One of the significant changes to the interior of the tool chests I build for customers is how the sawtill is constructed. The original from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was built like a few chests I had observed with a solid wall between the sawtill and the area for the bench planes.
I have replaced that solid wall with two horizontal rails. This change allows more light to enter the sawtill so you can find objects that have fallen down there or you have stashed there. And it reduces the overall weight of the chest.
I’ve also reduced the height of the sawtill to 9-1/2” so the three sliding tills float above it without interference.
Finally, I now add a bit of moulding to the components for the sawtill and the moulding plane till. In this case, I used a 1/2” square ovolo. These are decorative – spats on a sloth.
All of these components are merely nailed and screwed together so they can be removed for repair or when your heirs decide to store blankets instead of tools in your precious tool chest.
If you plan to come to one of our open days, might I recommend May 12?
On that day we will have a surplus tool sale where Megan, Brendan and I are going to dispose of all the extra woodworking stuff we have accumulated. We’ll post photos of the stuff in the next week or so, but I’ve dug up some woodworking vises, two (?) hand-cranked drill presses, a miter box and a bunch of other small stuff. Brendan and Megan also have heaps of stuff.
All tool sales will be cash only.
Second: We hear tell that Jameel and Father John Abraham from Benchcrafted will visit the store that day. You know what that means – breakdancing and oud solos. And talk of workbenches. Lots of talk about workbenches.
We’ll have two Roman workbenches on hand from “Ingenious Mechanicks: Early Workbenches & Workholding” for you to use. And that’s because we are going to hold a free book-release party for “Ingenious Mechanicks” that same evening, and you are invited.
The party – 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. – will feature special guest and researcher Suzanne “Saucy Indexer” Ellison, who performed a lot of heavy research for the book. Suzanne and I will sign books and then give an illustrated lecture on the history of workbenches as shown through religious and secular painting.
Suzanne is also cooking up some special gifts for attendees.
We are limited to 60 spots. The event is free but you need to register here. We will also provide snacks, beer, wine and soda.
We hope you can attend! The storefront is located at 837 Willard St. in Covington, KY 41011. The store will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The party will be 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
A rare first edition of “Welsh Stick Chairs.” We’ve had to acquire three copies in order to find one suitable for our scanning project.
I am thrilled to announce that Lost Art Press is bringing the classic “Welsh Stick Chairs” by John Brown back into print with a high-quality North American edition.
I have read “Welsh Stick Chairs” more than 20 times, and it has had an incredible influence on my life.
John Brown introduced the world to the Welsh stick chair (in fact, he might have coined the term). And that style of chair set me on a path that eschews fancy furniture and embraces pieces that were made by the end users, most of whom were amateurs.
Further, John Brown was the first person to put the words “anarchism” and “woodworking” together in his columns in Good Woodworking magazine. This bold move gave me the courage to let my own anarchist flag fly in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”
I am not alone. Thousands of woodworkers all over the world discovered a different way to look at the craft through John Brown’s writings. Every time I encountered one of his die-hard fans, they would ask: Why haven’t you brought “Welsh Stick Chairs” back into print?
The answer was simple: We didn’t own the rights.
But thanks to John Brown’s heirs, particularly his son Matty Sears, we have obtained the rights to print “Welsh Stick Chairs” for the North American market. (A second publisher retains the rights in the U.K. and Europe.)
We will do this book justice.
We are resetting the entire book from scratch using the original fonts. This will make the text as crisp as possible. For the photos, we will scan original first edition books (the original photos have been lost) and use high-tech scanning tricks and a very advanced printing press to produce images that will look as good as the originals.
The new edition will look a lot like the first edition. The cover will be a heavy and rough paper. The interior pages will be heavy, smooth and coated. The only change we will make to the binding is that we will sew the signatures together for added durability.
We don’t have a price yet – we are shooting for less than $30. And we expect to release the book in June. Why so fast? I have been working on this book for quite some time. Only now can we talk about it publicly.
“Welsh Stick Chairs” will serve as an excellent companion to our forthcoming book on John Brown by Chris Williams. Their book, which should be out in 2019, will explore John Brown’s woodworking career and the path his chairs took after the publication of “Welsh Stick Chairs.”
It is my sincere hope that this pair of books will inspire future generations of woodworkers, and that the works of John Brown will never be forgotten.
I have been at Hancock Shaker Village the past five days and up to my neck in furniture. What a week it has been.
It is baby animal time at the village.
The hardest part of documenting anything here is trying to stay focused. Every time I go anywhere, in any building, I find items of interest. I am always finding things I have not seen before. Nonetheless, it has been a productive visit.
The buildings themselves have a lot of interesting details inside and out. If visiting HSV, take a behind-the-scenes tour; you won’t regret it.The view from my work room in the brick dwelling Monday morning when I arrived.
In the coming days I will be doing some more posts on my latest visit to the far north. In the meantime, back to North Carolina in the morning. Twelve hours alone in a car with Will is no good!
This excerpt from our latest book, “From Truths to Tools,” speaks to a rather esoteric, but highly useful, rule for use with scaled drawings:
Here’s a typical, traditionally drawn small boat plan:
To find the dimension of any particular part of the boat, we simply set the divider to the part – here the cap on the centerboard trunk:
Then we transfer the dimension (what the Greeks called, more precisely, a “magnitude”) to the graphic rule…
…and read the numerical distance of 3′, 6″. This technique eliminates the need for an awkward and hard-to-read scaled ruler and, furthermore, works no matter what scale the drawing is made to.
