Local Man's Dovetail Joints So Tight They Achieve Molecular Bond

Gerald Fisk, 58, of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, has spent forty-three years perfecting his dovetail technique, and it appears he has finally gone too far. Laboratory analysis of his latest blanket chest confirms that the pins and tails have achieved a bond tighter than the wood's own cellular structure, effectively creating a new material that scientists are calling 'Fiskwood.' 'The joint is no longer a joint,' said Dr. Helen Marcoux of the Materials Science Department at MIT, who was called in after Fisk's woodworking club reported the anomaly. 'It's a continuous molecular lattice. You cannot separate these pieces. We tried a hydraulic press. We tried a diamond saw. The saw broke.' Fisk, who exclusively uses hand tools and refers to table saws as 'the devil's carousel,' has been characteristically modest about the achievement. 'I just take my time with the marking gauge,' he told reporters from his shop, which smells of linseed oil and contains no electrical outlets. The discovery has intensified the already bitter divide between hand tool purists and power tool advocates. The American Power Tool Association issued a statement calling the molecular bond 'an irreproducible anomaly' and suggesting that 'a CNC router could achieve similar results in four minutes.' Fisk's response was to silently hold up a hand plane and make eye contact with the camera for an uncomfortable thirty seconds. The blanket chest has been acquired by the Smithsonian, which plans to display it alongside the Hope Diamond in an exhibit titled 'Things That Cannot Be Broken Apart.'