Vintage Tool Patch

When I last talked about the stick chair a month ago, the first coats of oil had just been applied. It has now been in my living room and in regular use for a few weeks. Apologies for the lack of diversion posts recently. I’m in the middle of buying/selling a house, and its eating a lot of my time. Posts will probably be patchy for a while.

Rather than talk about one of my own projects, this week I’m going to recommend checking out Mattias Hallin’s Archivist’s Tool Chest. Last Thursday Mattias gave an absolutely magnificent presentation. He not only explained how he built the chest, but his rationale for choosing an Anarchist’s Tool Chest style chest. He also gave a wonderful insight into pragmatic hand tool techniques.

I’m finally at the point of applying finish to my stick chair. I’ve chased tearout and dings around and around. I’m partially convinced that the tearout in this chair has developed the ability to breed. Hit it with light from a new angle, and you find a new spot. The chair is really too big a project for my shop. It can’t even sit on my bench if I turn it sideways. I’m adding dings almost as quickly as removing them. I’m at the point of “good enough” rather than perfect. That leaves applying finish.

It has been cold lately. A lot of nights, its sub zero out in my workshop. This has cut down on my shop time. Most of my time has been spent sanding. The chair I built back in November had a myriad of little marks, patches of tear-out, etc. I made a little scraper to get into nooks and crannies, but here are a lot of spots only sanding could reach.

During covid my kids took to using our bed as a trampoline. There was not much else to do, so I never had the heart to stop them. Now its just a thing they do a lot. It is a miracle there is a spring left in the mattress. Eventually the inevitable happened and they snapped one of the battens that hold the headboard on to the bed. Fixing that up made for a nice quick project over Christmas.

For the last 5 years, I’ve been making toolboxes to share with other woodworkers. This last year had been a bit of a challenge to get something done, but I made a promise that I’d put together a box for Plane Wellness. I pushed between Christmas and New Year to try and get something done before 2024 was out. How this box is used is up to the organization; whether in the hands of someone who needs them, as a community/loaner set of tools, or a travel set of full-size tools… so long as it’s used I’ll be thrilled.