Overflow Saw Storage

My English tool chest is darn-near full up on saws (and adjustable squares, and hammers, and wax, and…).

Christopher Schwarz has taught me many things over the 16 years I’ve worked closely with him, but two lessons just won’t stick. I will never learn to love late 19th/early 20th-century Russian literature, and I will likely continue to own more tools than I truly need.

In no category is this more apparent than saws. I own four dovetail saws, three carcase saws, two tenon saws; only two panel saws (one crosscut, one rip) and two full-sized hand saws…that belonged to my grandfather but are too long for me to use (I tag the floor with them on every stroke unless I’m careful…and I can never remember to be careful for more than a couple strokes). Also a coping saw, a fret saw, a keyhole saw, a couple flush-cut saws….

I suffer from saw overflow.

Only about half of my saws fit into my English tool chest; the rest are hanging on pegs on the other side of the shop (except for those that are hanging out on my still-unfinished staircase)

So I’m thinking I’ll build something like the saw-till half of Mike Siemsen’s “Saw & Plane Till” from the August issue, but add a back, a door and a few packs of desiccant. My basement is dry, but Cincinnati summers eat metal for snacks. (Note: My tool chest has done a pretty good job of keeping away insidious incursions of rust – of course, because I work out of my tool chest, the tools therein are the ones that I use most often, and are thus regularly cleaned and wiped down with an oily rag.)

It’s probably just sublimated staircase-avoidance work. I haven’t yet worked up the energy (or the checkbook cushion) to order the necessary 8/4 rift-sawn white oak for the spindles I don’t want to turn (I prefer the flat woodworking world…fewer chips and shavings get into in uncomfortable places).

Or I could listen to Chris and divest myself of those saws I don’t need. Ha!

— Megan Fitzpatrick