Lost Art Press

The Swedish Tool Chest

Posted on by Lost Art Press
The Swedish tool chest and its tool rack.

One of the tool chest forms that has been on my list to explore is the Swedish chest, which I’ve encountered a few times both in the United States and Europe. It’s similar to the Dutch tool chest, with its slanting front lid. But the Swedish one is in many ways simpler.

The chest shown here came from the family of Johan Lyrfalk, who owns Rubank Vertygs AB, a woodworking supplier in Stockholm, Sweden. Last Saturday, he brought it out for us to inspect and measure during a visit to his store.  

Note how the bent hasp holds the lid open and accessible.

The chest is most likely pine and it is assembled with through-dovetails at the corners. The top and bottom are screwed to the carcase. The slanted lid is kept flat with two battens that are neatly joined to the lid with blind sliding dovetails. The steel hinges are let into the carcase and are screwed through the lid and into the battens, increasing the reach and strength of the screws.

The interior of the chest is fairly open. There are openings for three drawers (this chest had only two of them remaining). The drawers are assembled with half-blind dovetails (two dovetails per corner). One nice detail of this chest is the top edges of the drawer sides are beveled to the inside. That reduces the number of corners you will bump into when you reach for a tool.  

The middle drawer. Note the bevel on the drawer side.

The drawer frame and dividers appear nailed and screwed to the chest from the outside, keeping with the aesthetics of the chest.  

The interior walls of the chest are lined with tool racks. And there’s a tool rack on the lid.  

How the tool rack on the lid was used was a question among the woodworkers looking at the chest. The lid is propped open by its hasp, which allows the tool rack to be handy. But you’d have to remove the tools to shut the lid. Some speculated perhaps this chest was rarely closed and used mostly in a workshop environment.  

Dimensions are: 32” wide, 18-1/2” high and 19-1/2” deep. The top is 11” wide, as is the drop lid. Most of the stock for the carcase is 7/8” thick.  

The interior tool racks.

This chest is definitely one on my to-build list. We are always looking for tool chest classes that teach a variety of good lessons for classes (or for publication). The Anarchist’s Tool Chest is my personal favorite to work out of; but as a class, it is mostly about through-dovetails and nails. Even in a one-week class working flat out, it is difficult to get to making the lid, much less the rest of the interior bits.  

The Dutch tool chest, as a class, is a more balanced experience. You get some dovetails, dados, rabbets, maybe some tongue-and-groove.  

The Swedish tool chest could be a primer on through-dovetails and half-blinds, for the drawers.  

I’ll have to build one to find out.  

The tool chest at the Vasa.

After we spent an hour poring over Johan’s tool chest, he returned it to its resting place. The next day we went to see the Vasa exhibit. And there, right next to one of the workbenches from the Vasa, was an almost-identical chest (just a little longer). Perhaps the universe is sending me a message.

— Christopher Schwarz

This Saturday’s Open Wire is with Joel Moskowitz

Posted on by fitz
Joel Moskowitz at Union Square Market last weekend.

Joel Moskowitz, founder/owner of Tools for Working Wood and co-author of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” (With Christopher Schwarz and the anonymous 19th-century author) is hosting this Saturday’s Open Wire here on the Lost Art Press blog. If you read Joel’s blog, you know his intellectual curiosity about all things woodworking (among other subjects) is boundless. So while you could probably get a great answer on just about any topic, stick to woodworking, woodworking tools and trade history – that ought to be enough to keep us all busy reading for the day! Oh – and he’s been working on a super-secret project…that he _might_ be ready to reveal this weekend. No promises though.

The blog post will go live at about 7 a.m. for questions (post them in the comments), and Joel will stop in as his time allows to answer. Comments will close at around 5 p.m. Eastern.

Cut Leg Tapers by Machine

Posted on by fitz

The following is excerpted from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” – an exploration by Christopher Schwarz of furniture forms that have persisted outside of the high styles that dominate every museum exhibit, scholarly text and woodworking magazine of the last 200 years.

There are historic furniture forms out there that have been around for almost 1,000 years that don’t get written about much. They are simple to make. They have clean lines. And they can be shockingly modern.

