I’ve mentioned this one before, back in 2010. It’s back, now with photographs. This is an updated version of Kate Ravilious’ earlier National Pornograhic article, ‘World’s Oldest Leather Shoe Found—Stunningly Preserved‘ from Dr Kaveh Farrokh’s blog.

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

I did a little less than scientific weight trials on the completed toolbox.  I used a bathroom scale and weighed myself.  Using that base weight I was able to obtain a fairly close approximation of the empty and packed toolbox.

To find the empty weight I simply stepped on the scale while holding the toolbox.  A quick calculation and the empty toolbox was found to weigh approximately 15lbs.  Pretty light, I think, for the size.  Next I began loading in tools to get an idea of the capacity.

I was surprised at just how many tools I could pack in.  In fact it easily held all of the tools that I would typically need for any of my projects with a little extra room remaining.  I’ll not list everything here but here are the highlights.  The box held a #4, #5 and all of my joinery planes.  All of my Japanese…

If you have an interest in Japanese joinery or joinery in general, then I would like to point you to an article series by John Bullar.  Mr. Bullar is writing this article series about Japanese joinery for:

Furniture & Cabinetmaking magazine.

Mr. Bullar begins the series with a look at Japanese tools as well as pointing out that a person can execute these joints with traditional western tools.

Photo used with permission of Furniture and Cabinetmaking magazine. Also note the article title in the lower left corner… Just saying…

Let me say this, there is nothing magical about Japanese tools.  They are just tools and are solely dependent upon the skill of the user.  Now I’ll admit that their exotic nature is what first drew me to them.  The quality of the steel and ergonomics is what really hooked me.  The Japanese chisels and saws I absolutely enjoy using.  The kanna…

Dwarf Mammuthus primigenius, cousin to our own Columbian mammoth.

When the pyramids were being built, there were still wooly mammoths.  A few anyway.  Probably more on earth than there are rhinoceroses NOW; today!

Keeping time in perspective is the most difficult task when talking to or writing for the public.  Way back in college I kept notebooks of correlating timelines from around the world.  I still do this to some degree but it grows too fast to be really useful.  Twenty-plus years ago I started a project in Adobe Illustrator (that alone should give some perspective of technology) to create a graphic concordance; but it was too big to handle without making it a job.  Anyway, facts like that above are very useful for keeping a perspective of time.

A few other tidbits from this interesting blog post*:

“Oxford University was over 300 years old when the

I don’t think there has been a better time to for someone to start wood working in over a hundred years.  At least for hand tool woodworking.  Quality tools are once again being manufactured and the internet gives us unprecedented access to used tools.  There are numerous blogs on the internet with a wealth of information.  Not so much this one, but the good ones. 🙂  Videos abound for just about any type of project you can think of and more are uploaded every day.

A round of recent comments on one of my posts set me to thinking about and re-watching one of those videos.  Well, actually three of them.  Back in August, Lost Art Press released a set of DVD’s entitled “The Naked Woodworker“.  On the DVD’s host Mike Siemsen walks the viewer thru acquiring essential tools, putting them in working order.  He then demonstrates how to…