Editor’s Note: Buckle up. This will be a long one and will at times feel like James is just ranting. In an effort to pander to his international audience, James is also adding metric parentheticals. Even if using anything other than Freedom Units is anathema to him.

I’ve a number of small trips on my calendar for Fiscal Year 2025. Between concerts throughout the Northeast of the United States, a beach vacation in the Cape of Cod, and, of course, my spring pilgrimage to the house in Central Vermont, I will be away from my home shop quite a bit over the next 6 months. And I’d like to be able to do some vacation woodworking.

Vermont is not an issue. I have, over time, migrated a full size workbench and entire complement of essential woodworking handtools up to permanently live in the utility shed on the property. As a result, though, I don’t really have a travel tool kit anymore. I’ve never been much of a tool hoarder and I foolishly gave away my travel tool box once it did its job and moved everything up to the aforementioned utility shed.

So I’ve been forced to start at essentially square one in putting a new travel tool kit together.

Over the years of making many, many, many travel tool chests, and in refining my thinking on what specific tools one actually needs for casual, on-site, vacation woodworking, I’ve learned a couple lessons. Many the hard way.

First and foremost, vacation woodworking (for me) is not fine furnituremaking. I know of very talented folks who vacation carve beautiful and intricate panels. And I envy them. But that’s just not me. If I’m making furniture outside the home shop, it’s utilitarian: an extra table or a bench or stool. Or if you can’t sit on it, it’s probably a shelf or a rack or a quick shadow box to display some quirky knick-knack picked up at a local antique shop.

That is the long way of saying that my vacation tool kit can an should be small. And I mean small. One saw that crosscuts well and can rip decently (if not efficiently). One bench plane. Two chisels and a mallet. A knife, a square, a bevel gauge, an awl, and a way to bore small holes. Something to keep all of the above sharp. A small hammer and nail set, some pliers, and a measuring tape (although everyone should have one of these in their car anyway). That’s about it. And I’ll probably be tossing in a bag of nails, a bottle of glue, and other miscellany as well (because I just can’t help myself).

All told, that’s 30 lbs. or so of tools (or 14 kg for you metric cretins), before you add the container to store it all in. About that…

I grew up (and still live) by the coast in Southern New England. Between sailing and swimming and other salt-water related activities, canvas tote bags are second nature to me. I have many, and I love them for a broad range of holding and storage tasks. But you cannot just throw a bench plane into a canvas bag, even in a plane sock. No matter how careful, you’ll eventually break the tote or ding another tool. I have in the past made a plane box to keep the bench plane safe, but even that’s not ideal since it still rattles around and can crash into other tools.

And what about your hand saw? Even if you sheath it in a proper carpenter’s saw bag, you could still bend the plate if it bangs around too much in the bag (for instance, against the heavy bench plane). Folding saws are great, but they tend to cut on the pull stroke and I work in the English style (being a steadfast disciple of Paul Sellers).

You can spend money on a nice tool bag with storage pockets to segregate the edge tools and other small tools into pockets. I especially like CLC bags, and any of the Husky bags from the purse aisle at the Homeless Despot will work. But the big stuff is still rattling around inside, if they will even fit. And don’t get me started on metal toolboxes, which can hold a small arsenal in perfect organization but will undoubtedly snag and tear the upholstery in your back seat if you’re not careful.

So where does this leave you? Well, we are woodworkers after all. So I would suggest making a pine box that you can french fit to keep your tools safe.

It’s a travel tool chest, though, and will need to haul at most 50 lbs. (again, 23 kg for you metric types), inclusive of the box itself. The 3/4″ or even 7/8″ stock you might see in a proper English floor chest is way overkill here. For a travel tool chest, I typically take the thickness down to 9/16″ or even 1/2″ (13mm or so), with the actual thickness depending on wherever ends up actually flat across the width.

Funny thing is: when working in stock of that thickness and this application (where strength really matters), you really can’t do posh Western European dovetail patterns with super narrow pins. I like wider pins anyway and these travel tool chests are a good excuse to make the pins noticeably beefier. Like so:

So how big should a travel tool chest be for the type of rustic vacation woodworking I tend to do? Well, your saw is always going to be your longest tool in the kit. Frankly, if you’re intent on hauling around one or more 20″ panel saws, you might as well just make a full size Dutch Tool Chest and bring an entire workshop with you. But I have found you only really need about 15 inches (380mm or so) of tooth line for most woodworking sawing tasks. It’s less efficient than a longer saw because of the shorter stroke, sure. But it still works fine.

A saw like that will fit into a tool box that’s got 19-20 inches (480-510mm) of internal length. You could buy a small home center hard point saw, and they work well. But they sure don’t look very nice and aren’t terribly comfortable to use for long periods, especially when ripping. So what are the other options?

Well, vintage hand saws are abundant and cheap. If the tote is in decent shape, and the plate itself still has some life, odds are it’s got a kink in the tooth line. And that kink is probably around 1/4 or 1/3 of the way back from the toe. You’ll never get that kink out (and even if you do, you probably just work hardened the area around the kink so it will just kink again, or shear). But what if you could just angle grind off everything past the kink and make a shorter saw? Suddenly, that saw would fit into a travel tool box of manageable size.

Something like this, perhaps?

I find with shorter saw plates (physics for the win) that they are more rigid and more controllable. After making several travel saws of various tooth pitch this way, I’m starting to think that backsaws (and especially half back saws) are somewhat superfluous. You can do fine joinery tasks with a backless hand saw that’s short enough. The lost stroke length is meaningless when you’re aiming for precision. And 15 inches feels like the sweet spot for rigidity and control.

So when you allow for the saw and other tool kit described above, plus the french fitting, I find a tool chest that is about 20″ long (510mm) x 8″ wide (200mm) x 7″ high in the well (175mm) will hold everything I need, even if it’s a bit cramped. If you can get away with some more width, go for it. But remember to subtract about 1 inch (25mm) to determine the inside dimensions when planning out your tool storage.

The second lesson on travel tool kits, and probably even more important, is that you can’t bring a thickness planer with you to the beach. I mean, you can. But then you’re a psychopath. So you’re probably working with dimensional stock (home center pine or construction lumber) that needs to be flattened and/or trued on site. And unless you are a different type of psychopath, this rules out anything smaller than a No. 5. I typically use a No. 6 fore plane for everything in home shop (other than the absolute final smoothing before finish). However, I prefer a No. 5 1/2 jack plane for travel work. It’s the right combination of length and width (and heft) for being on the go. And this is where a corrugated sole really shines, in fairness.

In a 20 x 8 toolbox, your jack plane will take up less than half of the total width, and not all of the length either. A hand saw till is about 1 1/2″ (38mm) wide and you can cram a few smaller tools around the saw itself. So you have around 4″ of width for everything else, which I typically fit out with a rack (for the edge tools and pokey bits) and another well for sharpening gear). You can make a lid with some depth to it that will add a new dimension (pun intended) to your storage space.

But I’m going to stop there, before this becomes a veritable novella.

In the meantime, that cut off saw plate needs to sit in some Evapo-Rust for a day to get cleaned up. Pretty sure that saw was a Disston, but it could be an Atkins. It’s definitely not a Simmonds (my preferred brand of vintage saw).

We’ll see. In any event, Happy President’s Day, all!

JPG