In my ongoing efforts to replenish my intellectual excitement for woodworking, I have undergone a periodic downsizing of my tool kit.  Using a full sized, English-style floor chest is great.  But it gave me the space for extraneous tools to creep in.  And, when something can happen, it does happen.  So the best solution to reducing a tool kit is to reduce the available tool storage.

Another Dutch Tool Chest for the archives.

This particular Dutch Tool Chest has no dovetails.  For good reason: the entire thing was built on the low, apartment woodworking bench.  Which has no vices.  And I’m a tails-first kind of person.  The bottom corners are rabbeted and nailed, which is more than solid enough, even if it was actually more work to assemble than dovetails would have been.  Well, more clamps and cauls, at least.  I have a feeling it would have been easier if the apartment woodworking bench was more than 9.75″ inches wide.

Wooden hand screws are well worth the investment, if you’ve never used them.

I also, for the first time, just bought shiplapped pine siding from the home center instead of bothering to do my own rabbets or tongue and grooving.  It saved quite a bit of time and effort and, if you pick through the pile, you can find knot-free wood. A sixteen foot board was like $8.  I have no idea why I ever bothered doing this myself.  Just put the course side facing into the chest.

Sure, the chamfers are a bit wide, but it’s the back of the case.  

As I’ve done additional woodworking, I’ve slowly moved tools over to the new tool chest.  A few things that haven’t made the cut yet:

• 1 1/2″ chisel (my 1 1/4″ is just fine)
• Scrub plane (my No. 5 is just fine)
• No. 3 smoothing plane (my No. 4 is just fine)
• Low angle block plane (I’ve migrated to a rabbet block plane over time)
• Roll of firmer gouges
• Quarter set of Hollows and Rounds (Nos. 2, 4, 6, and 8)
• Yankee Push Screwdriver
• Large (18″ max) dividers

Although, it’s fair to say, I don’t think there is room for any of that stuff in the new tool chest anyway.

JPG