The Mastermyr Saga: Act 1/Chapter 1
An Epic Poem... I think not, but its an object I've been chasing since the start of my woodworking story.
Dear Good Hours.
Due to things beyond my control, I can no longer teach the woodworking portion of the combined craft class for the Almost Accurate Mastermyr Chest class being sponsored by The Vesterheim Museum of Decorah Iowa. Don’t worry, the class is still going forward with Tom Latane stepping in to teach both the chest build and the lock.
I’m considering swearing off teaching all together no matter how much I love the process, the interaction, and the results. It’s just, something seems to go sideways almost every time I try… But guess what my Good Hours… That means I might just be forced to do more of that here. Starting now.
Here’s the cool thing.
My frustration and $ loss for taking a week off of work to get paid for teaching may benefit you..> I’ve been spending the last few weeks working my way through a “pine prototype” of the eventual piece. (There will be more explanation of the measurements and that journey in a minute!
Stage Direction: SCATTERED GLITTER IN THE AIR
Derek: (in a whispered voice) “Foreshadowing…!”
The Mastermyr chest is a cruel mistress and lets be honest - a difficult thing to chase. The posts following in this “Saga” are about me chasing an object I’ve obsessed over since I learned about it… gods… nearly 20, maybe more, years ago.
ACT 1/CHAPTER ! - The origin story.
Let’s go back a long time…
Making a long story story, or trying too.
I was in my early 20’s, married, with one blistering smart 2.5 year old and one on the way. Up until this minute, I’d been completely obsessed with music and playing guitar. I had a 4 track tape recording “studio” and I spent a lot of time and energy recording a ton of cassette tapes (I still have them for fucks sake!) I can’t even access anymore, because I’m an idiot, and I borrowed the 4 track to a brother of a friend… later on… and I never saw it again.
But, young 20’s regrets aside - the “band” I was always starting never went anywhere and my strong desire to manifest into the next Kurt Cobain fizzled away with a slow, acrid smoke, not too different from the aroma of cheep fireworks tent “worms” or “snakes” or (whatever emogi) “turds” because that’s what they all looked like.
(I tried to upload a .gif of the event RIGHT HERE… I failed… So what, fuck you… just use your imagination or disappointed memories, you have those tools for moments just like this.)
Thankfully I found another outlet / hyper-focused-obsession. Viking Age Historical Reenactment.
OK - real quick (SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH - I WARN YOU! - however, if it makes sense to you, and if we ever run into each other in the real world, and if you can explain/decipher this mess to me, I’ll buy you a couple beers and we will geek out together)
I was hanging with a regular group of like minded induviduals. We gathered regularly to play the TTRPG AD&D though it was often some combination of 1.5 Edition and 2nd Edition. There were many games and it seemed like almost everyone was a DM and we all played in each other’s Multiverses. We all also shared an equal love of history and fantasy fiction.
One brought forward the idea that we could “live out in real life” the adventured we all shared at a table while rolling various polyhedral dice. As a group of several young families looking for something to share, we started searching for options. We spoke to the local SCA jurisdiction, and they proved to be a toxic mix of misogamy and unearned elitism and we all wanted our wives and children as involved as possible. We decided to form our own group and begin LARPing.
One of my first attempts at Viking Kit. That is a blacksmith forged spear head at least. Probably the most accurate kit on me!
Parallel to this, I was also a young husband who bought a very old house and I was eating a ton of bandwidth teaching myself how to remodel a bathroom and build custom cabinets and… well fuck, there’s just too many “well(s)” to carry on. This work gave me the beginnings of the dreaded “Woodworker Virus” and it was only time before the desire to make dead trees into things combined with my armature scholarship studies into medieval history with a focus on my own heritage in Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
Early on, we are talking dial-up internet days, The Mastermyr Chest and I found each other. I ventured onto this newish book buying site… Amazon… and ordered the published book detailing the find report resulting from the chest’s resurfacing in 1936 thanks to a plough pulling it from it’s moist dirt bath. What was discovered was a chest packed full of tools and miscellany. It took more than 6 months to arrive. I nearly immediately took to building a supersized version. Something like 18” off the ground and 4’ or so from end to end. A monster that I tried to sell and promptly traded away to a friend.
It holds up to this day. I get to carry it a couple times a year these days. He’s used it since as a Noah’s Arc to carry weapons and gear and nearly everything from one even to another.
*****
Around 2007 - 2008 Popular Woodworking Magazine had a contest to “build a thing from a single maple board of “XXX” dimensions. I decided to enter. I purchased the equivalent in maple BF and took off after a vision of a “modern take” on the historic chest.
