From W. C. A., Detroit, Mich. — In the December number of Carpentry and Building, “C. C. B.” has Introduced the subject of tool chest construction, and In order to try and save it from the fate of former inquiries on that subject I will give the readers of Carpentry and Building my ideas of this phase of carpenter work. With the ordinary sliding tray or “Grandpa” chest only one side of the chest can be utilized; or, if both sides are used, then the tools must be dumped out on the floor every time one of the trays Is moved. The only solution of the problem is to put in drawers. In the September number for 1896 “D. T. C.” illustrates this, as well as “N.L.D.” in the August number for 1897. The latter correspondent has been requested to send drawings of his Improved large chest, but so far as I can discover he has not done so. In the May number for 1898 “Down South” says he has some original ideas on tool chest construction, and, although he has been asked, still, he has not sent his plans for publication. In behalf of about 75 percent of the wood butchers of the United States, all of whom are going to build the best chest in the world some time, I ask that both “N. H. D.” and “Down South” send in their plans.
I send a sketch, Fig. 1, of an idea that I am slowly developing as to what I consider a tool chest ought to be. It is to be noticed that there is one large drawer at the bottom and two smaller ones just above lt. The cover is made deep enough to hold the saws, squares and level. One tray and several partitions in the top should accommodate the planes and larger tools. A chest constructed on such a plan as this will have no waste room, and it will make a small, compact chest. I have planned this chest to be 18 x 30 Inches inside, with paneled ends and cover. The details of construction and partitions I leave for discussion. I hope the readers will take up the subject and not drop It until a perfect chest Is the result.
Note.—The suggestion of our correspondent is a good one and opens the way for a most excellent discussion of the subject of tool chest constructlon. We hope our practical readers will devote a part of the long winter evenings to preparing letters and sketches showing their ideas of what constitutes a satisfactory tool chest.
— Carpentry and Building, January 1901. Thanks to Jeff Burks for sending the letter. More from this series to come.
Editor’s note: Normally, we would not post a blog entry such as this, where a writer abuses a fine Belgian ale. But because this is Brian Anderson, who happily translated “Grandpa’s Workshop” for all of us, I am willing to cut him some slack. This time. If he abuses anything more than a saison in the future, however, we will have to come down hard upon him.
“A cowherd on the Route de Chou”, near Chimay, Belgium, by Camille Pissarro, 1874
Among the rolling hills and pastoral landscapes of southern Belgium, a countryside of old stone houses with red-tiled roofs and fresh-faced rosy-cheeked milkmaids, a community of Trappist Monks has been lovingly crafting truly divine beer since 1862.
Among those beers is Chimay Blue. As the monks write, “This authentic Belgian beer, whose tinge of fresh yeast is associated with a light rosy flowery touch, is particularly pleasant. Its aroma, perceived as one enjoys it, only accents the delightful sensations revealed by the odour, all revealing a light but agreeable caramelized note.”
The other evening, I happened to be sipping a glass of that particular nectar of the gods, bubbling it gently in my mouth, and then exhaling through my nose, delighting in the yeasty freshness and the rosily caramelized aromas. Was that indeed a floral hint of vanilla beans? But anyway, after finishing an estimate for some translation work and jointing some drywall, I was rummaging around the net for old paint recipes, and there it was:
Beer Paint!
“Distemper made from beer is prepared by mixing pigment and beer (Dark lager as “Rød Tuborg” or “Gamle Carlsberg” is said to be the best (this is an English site but a Danish source) in a way that the paint is having great covering power and is easy to apply.
When working with minor works, for instance decorating like woodgraining or marbling, the beer-colour is often mixed on the palette. The pigment is placed on the palettte, if necessary mixed with other pigments. You dip the brush in the beer and mix the colour on the palette. Use an artistic brush.
Beer paint is often used as a glazing but is not waterproof. If you apply a lacquer afterwards it will make it waterproof.
Qualities: Mat with a beautiful reflection of light. Some of the pigments are glazing but they do not come off.
Drying: 1-2 hours.
Use: Only indoors and only on absorbing material: Paper, setting coat (dry), rough or planed wood.”
Wow, how cool is that? But while I have known folks to get pretty distempered while drinking beer, especially if you spill theirs on the rug, what the heck is distemper paint? Paint in which the binder is a diluted glue, I learned.
