Students David, Rebecka and Pete showing off the results of their work.
When it comes to the issue of transporting a fully constructed Anarchist’s Tool Chest home, not every woodworker owns a truck. And even though the finished dimensions of the chest are easy to calculate, some people’s eyes are bigger than their Impalas.
I have had to do some wacky things to chests to get them into cars. On a few of the weirder ones, I am sworn to secrecy. Among the less weird:
• Shrink-wrapping it to the top of a Honda, “Beverly Hillbillies” style.
• Building it completely without glue so it can be flat-packed like Ikea stuff.
• Abandoning it at the school!
This week student David Eads pulled another common trick: Taking the car door off the hinges to get just enough space to sneak the chest into the back seat of a sedan. The whole process took 10 minutes. Tips: Have a box below the door and helpers so you can remove the door gently without destroying the wiring or dropping the door on the ground (this has happened.)
I head home on Sunday with this tool chest on my mind. We are getting the electronic files ready for our sixth printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” Love it or hate it, this is the book that let me quit my job. So thank you for buying it.
One of the interesting aspects of the book “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is how many of the readers are active members of the military, government officials or managers in huge internet corporations.
I have lost count of the number of e-mails that begin like this: “I would like to order this book, but I don’t think it can be mailed to me on base, and I can’t have it show up on my credit card.”
We are happy to oblige and always ship our books in a plain brown wrapper.
This last week I’ve been teaching a class in building The Anarchist’s Toolchest at The Woodworker’s Club in Rockville, Md. The club is an interesting place – you don’t see many clubs like this except on the East or West coasts of the United States or in Europe.
Essentially, The Woodworker’s Club is, first of all, a place where you can pay a monthly fee to use a fully equipped and impeccably maintained workshop. There are lots of workbenches and an impressively equipped machine shop (a 16” SCMI joiner with a Shelix head?).
There is a lot of staff support, and the Maryland club also has an entire Woodcraft store up front.
As we were building a dozen tool chests this week, I got to watch the club’s members work among us, both in the bench rooms and in the machine room. I have to say this: Without a doubt, I have never seen a more diverse group of woodworkers. There was a healthy mix of men and women of all ages, races and ethnicities, working away at their personal projects.
It was very cool and quite heartening. If you live in the D.C. area and cannot set up shop in your apartment or condo, stop by the club and talk to Chris, Matt or Amy. They will be happy to help you get started in the craft without having to invest a year of your salary in machines alone.
During this class, I lost track of how many of the students were connected to the military or the government. And after a Thursday-night open house at the club, I was overwhelmed by the response of people to the anti-establishment ideas I write.
So now I think it’s a good idea if I sneak out of town before anyone notices what I’ve been teaching.
Yeah, we all built rectangular boxes this week, but what is radical is what goes inside.
We recently came across an article in one of our most esteemed contemporaries, remarks the Sanitary Plumber, in which, under the above title, the writer had sought to illustrate the difference between the honest employe, whose interests were identical with those of his employer, and the indifferent mechanic who seems to have no care or thought beyond the fact that he is paid for his time, and that as long as he puts in the requisite number of hours and maintains a show, of doing something, he is furnishing a fair equivalent for his wages.
Unfortunately, the remarks offered by the writer are only too true. There are plenty of such workmen in the market, but the question is, are the employers not to a certain extent to blame for their existence? Let us explain. One of these unsatisfactory mechanics finds his way into a shop and it does not take long to discover his presence. The proper thing for the employer to do, after giving him due warning, is to lay him off. He is an unprofitable servant, and no one is bound to keep him.
Stern necessity will compel him very soon either to mend his ways or he will go to the wall—that is, if he does not bring up in some snug harbor where his employer is as slack as himself. “It is the opportunity that makes the thief,” is an old and well proved proverb, and it is the fact that they find employers willing to put up with them that is responsible for the existence of so many of these circulating nuisances.
It may seem strange that employers should be so blind to their own interests as to tolerate such an unprofitable servant. Sometimes carelessness is the cause of their indifference, sometimes they are ignorant of the failings of their men for obvious reasons, or they may have good cause for keeping such men on their books. This much is certain, if the employer knew his duty and did it, these makeshift mechanics would be compelled to give place to better men.
