Lost Art Press

A Trimming Trick and a Degree Change

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Getting the lid, the dust seal, the carcase and the top skirt of the tool chest all working in tandem requires some care. Small errors compound quickly.

In the end, the lid should overhang the carcase by about 1/16” on its front and ends before you attach the dust seal. Sometimes you have to trim the lid. Sometimes you have to trim the carcase.

Trimming the lid is straightforward. Mark what you want to remove and plane it away.

Trimming the carcase can be trickier. On one carcase on my bench today, the lid was out of square by less than 1/16” over its 24” width. The best solution was to trim the carcase. But the wood that needed to be removed was a thin taper that started at less than 1/16” at one end and diminished to nothing at the other end.

To mark this out I use blue tape.

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I first used a knife to mark where the taper should begin. Then I laid the tape down on the edge of the carcase. I put a shoulder plane on the carcase. Because of the tape, I can easily see the wood I need to remove (even with 49-year-old eyes). If I get any blue tape in the mouth of the plane, I know I’ve gone too far.

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The Dust Seal
The dust seal is dovetailed at the two front corners and wraps around three edges of the lid. With these two particular chests, the dust seal is 1-3/8” wide. The problem here is the slope of the dovetails.

Usually I use a 1:4 slope for dovetails (about 14°). The problem is that the slope is a little extreme for a piece of wood 1-3/8” wide. So I use a less-radical slope, 1:8 or about 7°. This slope makes the base of the dovetail a good deal beefier.

While I’ve gotten away with a 1:4 slope on the dust seal, it looks like a pencil-necked chicken.

— Christopher Schwarz

Hand Tool Immersion 101

Posted on by fitz

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A few years back, Christopher Schwarz taught a handful of what he affectionately calls “the baby anarchist’s tool chest class.” The premise was to help build the woodworking community by offering to young would-be hand-tool woodworkers a low-cost class to jump-start their skills. These classes involved an intensive week of tuning up old tools, then learning to wield them while building a simpler version of his “Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in which to keep them, and little sleep or showering (because: camping).

Since Chris has stepped back from teaching, Mike Siemsen has taken up the baby anarchist baton, and is (for I think the third year) offering much the same at his Minnesota school. The 2018 “Hand Tool Immersion 101” class is May 7-11, and costs $650 (materials included). Mike is offering free camping and communal dinner prep on site. And bathrooms and showers. Because Mike spoils his students.

Find out more at the Mike Siemsen School of Woodworking website.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

Unto Others

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I spent this afternoon installing five hinges made by blacksmith Peter Ross on two tool chests. And though I’ve installed a lot of them, I involuntarily marveled at their beauty and utility. They are that gorgeous.

In fact, one the best parts of my life is getting to work with other artisans, whether it’s a woodworker writing a book for Lost Art Press, a blacksmith making a chest lock, a foundry worker pouring a casting or a bookbinder making a deluxe edition.

While this statement seems obvious – who wouldn’t want to work with these awesome people? – I don’t think it is. It’s a damn challenge to work with others. Every piece of blacksmith-made hardware is different and requires extraordinary individual attention. Every woodworker who writes a book is different and requires individual attention. And so forth.

In fact, my work would be a lot easier (and profitable) if I simply wrote books, published them and ignored the work of other people.

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But my life would be much less rich. And I would be a lesser person for it.

That’s why I have great respect for publishers such as Marc Spagnuolo and Joshua Klein, who have reached out beyond their insular worlds (we all have insular worlds – we’re woodworkers) to bring the ideas of other people to the forefront.

Marc, as you might know, has been filming the work of people such as Anne Briggs and Darrell Peart for The Wood Whisperer Guild. Joshua has enlisted an entire host of writers and builders to create new knowledge through Mortise & Tenon magazine.

Both of these guys could easily do their own thing, ignore the rest of the world and live handsomely. They both have magnetic personalities that would allow them to be the epicenter of their own universes.

But they haven’t. And my hat is off to them.

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Your work will be better if you listen to a variety of voices. Don’t just listen to me. Learn what you can from all the other people out there. And pay special attention to the people who are also willing to listen to others.

Learning this craft from 100 teachers (instead of just one) is more challenging for you, the student. At some point you will need to say: “Wait, this particular bit of gospel is total BS to me.” But you will be a more resilient, informed and balanced woodworker as a result.

You will see the overall patterns in our craft, not just methods of a single teacher. And maybe, when it comes time for you to teach others, your mind will be open, and you will glady promote the work of others, even if it challenges the work you do every day at the bench.

— Christopher Schwarz

Make Your Own Dang Shirts

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Until we can get our act together and get Lost Art Press T-shirts back in the store, feel free to make your own T-shirts using our logo.

We don’t make T-shirts to make money (unlike some rock bands). We make T-shirts because people ask for them, and because we need something to wear that doesn’t have holes in it.

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You can use these logos at a print-on-demand service, or even on an existing favorite shirt using an inkjet printer and special paper. Note: If you put our logo on thong underwear or a tube top, please don’t send us a photo.

I’ve put two logos – our main logo and our beehive logo – into a compressed file you can download and unzip. They are sized for T-shirts at 300 dpi.

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We can’t offer tech support on these (such as changing the ink color). But I’m sure a local 11-year-old could help you with that.

— Christopher Schwarz

My Favorite Detail on the Tool Chest

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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One of the other small design changes I’ve made to my tool chest design is to bevel the top edge of the lid’s panel. It’s a 30° bevel with a 1/16” flat at the edge.

On the original chest, I merely rounded the panel’s corner with a block plane. It looks OK, but this bevel looks much better. By the way, the bevel on the panel is an echo of the 30° bevel on the chest’s skirts.

It’s Friday, and so my head is full of cottage cheese. When the cheese clears, I’ll write up an explanation of how the lid works. I’ve probably had more questions about that aspect of the chest than any other.

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Personal Note
If you follow the comments on this blog, you might have noticed a little back-and-forth with a reader about some details of the chest. This entry is not to shame the reader – honest, Stan – but instead to explain how I deal with comments.

I don’t (and honestly cannot) answer every question that is lobbed at me on the blog, Facebook, Instagram or via vacuum tube. Here’s why:

Many questions are from the Google-impaired. Rather than shame them, I hope my silence encourages them to look for the answer on their own.

Sometimes answering a question will only encourage trolling, or will drag decent readers into a troll fight. I steer clear of those briar patches.

Sometimes I decline to answer questions directly and instead try to elucidate what I think is important about the question (and not the direct answer). I do this for a variety of reasons, including the fact that sometimes what I write gets taken out of context and spread around the Internet like cow dung.

And sometimes I don’t know the answer, so I just let the question be.

I don’t mean to be indirect or inscrutable, I simply took too many Zen Buddhism classes in college.

— Christopher Schwarz