Hey everybody, it’s that time of year again – it’s the Anarchist’s Gift Guide. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade now, people seem to like it, so I guess we’ll keep it up. Why? Unlike some other gift guides, ours isn’t sponsored. (In fact, if somebody asked us to write about their tool for the gift guide, our standard retort would be: “Why don’t you poop up your own butt?”) This is stuff we use and love. We have 11 offerings this year, and will publish one a day until we’re done. – Chris & Fitz
Mono Erasers
Another great find in Germany: Mono erasers have become my favorite tool for obliterating entirely my layout mistakes on wood and paper. Unlike the lame erasers on the end of your pencils, the Mono really wipes away pencil lines. You can buy them in a variety of sizes. Keep a few on hand for wherever you make mistakes. – CS
Hey everybody, it’s that time of year again – it’s the Anarchist’s Gift Guide. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade now, people seem to like it, so I guess we’ll keep it up. Why? Unlike some other gift guides, ours isn’t sponsored. (In fact, if somebody asked us to write about their tool for the gift guide, our standard retort would be: “Why don’t you poop up your own butt?”) This is stuff we use and love. We have 11 offerings this year, and will publish one a day until we’re done. – Chris & Fitz
Drug-dealer Scale
As we have gotten deep into making glues, finishes and paint, we’ve developed the need to measure small quantities of stuff.
Enter the scale preferred by your friendly neighborhood drug dealer. These pocket-sized digital scales are ideal for parceling out Fentanyl in an alleyway or measuring 10 grams of Ercolano red for your next batch of fresh milk paint.
These scales are stupid cheap – we pay about $10 to $15 per. Buy a few and keep them in the shop, in the kitchen (for baking) and in your sunken conversation pit with wall-to-wall shag carpeting.
The scale switches easily between metric and American customary units, has a tare function and probably shouldn’t be kept in your car in case of a traffic stop. – CS
We had some – a lot , actually – leftover quark after last week’s chair class. We bought enough so that everyone could make their own milk paint to paint their chairs…and only one person chose to make milk paint and paint their chair. Ah well – their loss is our gain (weight gain, that is).
In the back of Nick Kroll’s “Make Fresh Milk Paint” is his wife Babsi Kroll’s recipe for topfengolatschen that takes only five ingredients (including the leftover quark): a little granulated sugar, two eggs (one is for egg washing the dough), instant vanilla pudding mix, puff pastry sheets (thank you, Pillsbury) and quark. And if you’re fancy, a little dusting of powdered sugar on top for good looks.
Chris’ pantry was missing the powdered sugar, so I sprinkled a few grains of granulated on top for crunch…and let’s be honest: powdered sugar was not going to make mine any prettier…gotta get that dough twist down! But they taste darn good. Thanks, Babsi!
Oh – and milk paint? Looks as good as these pastries taste, and takes about the same amount of time to make (15 minutes, tops – including cleanup).
Hey everybody, it’s that time of year again – it’s the Anarchist’s Gift Guide. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade now, people seem to like it, so I guess we’ll keep it up. Why? Unlike some other gift guides, ours isn’t sponsored. (In fact, if somebody asked us to write about their tool for the gift guide, our standard retort would be: “Why don’t you poop up your own butt?”) This is stuff we use and love. We have 11 offerings this year, and will publish one a day until we’re done. – Chris & Fitz
Conifer and Cairn Angle Setup Blocks
When I was self-employed, I thought about making setup blocks for Lie-Nielsen honing guides and selling them – a piece of plastic cutting board screwed to a block a wood to quickly be able to set the perfect projection of a plane blade for a 35° secondary angle. But I didn’t do it, because that sounded like work.
Enter John Byer, a woodworker in Indiana. He makes HDPE setting blocks for the Lie-Nielsen honing guide (25°, 30° and 35°) and the same angles for the Veritas Side Clamping Honing Guide. We have both.
They’re large enough to handle any blade that fits in the guide, and they are priced to make you never make your own again. Most of all, they are quite durable. Our wooden angle-setting guides got chewed up in no time. So far, the HDPE has proven quite resilient. – Fitz
Hey everybody, it’s that time of year again – it’s the Anarchist’s Gift Guide. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade now, people seem to like it, so I guess we’ll keep it up. Why? Unlike some other gift guides, ours isn’t sponsored. (In fact, if somebody asked us to write about their tool for the gift guide, our standard retort would be: “Why don’t you poop up your own butt?”) This is stuff we use and love. We have 11 offerings this year, and will publish one a day until we’re done. – Chris & Fitz
Baby Bessey Tradesman Clamps
We own dozens of the 6″ Bessey F-style clamps for our shop. These miniature clamps get into places that our big clamps can’t. They are especially ideal for tricky repairs where you need a lot of strength applied to a small place and at a weird angle.
We always bought our 4″ clamps from the home center or when our local woodworking supplier, Mueller, would put them on sale. They’re made in China and use zinc castings. They are OK, and I didn’t think there were other options available.
While teaching in Germany one summer I picked up one of the small Bessey clamps in the shop where I was working and was shocked to see it was German-made and was part of the company’s Tradesman line of clamps, which are the best.
This German clamp was considerably different than our Chinese-made Besseys. It had malleable iron jaws and could crank down with more pressure than the Chinese ones. Plus, the German version had two plastic pads instead of one.
The Chinese-made Bessey.
I bought a bunch of these small Tradesman clamps in Germany and shipped them back to the States. You can do the same thing – Dictum carries them. They are also being sold by Rob Cosman in Canada, who has been trying to get Bessey to sell them in North America for a long time.
If you don’t have any small F-styles, you should definitely fix that deficiency. And the little Tradesman ones are the best. The ones I imported are the TG10/100×50 clamps. These have 4” opening with a 2” jaw depth. – CS
