Suzanne Ellison prepared this montage of swimming ducks from A.-J. Roubo’s “The Book of Plates” (plates 98, 294, 319 and 349) to remind you that you have only a day or so to order “The Book of Plates” and have any hope of it being delivered before Christmas.
Also worth noting: We are shipping this book (and all of our books) via Priority mail until the end of 2014. After that, we will be switching to another system of mailing books. It will be more reliable, likely a little faster than Media Mail and definitely more expensive.
So take advantage of us while you can. Shipping will be more expensive in 2015 (can you hear us, California?).
Small beads – 1/4”, 3/16” and 1/8” – are ideal for creating shadow lines and transitions between flat boards. The classic example is with tongue-and-groove backboards. If you add a bead on the face of every board with a tongue, the back will look finished, instead of something that has oddly spaced cracks.
But beads aren’t just decorative. They also protect corners. If I have an arris (a mid-falutin’ word for “corner”) that is vulnerable to damage, a bead can strengthen it.
Shown above is a classic example: These runners in this tool chest are going to get a lot of wear, and their corners are going to get whacked by tools and wood. By beading each corner, it is much less likely to splinter in service.
The beads also look nice.
And now that I have three beading plane sizes, I can even scale my beads – wider ones at the bottom and smaller ones at the top. Joy! Nerd!
When I finally get to point where I’ve answered all my e-mail (sometime about July 2026), I might write a supplement or revision to the last bit of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” to include more construction information on different chests and the principles of their interiors.
When I wrote that book in 2010, I considered the chest in the book to be more of an idea than something that a reader would really build. I love (that’s the correct word) working out of a full-size floor chest and have since about 1997. But most people I talk to think it makes as much sense as using a gerbil to pull a plow.
This week I’m fitting out a traveling chest for an upcoming article in Popular Woodworking Magazine and am designing the interior to take advantage of every millimeter. Here are a few of the thought processes I use when designing the vertical space of a traveling chest (floor chests are different). Here’s a crude, shop-made sketch of the chest’s elevation in section.
The Bottom Well With a typical traveling chest, you aren’t going to be able to store your moulding planes on their toes – that would take up about 10” of your vertical space. So you store them on their soles so they eat up less of the chest’s height.
If you use panels saws – which is typical if you use a traveling chest – you need to be able to accommodate the full height of the saw’s tote. The saw tills on my traveling chests grab the panel saws at their toes. The heel of the blade rests on the floor of the chest.
And you need to be able to put your bench planes on the floor of the chest with their soles on the floor of the chest. If you use tools with a high cutting angle (moulders or bench planes), you have to be careful and measure their heights.
So when I design the bottom well, I start with a height of 6-1/4”. Unless you have any unusually tall bench planes or panel saws, that’s a good starting measurement.
The Top Till After drawing out the bottom well, the next step is to sketch the top sliding till. This is the till that usually gets all your small tools that you use constantly – layout tools, block planes a mallet, wax, knives etc. So this till is generally not very tall. I have found that a till that is 2-3/4” is a good overall height. When you figure that the till’s bottom will eat up 1/4” of that height it leaves you with an interior height of 2-1/2”. I really like this height.
When positioning the top till in the chest, I like to leave a 1/4” (or so) bit of airspace above the top till. This gap prevents damage to your tools or chest if you slam the lid and a couple of your tools are accidentally piled on top of each other.
What’s Left Then you divvy up the space between the top till and the bottom well. If the overall chest isn’t tall, I might put in another 2-3/4”-tall till. But I’d rather have a deeper till that is good for storing tool rolls, boxes of augers, my brace, hand drill and the like. If I can get a till that is at least 5” tall in there, then I’m pretty happy. If I can get a slightly taller one in there, even better. Once you approach 7” deep, however, it becomes a junk drawer.
It’s no secret that I like beer. So I get asked by students occasionally: Do you drink while you are in the shop? The answer?
Absolutely, yes.
Now, before you read another word, know that I am not an uptight or judgmental person by nature. Plus, I want to live a long life with all my natural-born fingers attached to my hands – not sitting in mason jars on the mantlepiece.
Now the “correct” answer is to never ever touch a woodworking tool if you have even seen a beer commercial on television. Jamais! Nicht! Etc.! Historically, we know this teetotaler approach is new. Craftsmen of all trades drank all the time in the shop. There are so many accounts of drinking in shops from the 18th until the early 20th centuries that it’s weird to find an early account of a shop where people didn’t drink.
The drink was likely lower in alcohol than what we consume today. But judging from the quantities listed in historical accounts, we are all on the same historical Breathalyzer.
So what is a reasonable approach? Can you have a beer in the shop in Saturday afternoon?
Here’s my thinking, which has been developed during the last 20 years by doing stupid things (a bottle of wine and a lathe do not mix) and finding my limits.
If I have had any alcohol in the last few hours, I won’t turn on machinery. OK, I might turn on a shop vacuum. But I’m not going to mess with cutting tools.
If I have had one beer, all hand-tool operations are go. I’ll saw, plane and chisel to my heart’s content. By the way, I don’t feel anything after one beer, but I’m 6’3” and 180 pounds.
If I have had two beers or less, I’ll do donkey work. That means I’ll do some handplaning, maybe some rough sawing. But I won’t cut joinery and I definitely avoid the chisels, which are the single-most dangerous hand tools in the shop.
After three beers, I’ll clean the shop – there are very few broom injuries reported to the federal government. I put away tools. I oil stuff. Or I’ll stare at my work in progress and make notes. As a writer, I appreciate the effect that alcohol has on the creative process – do not discount it. Alcohol removes inhibitions, and sometimes that’s what I need when I stare at a work in progress. I need to decide: This stinks. Or, this needs radical surgery.
I rarely drink more than three beers in a night, unless things are going really well or really poorly. Then I sit down with the laptop and write a blog entry, which may or may not get published the next day.
So that’s the truth. You might disagree with my approach, but all I can do is repeat the following quote from one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century: “Lighten up, Francis.”
