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This week, Christopher is in Berea, Ky., at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking where he’s teaching a class in building a French bench (you can read about and watch videos of his exploits over on his blog). Usually when he’s out of town, Chris takes all his favorite hand tools along for the ride, but the bench build, for the most part, uses power tools – so he and the students are giving Kelly’s awesome Felder machinery a good workout. He left his hand tools at home.
Now Chris is always generosity itself in allowing me borrow his tools (though I’m doing my best to amass a good working selection of my own). If I need a large router plane, for example, I’m welcome to go in his tool chest and get one. If I need to plane a pesky area of tear-out on a piece of figured wood, I can reach my hand into his hanging cabinet and grab one of his high-angle planes (any excuse to use his Wayne Anderson smoother…). In fact, the only two tools of his I’m forbidden to use are his Andrew Lunn backsaws. The Lunn dovetail saw is, beyond question, the tool of Chris’s that I most covet.
So guess what he left atop his bench, where I can see it every time I walk into the shop?
That’s just mean.
