I’ve long been looking for the perfect rug for my dining room (which may become my shop if I can’t soon find the perfect house in my price range, but that’s a story for another day), so I regularly troll a local online auction site, on which I can’t seem to keep from looking at … Read more
I’ve been teaching classes on building “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” for two years now, and with every class I find some way of goosing the students a bit further along. Last year at The Woodwright’s School we actually got two of the 12 students completely over the finish line. This week, I hope to shatter … Read more
I don’t know why, but I didn’t like the idea of a saw till on the floor of my tool chest full across the front, walled off from the rest of the floor space (like what Christopher Schwarz installed in his “Anarchist’s Tool Chest“). Instead, I put my panel saws on the underside of my … Read more
I hope you are enjoying my latest series on my new tool chest. The project was born this time last year during the FWW presentations at Colonial Williamsburg’s “Working Wood in the 18th Century” conference. The FWW presenters, in my opinion, were wrestling with the differences between executing 18th-century work using 18th-century approaches, (I don’t … Read more
When you’ve worked out of a traditional tool chest for 15 years, you sometimes forget how excellent it is to work from. That is, until you teach others how to build the chest. This week, I’m at Roy Underhill’s woodworking school, “The Woodwright’s School.” This is the last class I’m teaching in 2012 (aside from … Read more
I can build a six-board chest entirely by hand in about 10 hours of shop time. That time starts with one 8’-long and one 12’-long board and ends with a paint job. In fact, I just did. The above statement is not a boast. Instead, it is a way to encourage you to build one … Read more
I have intended for 14 months to add handles to the chest I built for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” And in fact, I had a pair of cool iron chest lifts that a kind reader sent me. But life and other projects kept getting in the way of making the gaping mortises for these cool … Read more
