The final coat of paint went onto the travel tool chests over the weekend.  Net net: I am very pleased.

The color is still a little blue for my taste.

For the first time in a long time, I have nothing bad to say about a completed project.  At least nothing bad to say about the design or the concept.  There is always something bad to say about my execution of the aforesaid (the lid is not on straight, yet again).  So rather than do my usual pros and cons, I will talk about what I’ve learned on this project.

• Geometry is a thing.  The dimensional difference between this tool chest and the original traveling tool tote is ostensibly minimal.  Compared to its predecessor, it’s 4″ shorter in length, barely 2″ less in width and essentially the same height.  But when we’re talking inches cubed, that adds up to a lot.  This thing is truly portable.  Filled to the gills, it’s not even a chore to carry around.  I’ve finally made a replacement for my nylon tool box.

Doesn’t look like much, but do the math and you’ll see.

• A wide skirt is a better skirt.  On my original traveling tool tote, the skirt was only 1.5″ wide.  With the 45″ chamfer, it’s basically all corners and has gotten beat to hell. In version 2.0, the skirt is over 3″ wide: quite a bit of surface area for deflecting blows.  Unlike its forebear, the skirt is a bit out of proportion to the lid.  But this is because I had meant to do a full dust deal (of approximately equal width to the skirt) and just got lazy in the end.

Durability > all.

• No casters for small tool chests.  The casters have worked out really well on version 1.0 and I meant to add casters to this project.  But I didn’t.  For two reasons, really.  The first is the spacing on the die-forged, headed nails holding on the floor boards precludes the caster feet from seating properly at the corners.  The second reason doesn’t really matter, does it?  At least it won’t roll around the trunk of car in use.

These will have to do.

• Grey is not for tool chests.  Or is it gray?  I don’t know anymore.  At least it’s easily distinguishable from my other tool chests.

That’s the “sliding” tray to the bottom right.  It has about 1″ of travel.

I plan to immediately make another one of these (and this time, paint it black).  More on that later, though.

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The roll of cheap adhesive-backed cork purchased online for the floor of the new traveling tool tote was exactly that: cheap.  The adhesive was not uniformly sticky and kept curling up in places.  My slightly less permanent solution: foam drawer liner and spray adhesive.  This should provide comparable, if less durable, cushioning.

And it fits much better than the cork did.

Speaking of durability, I started painting the chest with Seagull Grey milk paint.  The first coat looked a bit too blue for my taste, but has since flattened out in the second coat.  I don’t do a ton of finishing, but I’ve done two things differently this time around.

First, I did not attach the handles to the chest prior to painting, although I did punch alignment holes.  The traveling tool tote was in service before it even got painted and I did not remove the handles for that operation.  I will assume this was part laziness and part fear the screws would lose their bite when reinstalled.  Painting is so much easier without curvy obstructions, it turns out.

See?  Baby blueish.  

Second, I am painting the carcase before the lid is attached (or even made, for that matter).  See the above comment re: obstructions.  I also took the time to properly mask the inside of the lid, which did not stop me from dripping a big glob of paint on the inside of the chest.  That little accident cleaned up okay with multi-surface furniture cleaner and will hopefully be hidden by the tools in the wall rack.

I have neither the oak for the tray bottom nor the pine for the tray sides on hand.  Those will be acquired over the weekend (from the home center and from my stash at my parents’ house, respectively).  The width of the tray is still TBD.

And there is still that pesky lid to make.

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The new traveling tool chest is finally starting to look like one.  The dovetailed lower skirt went on Sunday morning, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the result.

Another size comparison with Version 1.0.

Unlike my other tool chest iterations, the chamfer on the lower skirt was cut by hand with a block plane.  The result is a steeper angle (about 55 degrees) than I would otherwise get with a trim router.  It was good practice at planing both right and left handed and the clean-up was oh-so-easy.

A simple operation, really.

When gluing the skirt onto the carcase, there was a sizable gap along the front skirt, more than I was comfortable filling with just paint.  So in addition to a significant clamping setup, I made a goberge to help close the gap from the inside.  Marginal improvement, but not enough for my aesthetic taste.  The front of the chest is now the rear (and wee-keh wehr-sah).

So much clamping going on here.