This book explores 18 of these forms  – a bed, dining tables, chairs, chests, desks, shelving, stools – and offers a deep exploration into the two construction techniques (“staked” and ”boarded”) used to make these pieces that have been forgotten, neglected or rejected.

But this isn’t really a book of plans. “The Anarchist’s Design Book” shows you the overarching patterns behind these 18 pieces. It gives you the road map for designing your own pieces.

Cutting tapers on legs with a jack plane and a smoothing plane is simple work if you have only a handful of legs to do. But if you need to do a production run of legs – 10 or more – you might want to switch gears.

One way to speed the plow is with a band saw. Saw the leg square and tapered on the band saw. Then finish the job with a jack plane.

But the easiest way to do it is with an electric jointer.

The first time I learned this process from woodworker Troy Sexton in the 1990s, I thought it looked dangerous. It’s not. I’ve used this procedure for more than 16 years in production work without a single incident. But if you are skittish, skip it.

Troy told me that this operation came to him in a dream. He’s one of the smartest woodworkers I know, and after you try it, I think you’ll agree with me that it is brilliant.

A foot at first. If this is your first time out, mark the finished foot size on the leg.

Here’s an overview of the process.

  • Decide how much material you want to remove from each face of the leg at the foot. Let’s say it’s 1/4″. So you need to set your jointer to take half that amount (an 1/8″-deep cut). Lock it. You are done setting the jointer.
Set the infeed table. If you are going to taper a face of a leg by 1/4″, set the infeed table to remove 1/8″.

  • Decide how long the taper needs to be. Let’s say you have a 30″ leg and you want the taper to be 26″ long. Divide that in half (13″). Clamp a stop-block to your jointer fence so it is 13″ away from the top dead center (TDC) of your jointer’s cutterhead. You are done setting stops.
Set the stop. The leg should stop halfway along the taper.

  • Take your leg and push it into the cutterhead foot first until it touches the stop-block. Lift the leg off the jointer’s table. Repeat this process for all the leg faces that you want to taper.
First cut. Push the foot of the leg into the cutterhead. Stop at the stop. Lift the leg off the machine. Repeat for every face that needs to be tapered.
First-cut results. It looks wrong, but it’s right.

  • Remove the stop-block.
  • Now push the leg through the jointer a second time. This time the top of the leg goes in first. And you need to press the leg down against the table so the top of the leg “pops a wheelie” (for lack of a better expression) as you push it across the cutterhead. Cut all the faces this way and you will have a perfectly tapered leg in just a few minutes.


Pop the wheelie. A substantial push stick will push the leg into the correct position for the second pass. This time the top of the leg is first across the cutterhead.
Final results. This leg is tapered almost perfectly to the lines drawn at the beginning. Finish the job with a handplane.

Note that this process is far safer than using most commercial tapering jigs for a table saw. Those jigs are designed to remove fingers as much as create tapers.

Editor’s note: These days, we skip the stop block and simply mark a line in Sharpie on the fence.

Look closely to just right and above center, and you’ll see 10″ marked on top of the joiner fence, and a line down the face of the fence. Reach that line, and it’s time to lift the leg off.

Warm Glue With a Coffee Mug Heater

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One of the other suggestions for a replacement for the beloved Hold Heet glue pot is to use a coffee mug warmer, such as this one. I chose this particular model because it has two heat settings that are ideal for heating glue (122°F and 140°F), plus it has a timer and an automatic shutoff.

I’ve used it a few times, but the limitation of this kind of glue heater was obvious from the start: It’s too small to heat more than a little bit of glue. If you work on small projects and need only a few ounces of glue at a time, a mug warmer is ideal. But I had trouble heating enough glue for a chair class and had to break out the Hold Heet.

Honestly, it’s a lot to expect from a $20 appliance that is supposed to keep 8 ounces of coffee warm. It just doesn’t put out enough heat to warm a water bath and a plastic glue bottle. (You can’t put the glue bottle directly on the warmer; it will melt.)

One possible option would be to store your glue in a steel container, which could go directly on the appliance. I tried using a large ceramic vessel but couldn’t get the water above 100° F. The thing likes to heat metal.

So the best option was a steel vessel filled with water and a glue bottle inside. 

So, bottom line: It’s great for people who need enough glue for a few crackers. But if you need enough for a big piece of casework, look elsewhere.