Well, why not. They say beer is watery bread, and bread is made from flour, and flour mixed with water was long used as a glue….
The bad news: you have to use good beer. At the store the next day, I was torn between Guinness and the Chimay, but the Chimay was really the only choice because I didn’t need all that much beer to make enough paint for an experiment, and I like Chimay better than Guinness, which is the good news about the bad news about the good beer. No waste. Unless you mix too much paint.
The other thing about beer paint is that apparently the beer should be flat. So that afternoon I found myself whisking beer in a small bowl to get the gas out of it. Cue Roger, my neighbor, who gives me tools, and knocked on the kitchen window, needing a hand.
“Brian, why are you stirring beer in a bowl?” he asked me when I opened the window, taking in the open bottle of Chimay Blue on the kitchen table.
Roger is a kind neighbor with an unusually flexible mindset when it comes to stuff like this. But he was a painter before he was a roofer before he was a plumber. Beer paint was not working for him. He shook his head. “Come on, I have to hang a water heater on a wall down in the Port (an ancient little neighborhood down on the Cher River in my village). The damn thing is too heavy.”
The water tank was sleek, streamlined even, like a re-entry vehicle for a space probe, and the manufacturer had thoughtfully coated it with some kind of greasy wax for the kind of special sheen that spells quality when you are shopping for a water heater. It was impossible to get a grip on the thing: the perfect mix of form and function in design if you would like to torture the people who need to actually install it.
After Roger taught me a number of French idiomatic expressions that one could be jailed for using in public, and dislocating a disk, I mixed up the paint. After messing with it a bit, I found that with the Chimay beer at least, it works better as a kind of wash or stain, but it works best if you gently warm the mix and let the alcohol and some water evaporate.
So I grabbed a stool I made a while back out of some offcuts in glue-lam birch and scraped and sanded the wax/stain off the top to see how it worked.
Looks like a fine beer distemper. Dries hard with no smell.
After a coat of shellac. Works just fine.
— Brian Anderson
IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP when speaking of distemper, monks, shellac, woodworking and mad chefing: A remarkably efficient way to receive an early morning tonsure by your distempered wife using an antique saw is to leave a coffee jar full of shellac flakes, of the same brand that your wife uses in her warm milk in the morning, on the kitchen counter where she might mistake it for a coffee jar full of coffee.
When I build stuff, my first joint of choice is the dovetail. It’s hard to beat or defeat.
But lately I’ve been pondering a common situation where a nail would be a better substitute for the much-lauded tail. It’s a bit of a trick to explain, but I am willing to try.
When you make sliding tills in a tool chest, they are difficult to fit because they are incredibly long (mine are about 36”) and not so wide (mine are about 8”). Because they are this peculiar shape, they have to be fit precisely and tightly so they do not rack inside the tool chest.
If they are even slightly loose, they will rack and bind. And you will then make bad words come out of your lip hole.
So you fit them precisely with a hand plane. It is not hard to do. The world smiles upon your efforts, and your tills move like they are sliding upon butter.
Fast forward 10 years.
You are a heavy user of your tool chest. You move the tills back and forth all day. The sides of the tills begin to wear. As they wear, a gap grows between the till and the wall of the chest. At some point, this gap becomes a problem and your tills begin to bind and resist your every pull.
I think it’s time to replace the till, but the dovetails in this till are good for another 200 years. In this case, a till that is nailed together might be the better choice.
For me, the real eye-opening moment came when I found some chests where the bottom tills were dovetailed and the top tills were nailed together and were obviously newer. Someone else had encountered this problem before me.
If you accept that your tills will wear and bind in short order, then the dovetail joint might not be the smart answer. Perhaps you should choose a joint that is strong enough but easy and quick to make, such as a rabbeted corner that is reinforced with nails.
I started thinking seriously about this idea after inspecting a lot of old (and not-so-old) tool chests. Hands down, the most common problems are: the tills bind and the bottom of the chest is rotted. You can fix the soggy bottom problem by putting your chest on cast aluminum wheels or living in a desert.
Fixing the binding tills isn’t an easy thing. You might consider repairing the tills – glue some extra wood to the sides of your tills and then plane them down until the tills move smoothly again. Of course, the tills have been lubricated with tallow, candle wax or oil for so long that getting anything to stick to them will be a miracle.