I decided to throw a “just because” dovetail into the mix. This was my first time working with maple and I didn’t expect it to be so hard and “chippy” and I decided to go with really shit brass hardware from Home Depot and for Christ sakes I was so damn proud of this thing…
Until like 2018 or so when I took it to a reenactment even and listened to a couple serious reenactors tear the thing apart when they thought I couldn’t hear. I brought it home, emptied to tools out of it, and smashed it to splinters with a hammer. I remember a blog post about using it as a tool chest written just before the box’s demise… maybe my next “Evolution” post, looking back at my previous writings will cover that post.
*****
I’ve built others. There’s this version with a verse from the Viking poetic edda “Hávamál” or “Words from the Wise One.” It’s a representation of Verse 82.
“Hew wood in the wind, row out to see with the breeze, speak to young women in the dark, for many are the eyes of the day.
Use a ship to sail the sea, use a shield to protect yourself, use a sword to strike your opposition and use a damsel for a kiss.”
Timeless advice…
I started to build a prototype for the class I can’t teach around the beginning of April. This happened after Tom and I had a chance to sit down together to try and decipher he measurement mess given in the book about the find. I’m going to quote here…
“Chest: sides 86.0-88.5 x 20.5 x 1.8xm and 87.5-89.5 x 20.9 x 1.8cm;
Ends 22.4-26.2 x 1.8-2.5 x 24.2 cm and 21.5-26.3 x 23.8 x 1.8-2.7cm;
Lid: 88.5 x 24.0 x 3.2 cm.”
OK… go and draw that… I know it looks like a scientifically significant amount of information there for the taking, but I’ve “measured drawing” this chest a bunch of times and it always comes out Bermuda triangle weird and different every damn time. It could be me converting from metric to SAE, because that’s how my brain in wired.
It could also just be cursed…
In February I drove up to Tom’s shop to work on some of the student wood we’d harvested and go over the measurements for the chest. It was a relief to find out I wasn’t the only one struggling with the given values. They aren’t even consistent L x W x D
The “measurements list the side as being from 1.8 - 2.7 cm thick. That’s roughly 3/4 to a thick inch (1.06 inches” thick, but the drawings of the chest make the thickness of the ends relatively uniform.
Is it thicker at the bottom? (probably…) or is it thicker at the top. There is little definition given. The chest was not observed from a maker’s viewpoint, only a pigeonholed scientist from nearly a hundred years ago. I’m grateful for the information we have, but there is no analysis of tool marks, of construction marks of methods, even the description of the lock… the most intricate and intriguing part of this whole damn build!
The real trouble is this.
The Mastermyr chest is nothing special. I mean… a thousand years buried in the ground, filled with a wide variety of blacksmithing and general “maker” tools makes the chest and everything associated with it special, but let’s accept it.
The book on the find claims the area the chest was found in was flooded at the time it was lost. The chest was wrapped with a chain and there were several other camping, survival type items found in proximity to the chest. The report itself hypothesizes the chest and associated items were on a “barge” or a “raft” or similar “ford” or “ferry” that possibly capsized (or the items were kicked or lost overboard.) There is no way to know the circumstance.
The absolute truth -
The best that I can see. This was not a chest made by a person who worked wood with great proficiency or pleasure.
The wood selected to build this chest was of “whatever is available” quality. This chest was slapped together by a reasonably competent craftsperson. They had no idea some asshole 700 years in the future would be assessing their “thrown together tool chest” in minute detail, and trying to discern every single decision point with some version of Occam’s Razor.
There is No Fucking Way Possible to understand the original intent of the the thing, “I just need to carry all this stuff I might need over “there…”
Last thing…. and this is controversial…. i really think there was a handle attached through the lid that dissapeared in the peat and dirt and the traumatic discovery. That’s how I would carry this heavy bitch… but again… speculation.
This was just an introduction to the chest and a shallow dive into my research and near obsession with it. Since I can’t attend the class and teach the thing’s I’ve figured out I decided I might as well share them here.
Forgive me a moment of blatant self promotion here… I’ve had a tidal wave of new subscribers and followers in the last month… the numbers have jumped from barely 100 subscribers to well over 400, with bigger growth in “followers” up to over 700.
All ridiculous and humbling numbers to me…. thanks for being here.
That said… I have a day job that supports my family, but this “blog situation-ship” supports itself. So I humbly ask, please… If you have the means, of you have the ability to support an artisan like me for even $5 a month… holy shit I can’t tell you how much it means when I see that pop up in the doobeldy-doop. Please consider shifting your Subscription from “Free” to “Paid”
No pressure to do so. I gatekeep very few things here or ever. All it is, is a gesture of appreciation for all my hard work.
*****
The next chapter in the Saga will start talking about building this specific chest and the hurdles and as much Behind the Scene stuff as possible.
Tonoght’s letter is already long enough… its time I signed off - please forgive me.
Ratione et Passionis
Derek
Is the book in the picture the one that took six months to get to you?