Download ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Revised Edition’

The 2025 chest. Photo by Narayan Nayar.

On Thursday morning, we signed off on the final corrections to “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Revised Edition” so it could make its journey to the printer’s platemaking department. From there it will be printed, sewn, bound and shipped to Covington, Kentucky.

Its journey will be brief – about five or six weeks, which is the gestation period of your workaday ferret.

When planning this revised edition, I weighed two approaches to the new book. The first was to bear hug the “manifesto” aspect of the original. The 2011 edition (all 16 printings) was designed using typefaces in the public domain, plus a Walmart label maker and an approach to page design that ignored all the grids and rules I learned in design classes.

(Designing that original 2011 book was the hardest layout job I’ve ever done. I kept saying: “No, that doesn’t look bad enough.” And: “Hmmm. That needs to be f-ed up some more.” Also: “Buck Ryan [one of my teachers] would crap his Dockers if he ever saw this.”)

For the 2025 revised edition, I contemplated pecking out the text on my beloved Smith-Corona. I’d lay out the pages old school with paste-up boards and a waxer. Then print it on groundwood (a low-quality form of newsprint) with a cover like a trade paperback (Calling Fabio!). I napkin-guessed that I could get the book’s price to $7 retail.

While that project would have been fun, it ignored a central message of the original book: Buy good tools and use them to build beautiful things that last.

A groundwood paperback is neither pretty nor durable.

My second approach was the one we used. I redesigned the book to the best of my abilities using the most readable font we own (Garamond Premier Pro). And we’re printing it on Wisconsin-made Cougar paper (no tariffs on that) from Domtar (more details are in this substack post).

So the physical book is different. What about the content?

Moving the tools to my new chest. Photo by Narayan Nayar.

Every page of the book has been edited, added to or rewritten. About 35 percent of the book is new material. About half the photos are new, including some beautiful images from Narayan Nayar, the photographer for the 2011 book.

All these wholesale changes might make you wonder: Was the 2011 book wrong?

No. I was surprised by how much I agreed with my circa-2010s stuff. In fact, most of the changes to the 2025 book double down on my ideas from the 2010s. After 15 years of full-time furniture making, my list of essential tools has shrank – not expanded.

Some examples: For years I’ve recommended three rasps (a cabinet rasp, a smaller modeller’s rasp and a rattail). Now I recommend two. In 2011, I recommended a small set of chisels, now I take a different approach: buy an expensive 1/2" chisel, make sure the handle suits you, then slowly acquire more chisels as you need them.

(People hate hearing me say this, but sets of tools are for suckers. Even if you saved a few dollars, you probably bought some tools you don’t need – but must care for.)

I’ve also reassessed the smoothing plane. I’ve found a way to work without a drawer-lock chisel. My sharpening advice has been sharpened/honed/polished/another stupid metaphor. My advice on moulding planes has been improved.

And on and on.

The chapters on building the chest are 100 percent new. New drawings. New techniques. I think the 2025 chest can be made in about half the time of the original chest.

The final thing that has changed is me. I’m 15 years older. My writing uses fewer adverbs, -ing words and adjectives. I’ve become a verb slut.

And my 56-year-old self cares a lot less what the world thinks about my woodworking, writing and approach to life. You can whine that I’m not an anarchist, but I’ll just cackle and fling a copy of Josiah Warren’s “Equitable Commerce” at you.

“Read this, then we’ll talk.”

I don’t speak the “anarchist” word in public anymore because I’m tired of talking to people who think an anarchist is someone who doesn’t floss or wipe between their legs, and who wants society to collapse.

In fact, most days I’m completely tired of talking, period. I just want to work. And I want the work to speak for me.

I want it to say: This is how the world should be built. This is how it should look. This is how it will last.

What I want is – ultimately – impossible. I know that. But we (woodworkers, small business owners, anarchists, anti-corporate types) are the natural reaction to a world that lionizes wealth, speed and greed.

We are the by-product. The sand in the Vaseline. You cannot have unchecked avarice without also having people who want to give everything away for free.

And when the world becomes a just place (it never will), the anarchists will fizzle and pop away – like Peeps in a microwave.

Did I mention I’ve become more radical in the last 15 years?

You can find out for yourself. Below the paywall is the complete pdf of the revised edition. When the book is released in late June 2025, the pdf will be free to everyone (just like my other books). No one has to buy anything.

If you do buy the book, the first 500 customers will get a free Anarchist’s Merit Badge, and the book will be signed (by me).

Mercy! Enough words. It’s time to get back to the bench. I have chairs to build.