Here are some other solutions to consider.
1. Make the nailed-on bottom thicker. There will then be more end grain bearing against the chest and perhaps the tills will wear more slowly.
2. Use a recalcitrant wood for the bottom. Pick something like jarrah or some other wood that has metal-like properties. Perhaps the exotic wood will take longer to wear.
3. Add (ultra-high-molecular weight) UHMW plastic to the high-wearing areas. You’d probably have to epoxy the stuff in there, but this might work.
4. Use ball-bearing drawer slides for your tills. OK, this is kind of a joke, but it probably would work if you used a high quality slide, such as a Blum.
Or you can just remake your tills, which is a quick job if you nail them together, and get on with building furniture.
As you can tell, I’m struggling mightily with this. I love me some dovetails. But the nails might just be the smarter choice.
Before you download this draft chapter from my next book, “Furniture of Necessity,” please read the following disclaimers.
1. Woodworking is an inherently dangerous activit… wait, wrong disclaimer.
Starting again.
1. This chapter has not been edited by anyone but me. It is rough, both around the edges and in the middle. If an occasional typo or dropped word makes you reach for the Valium, then make sure your prescription is up to date first.
2. The techniques discussed in this chapter might change. When I write, I build some pieces, then I write the chapter, then I build some more. Then I revise the chapter. Then I talk to a bunch of people. Build some more. Revise the chapter. This chapter is far from finished.
3. I have not added the photos or captions. This is the text. The only part where I think you will have trouble because of this omission is where I describe making an ogee. I’ll do a video on that technique in the coming days.
4. You might have questions about this chapter when you are done reading it. I cannot guarantee I’ll have answers.
5. If you build a six-board chest using techniques in this text, let me know if you find a better way to perform a certain operation. Your feedback is appreciated and desired.
So all that said, here you go. It’s a .doc file, which everyone should be able to read.
I get asked (a lot) for a list of my favorite books. The problem is that I have so many books that I use and rely on, that I can’t boil down my entire library to a list of favorites.
I don’t collect tools. But I do have a book problem.
This morning I went through my two rooms of books and pulled the 10 that made a profound change in the way I work or think. You might not like these books. Sometimes you have to be ready to receive the information before it can take hold.
These are in no particular order.
“Oak: The Frame of Civilization” by William Bryant Logan. I wish I had written this book. It is part narrative, part history, part detective novel. And all engaging. If you don’t love oak, this book might change your mind. I’ve read this book straight through twice.
“The Artisan of Ipswich” by Robert Tarule. This book examines the life of Thomas Dennis in 17th-century Massachusetts. This book will help you tie furniture forms to the economic and social structures in which they are created. Fascinating stuff.
“Woodwork Joints” by Charles Hayward. Buy the Evans Bros. edition — not the junky Sterling edition. Pay whatever. This book is one of the foundational texts – even though it’s just a bunch of reprints assembled together.
“The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing. I’ve written ad nauseam about this title. I love it so much that John Hoffman and I worked two years trying to get the rights to reprint it.
“Welsh Stick Chairs” by John Brown. This book made me want to build chairs so badly that I started building chairs.
“The Woodwright’s Guide” by Roy Underhill. I read it in one sitting. I love all of Underhill’s books, but this one is the most cohesive. And it’s beautifully illustrated by one of his daughters, Eleanor.
“With Hammer in Hand” by Charles F. Hummel. One of my prized possessions is an autographed copy of this book (thanks Suzanne). Like “The Artisan of Ipswich,” Hummel’s book puts the furniture and tools in context. This book made me travel to Delaware to see the Dominy shop.
“Illustrated Cabinetmaking” by Bill Hylton. This book is an encyclopedia of furniture forms that explains things in woodworking terms – rather than antique collector terms. It’s a good place to start when you designing a type of furniture you’ve never built before.
“Green Woodworking” by Drew Langsner. This book is like visiting a foreign country, a delightful foreign country. Even if you have been woodworking for decades, this book offers surprises and insights on every page. It will make you more intimate with your material.
“The Chairmaker’s Workshop” by Drew Langsner. While John Brown’s book made me want to build chairs, Langsner’s gave me the information I needed to actually do it. Though I build chairs differently now, I could not have gotten started without this book.
