My English floor chest is, for all practical purposes, complete.  I must still attach the lifts, paint the lid and add some ring pulls to the sliding trays, but it is now at max tool holding capacity.  I’ve organized the trays and am calling this one good enough.

The bottom tray is sharpening and boring tools, plus a tool roll of gouges and specialty chisels.  In the middle are my every day hammers and tools that do not see every day use (e.g., rasps and planemaker’s floats), as well as my largest chisels.  Up top are every day marking tools, plus a block plane and extra bench dogs.

Down below, the well is separated into three main areas.  At the front of the chest, a saw till at the front that holds both back saws and hand saws, and a tool rack that holds chisels and other important pointy tools that lend themselves to 1/2″ holes bored on 1 1/2″ center.

In the center, general storage for my bench planes (Nos. 3, 4, 5 1/2 and 7), plus my spokeshave and scrub, chisel, small router and shoulder planes, as well as a panel gauge.  The No. 3 is very much a specialty plane in my tool chest, used solely for delicate smoothing tasks.

In the back, a typical moulding plane till for my modest set of hollows and rounds (2-8), two tongue and groove plans, my shop-made fillister plane and some other bits and bobs.  I plan to expand my moulding plane collection through a combination of rehabbing existing planes and making new hollows and rounds (hence the new set of planemaker’s floats).

In addition to new moulding planes, one thing my tool chest is definitely missing is a drawknife.  I have vintage versions of both a small and a large drawknife, but I don’t dream of using them until I get a way to sharpen them safely.  In my case, a Benchcrafted Drawsharp.

In the meantime, though, a spokeshave will have to do for rounding parts.

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