably consistent. You can make many of them in a minute, and the individual units are inexpensive as a result. So why do some people dislike the process?

Like all technology, die-casting isn’t the problem. It’s how it is employed.

Fig. 3.7 Ejector-pin marks. The small circles are the marks of a die-cast object. Look for them on your Hot Wheels.

You can use copper (or even lead) in die-casting to make a nice and heavy piece of hardware. (In fact, die-casting was invented in the early 19th century to make movable lead type for printing presses.) But in many instances, the manufacturer will use lightweight metals, such as aluminum, tin, zinc or Zamak, an alloy of lightweight metals.

To be honest, these lightweight metals are fine for some pieces of hardware. A drawer knob, for example, can be just fine when it is die-cast. But when you get into pieces of hardware that have movable parts that you grab, such as a drawer pull, the whole thing can feel chintzy.

You can identify die-cast pieces of hardware easily, even if its catalog description doesn’t mention the process. The finished casting is pushed out of the die by ejector pins – movable rods inside the die. These pins leave telltale round marks on the hardware. Look for them on the back of the hardware, and you’ll start to see them everywhere.

Bent Plate
When it comes to the corner guards that are prevalent in campaign furniture, many modern manufacturers will use thin brass plate that is bent and sometimes welded at the corners.

Fig. 3.8 Or bend it. Bending your corner guards can be easier than casting them. So it’s a common practice with this piece of hardware. The big difference is that the corner is radiused instead of sharp.

This might sound like a cheap shortcut. It indeed is a shortcut compared to cast-brass corner guards, but it can be a good shortcut.

The plate is more consistent in thickness than any piece of sand-cast hardware. So installing it is easier because you can use one depth setting on your router plane or electric router.

The downside to using brass plate is that the corners of the hardware – both the inside corners and outside corners – are rounded because of the bending process. The cast corner guards can have sharp inside and outside corners. It’s a subtle difference, but it is noticeable once you are sensitive to it.

Fig. 3.9 Mind the gap. This corner guard isn’t welded at the corner. This makes it easy to manufacture, less expensive and wrong-looking.

If you do use hardware made from bent plate (and I do), look for welds at the corners when the hardware covers three surfaces, such as when you have a brass guard designed for the top corners of a chest. A quality guard will be bent then welded. Some of the less expensive guards are simply bent with no weld. This looks just weird and wrong to my eye.

Extruded Hardware
Some of the hardware you’ll see in catalogs will indicate it is “extruded.” Extruding hardware parts is analogous to making macaroni or using the Fuzzy Pumper Barbershop with Play-Doh. Metal (cold or hot) is pushed through a die to make a finished shape that is then cut up to finished lengths.

Fig. 3.10 Pretty, standard. Most quality cabinet hinges are extruded these days, though you will still see some that are stamped out then bent. Oh, and there are still blacksmith-made hinges, too.

Many quality hinges are made with extrusion. The leaf and barrel are extruded. Then they are cut to length and machined to accept screws. The only downside to extruded hardware is its price.

Choosing Hardware
So why is all this talk about hardware manufacturing important? I think that hardware can make or break a piece of campaign furniture. A zinc die-cast drawer pull on a teak chest is like a nugget ring on a millionaire’s hand.

When I am shopping for hardware for a piece of campaign furniture, I like to purchase a sample pull, hinge or corner guard to inspect the quality before dropping hundreds of dollars on a suite for a chest or trunk.

The samples also help me ensure that the color and finish on the hardware will work. And the color of the brass is another can of worms we need to open.

If you buy your hardware from several sources for one piece of furniture, the chance of them matching in color is tiny. And the last thing I want to do after spending $700 on pulls is to open a chemistry set to strip the hardware pieces and color them.

If you like dabbling in solvents and other noxious fumes, you can easily find information on how to strip the lacquer from your hardware and color it with ammonia fumes. Me, I have enough volatile organic compounds in my life. I’d rather leave that to other people.

That’s why I take one of two strategies when buying hardware: Either I buy all the pieces from one maker to ensure they have a consistent color, or I ask (nicely) if the hardware seller can color the pieces. The better hardware merchants are happy to do this for you. In fact, some will even bring in hardware from other sources and color your entire suite so everything looks the same. It might cost a little more to go this route, but the results are worth it.

One last note about buying hardware and I’ll shut up: I think slotted screws are really the only kind of screw that looks good on a campaign piece. Phillips screws are a 1930s invention that were intended for assembling cars – not fine furniture.

Once you get your hardware in hand, you can build the piece and install the pulls, knobs and corner guards. There are several strategies for creating the recesses for the hardware, ranging from a chisel and a mallet all the way up to templates for the electric router and pattern-cutting bits.