Another fruitful source of the careless workman is the shop were everything is done in a slipshod manner. “Hurry up, it’s good enough;” has spoiled many a good man, and if an employer habitually crowds his men with more work than they can properly accomplish, denies them the right as it were to honestly perform their alloted tasks, he has only himself to blame if eventually they become as careless as he is.
Where such shiftlessness involves a loss to the customer it becomes culpable dishonesty, and the employer who permits this has only himself to blame if he becomes eventually the victim of his workman’s lack of rectitude.
We are weary of reading dolorous complaints and criticisms where the power to remedy the evils complained of rests with the complainer. There would be an immediate and permanent decrease in the number of lazy and negligent workmen if every employer kept up to the mark himself and had those he paid do the same thing.
After requests from several readers, here is a short video showing how I teach beginning sawyers how to cut pins.
Some things to understand before watching this video.
1. We gang-cut the tails first and then transferred the shape of the tails onto the pin boards.
2. The joint shown is a single tail and pin, which is used to join an upper skirt at the top of a tool chest.
3. If you think a single tail/pin is easy, I would argue the opposite. I’d rather cut a row of 10 dovetails than a joint with just one.
4. This joint was cut the first thing in the morning after drinking five beers at the Dogfish Head Alehouse in Gaithersburg, Md. In other words, my head hurts, I’m not warmed up and the joint still came out perfect.
I did not develop this sawing technique, obviously. It’s pretty similar to how you saw a tenon. First you focus on the end grain. Then you focus on the face grain, dropping the saw handle. Then you use the established kerf to guide the rest of the cut.
I think this technique works. It’s slower than some methods, but it builds good sawing habits and doesn’t involve any extra jigs or doo-dads. It just makes the sawing a little more deliberate.
When you read advertisements for woodworking classes, books and magazines, one of the selling points sounds something like this: “You’ll learn to work just like the pros do, with plenty of tips and articles from pros on how they build stuff in a professional woodworking shop.”
It sounds compelling. I should know. I’m sure I used that bit to help promote Popular Woodworking. Professionals work fast. They have to be practical. And they do woodworking every day.
Amateurs, on the other hand, can work at their own pace. They can try antiquated or oddball techniques. And they do it at night and perhaps weekends.
My point: Professional techniques might not suit the amateur shop.
During the last year or so, I have tried to become a better teacher of amateurs. Instead of teaching a technique that gets things done quickly (but requires a lot of skill), I have tried to teach techniques that get things done well with a minimal amount of skill and a few more steps.
One example: Dovetails.
When I cut dovetails, I put the saw next to my knife line and cut down to the baseline as fast as I can manage. I have been cutting dovetails for 20 years now. I should be able to work without much in the way of guidelines or tricks.
But if you started cutting dovetails this Monday, the advice in the previous paragraph isn’t helpful. It is, in fact, frustrating and arrogant.
So the way I teach cutting dovetails is not the way I cut dovetails in my shop. It sounds duplicitous, but the results from my first-time dovetailers have convinced me it is a better way to go.
So sawing a pin is a multi-step process.
1. From the rear corner of the board, nibble a kerf along your knife line until you reach the corner near you.
2. Make one or two “cleansing strokes” to clear your nibbling into a kerf into which you can saw smoothly.
3. Saw down the face of the board only, dropping the handle of the saw gradually and never letting the saw leave the kerf on the end grain. Stop when your saw touches the baseline.
4. Remove the saw and clear the sawdust from its gullets.
5. Reinsert the saw and saw quickly forward. Let the two kerfs guide you down until your saw’s teeth touch the baseline at the front and rear of the board.
Whew. That’s a lot to explain. But it works. I also explain to students that someday they might leave this technique behind. And then I show them how I cut a tail or a pin as a demonstration.
I’ll admit that I feel guilty on some level. Perhaps I should pull a Mother Superior on them and just expect better. Show them how it’s done and expect them to work that way.
Here is what keeps me on my current teaching trajectory. Students say this during every class: “These are the best dovetails I’ve ever cut.”