Problem is, the more a goberge is required, the more it tends to dent the inside of the carcase.  With some heat from an iron and a wet cloth, though, the impressions should spring out well enough for a tool chest.  On a furniture piece, I would probably add some padding to the corners (adhesive-backed cork, probably) to lessen the marring.

With the lower skirt finished, next up is the lid.  The panel glue-up didn’t turn out as expected, so I’m going in a completely different direction: 3/4″ birch plywood.  That also means I’m skipping the full dust deal. Three oak battens, one in the front and two on the sides (dovetailed together) will be glued and screwed to the underside of the lid, keeping out the dust.  I have some lovely 3/4″ flat-sawn red oak that is mineralized along the rift-sawn edges and will be perfect for this operation.

Perfect enough to keep the natural wood color, I think.

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It’s been about a month since I finished the traveling tool tote.  I am very pleased with the result.  Even if I haven’t figured out how or where to attach a transom chain.

I’m getting better at stuffing it, too.

I may be my own biggest critic, but there also are genuinely some things I don’t like about it.  In no particular order of importance, the good and the bad are as follows:

Size and Shape

• The Good: the basic dimensions are nearly perfect for the tools it was designed to hold.  My panel saws fit inside lengthwise (in a till) and the well area comfortably holds a bevel-up jointer, a No. 4 smoothing plane, a large router plane, a block plane, a tool roll (chisels) and sharpening gear (diamond plates, saw file roll, etc).  The 4″ deep sliding tray has plenty of capacity for two backsaws (dovetail and carcass), marking and measuring tools and assorted odds and ends.  The simple rack on the back wall rounds out the basic storage setup, giving me everything I need for working away from the shop.  It’s heavy but portable, even fully-loaded (but by “portable”, I mean “I can move it from my apartment to my trunk by myself without herniating a disk”.
• The Bad: the sliding tray itself is too wide. At just under 7″, it covers more than half of the well, making it difficult to reach tools that sit in the center of the floor.  I find myself removing the tray more often than not as I’m unloading.  A small complaint, but still something to address in the next version.  In addition, the simple rack, with its four spacers, will eventually be replaced with a solid rack of 1/2″ holes bored every 1 1/8″ on center (which I avoided this time around due to lack of drill press).

Construction

• The Good: rabbets and nails are definitely easier to get right than dovetails.  Angling the nails a bit adds to the holding power and properly sizing the end grain makes for a strong joint.  Although not strictly necessary, I added a dovetailed lower skirt to keep everything cinched tightly and cover the end-grain on the floorboards.  And the lid, consisting of a pine panel and two oak battens nailed on, came together quickly and easily.
• The Bad: rabbets and nails will never be as strong as dovetails.  In fact, trauma to the case during construction fractured one of the corner joints and even when re-glued and re-nailed, I felt it necessary to add corner brackets as reinforcement.  I will likely dovetail the next incarnation.  Also, the oak battens only hold the pine lid flat across the width and do not affect the slight bow across the length of the lid.

Hardware

• The Good: the Lee Valley iron handles are comfortable and stout, being screwed through the pine sides and into the oak tray runners.  Both the Tremont cut nails (used for assembling the case and attaching the tray bottom) and Dictum die-forged nails (used for attaching the lid battens and assembling the tray sides) look nice and hold well.  I am still searching for a reasonably-priced transom chain for the lid.
• The Bad:  the “no mortise” hinges are a pain to get straight.  Even after attaching all three to the case and transferring marks to the lid, I still put the lid on slightly crooked.  An extreme amount of fussing barely undid the damage, and I switched in regular butterfly hinges .  I also continue to struggle with slotted screws (hand-driven or not) to the point where it was preferable to glue in the panel saw till.

Conclusion

I may have overestimated the tools required for on-site work.  I don’t really need everything this tool chest is meant to hold (e.g., I haven’t once reached for a panel saw or my saw set).  As a result, the fully-loaded tool chest is very heavy; almost too heavy for casual travel.

The next incarnation will be smaller and lighter.  I’m testing out a 24″ x 12″ version (also made from home center 1×12 pine, but thicknessed down to 1/2″) that will be dovetailed at the corners.  In addition to experimenting with french-fitting the well storage, it will also swap out a sliding tray for a full-depth version that should be placed on the benchtop (like a mobile tool well).

And this might be a good excuse to splurge on that BT&C Hardware Store Saw, which I believe will fit the 23″ inside dimensions.

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