— Christopher Schwarz

‘Claims & Counterclaims’

Posted on by fitz

The following is excerpted from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years,” a collection of the storied editor’s Chips From the Chisel, column, which ran in the front of every issue of The Woodworker for three decades.

What our full powers are—we shall never know exactly this side of the grave, but we can have a wonderfully interesting time trying to find out.

There are times when, looking back on our lives, we get a sudden sense of pattern. The kind of thing that happens when an artist, who has been plotting out a design in a series of small dots, which to the eye of the beholder look quite unrelated, joins them up with lines and curves and we become aware of the design, which he will enrich with colour and other decoration till the whole thing glows with life. It seems as though, in our own lives, the tiny dots, the small pointers which give direction to the whole, are the choices we make, those deliberate choices which in however small a way are strong enough to give some new direction to our activities or to the thoughts governing our activities which will end by colouring the whole.

The lines may not always be clear. There are always forces combining to pull us away from any deliberate choice. We may feel we need to make some real creative effort in our lives and to take up woodwork seriously in our spare time, having already dabbled in it a little, so that we become considerable craftsmen. But time is not elastic and the claims of family and friends and our own tendency to take the line of least resistance can easily divert us altogether from our programme unless we firmly dig in our heels. There is a world of difference between the just claims of others in daily living and the tendency to annex us altogether. You know the kind of thing—it is always happening. Only the other day I heard a group of youngsters discussing a popular boy, Jack, who had refused to accompany them on some projected expedition because he was studying for an examination. “Oh,” said one of his friends, “He must come. We’ll see to that.” I happened to know that examination meant a lot to Jack, who is desperately anxious to be a doctor, and wondered who would win. It is not easy for a popular sixteen-year-old to shut his head in textbooks, but that is the kind of decision in some shape or form that has so often to be made if we are going to achieve anything at all, and not only when we are young.

It is always easier to take the line of least resistance and go with the crowd, with the danger then that, instead of a design, the pattern of our lives may come to resemble a child’s meaningless scribble. We have to make choices and stick to them, even when it is not easy, if we are going to get any kind of satisfaction out of the business of living.

It is as though each of us is king of a little kingdom, which is ourselves. We have to keep control, prevent undue encroachments, give away to just claims, know when to relax and when to be firm, to keep a check over the foes within, which are our own weaknesses of temperament that, unchecked, could soon produce anarchy, and keep a particularly watchful eye on the thieves and snatchers of our time under whatever guise they come, time being the most precious commodity we have. Being human we shall fail often, but so long as we continue to make the effort, and in proportion to the amount of that effort, something worth while will evolve. The complete enthusiast, which includes all men of genius, has far less of a problem. His enthusiasm shows itself in a passion for his chosen work which refuses to be daunted by obstacles or hindrances, but must always be practising and experimenting. The custom of late years of publishing separate details of some of the pictures painted by the world’s greatest artists has been particularly revealing in this respect. It enables one to see the loving care, the passionate interest and powers of observation which have gone into the minutest part of a picture, the veins of a hand, the shimmer of light on silk and velvet, a dog quivering with excitement, a chandelier solidly and exactly portrayed, in all and every manner of thing each tiny detail perfect of its kind, and each representing not only the time spent in immediate execution but the hours beyond count which the artist has spent in acquiring his skill by drawing and painting everything within reach. For many of us enthusiasm is more fitful, wonderful when it comes sweeping us along on a glowing tide but liable to leave us stranded high and dry, our skill a mere adequacy or a job half completed. And it is at that point where determination has to step in to fill the gap.

But it is worth it. Only so can we hope to come within sight of our full powers, of our capacity for living. What these are in their fullness we shall never know exactly this side of the grave, but we can have a wonderfully interesting time trying to find out. Because the only way of finding out is by doing things and keeping on doing things as creatively and imaginatively as we can, and not scattering ourselves too much. Always remembering that we have to be like the gardener, who sacrifices most of his rosebuds by careful pruning in order to develop the few buds of his choice to their fullest extent. In a limited lifetime one cannot do everything, but it is safe to say that the choice of a craft like woodwork is sufficient to send one’s interests stemming out in all manner of directions, adding enough colour to one’s pattern of life to give a wonderful zest to living.

– Charles H. Hayward, 1952