I made exactly zero weekday progress on the medium tool chest this week.  So when I woke up Saturday morning, I knew I had to get something, anything done.  So I attached the trunk pulls.

They aren’t dogbones per the plans, but I’m no turner, either.

This might have been the second time ever attaching handles (and the other is on the shop stand for the thickness planer).  And the two pulls differ slightly in overall plate size.  But through careful marking and awling, they ended up as parallel and even as I could have hoped.

I even clocked the screws!  Thanks The Furniture Record!

Now the chest is much less unwieldy.  I plan to paint the chest on Sunday (it’s sanded and ready to go) and finally cover up all those tool marks and putty.

All in all, it’s not much, but it’s progress, which is important.  Then I will finally make the lid.

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I hit a milestone over the long weekend on the medium tool chest project.  I am officially done with the carcass.  The skirts are fitted, the drawers are done and the saw tills and chisel rack are attached.  There is literally nothing left build-wise but the lid and dust seal.

The second set of saw tills (for my backsaws) came out much better than the panel saw till.

The whole assembly has become a bit unwieldy, so I think I’ll pause the build process so I can paint the box and attach the handles.  I think two coats of paint on a lazy September day will do just fine.

Cards on the table, I’ve enjoyed the build, but I don’t think I’ll actually use this tool chest in my apartment woodworking shop.  It’s just not big enough for all of my tools.  I don’t own a set of moulding planes, but I definitely own more than just two panel saws and three backsaws.

That having been said, I stuffed the chest full of tools this morning, for the first and last time.

The well:

That doesn’t even include the jointer plane I’m still intent on buying.

The deep tray:

Yes, I’m a huge fan of Mythbusters. Thanks for asking!

And the shallow tray:

Admittedly, almost all of this stuff (other than the small planes and the rasp) lives on my bench.

It felt almost disingenuous staging all of those tools for a couple of pictures, but I to confirm my suspicion that this was the wrong size tool chest for me.  Plus, I got some pretty good tool pron out of it.

I will still complete the entire build so I can gift the chest to someone.

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I am intentionally procrastinating on the backsaw tills for the medium tool chest (the panel saw till was an interesting endeavor that I did not particularly enjoy), so next up are the rabbeted/nailed tool trays.  I started with the lower tray, thinking that any major mistakes would be hidden deep within the chest.

True to form, there are serious french marks and I split one of the ends down the middle, trying use 6d nails on the ends without (apparently) sufficient pilot holes.  After a quick reset with headless brads, the lower tray has really come together.

The upper tray will be perfect, I swear.

Aside from that minor splitting mishap, the tray itself is actually joined together quite well.  The rabbets were easily split and cleaned up with a router plane and I was sure to size the end grain before gluing.  Four headless brads per corner cinched the carcass right up.  I can steam out most of the french marks and I’m rather happy with the cleanliness of the shoulder lines on the rabbets.

You’d think I had any clue what I was doing.

The lower tray won’t be ready right away, as I still have to rip the board down to size.  In the meantime, I can attach the upper tray to its bottom and miter the the upper skirt.

Getting very close to being done with the carcass entirely.

Once the trays are done and the upper skirt and backsaw tills are attached, I’ll paint the carcass and affix the handles.  Then it’s just lid/dust seal and stuffing it with tools.

Oh, what I learned today was “don’t use a 5/64″ drill bit to predrill for a 6d nail”.

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… it also works for Miter Boxes.

The ever-useful stop-block.

So much of meaningful woodworking is accurate and repeatable cutting.  Usually, this means knifewalls and careful crosscuts, followed by cleanup at the shooting board.  But why bother with the shooting board at all when each part can be perfect right off the saw?  The use of a stop-block (whether at the chop saw or the miter box) ensures that each piece is identical in length, without any of that silly extra measuring.

Speaking of silly, I found in my cabinet some of that no-run, no-drip PVA glue and used it to assemble the chisel rack for the medium tool chest.  I swear, you only get about 45 seconds of tack time before the glue grabs, and I really don’t think you need more than 15 minutes of clamp pressure before the bond is all but permanent.

Never coming apart.

Speaking of the rack, just an FYI: there isn’t a measurement for it in the plans, but I would suggest you space the bottom of the rack no more than 1.75″ from the top of the lower runner.  Any higher and your chisel handles will protrude above the carcass line.  I learned this the proverbial hard way.

Just a test fit after adjusting the rack height.  That’s the panel saw till at the bottom of the frame.

Lots more to do but other responsibilities call.  Hope everyone had a nice weekend!

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After a fun couple hours of installing the red oak tray runners, it was time for fitting the red oak tray bottoms.  I hadn’t really fit any moving parts since the carriage vise on the Milkman’s Workbench.  From that project I learned the fine line between free movement and wracking.  For the lower tray bottom (pictured below), the magic length ended up as about a 1/64 inch gap when the tray is slid to the front of the tool chest (and about 3/128 inch when slid to the back, because the inside of the carcass is almost imperceptibly out of square).

Those are the vintage Stanley trunk pulls I bought for $20 off Ebay.

I couldn’t get 8 inch wide red oak hobby boards at the home center, so I laminated the bottoms using 5 1/2 inch and 2 1/2 inch boards.  The smaller boards actually ended up being slightly thicker off the rack than the larger ones, so a quick pass through the thickness planer is required before I nail the pine tray carcasses to the red oak bottoms.

Speaking of the tray carcasses, I’m thinking of making the trays rabbeted and nailed (as opposed to dovetailed), because I’ve been wondering if I should have instead made the boarded tool chest Chris Schwarz posted about a couple months ago.  I don’t own a fillister plane, but I can pretty easily chisel-split some shallow rabbets and clean it up with a router or shoulder.  If I go that route (although at this point, not sure why I would), the trays would be good practice for rabbeting and nailing.

Before I go, one thing I’ve loved about this project is getting to use tools I didn’t even realize I still had, like wooden screw clamps.

Unused since the stock prep for the now-defunct planing slab.

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I am nearly finished dovetailing the carcass of the medium sized tool chest (just two sets of pins left), so it was time to hit up my local box store for some common pine and hobby oak.  As usual, I got weird looks from the contractors and floor staff as I dug through the 1×12 common pine boards for the flattest, clearest stock.

That’s enough for floorboards, trays (other than bottoms) and runners.

After about 30 mins, I had uncovered 24 board feet of common pine that otherwise would qualify as select pine but for some small live knots here and there.  One board has some pith in it, so I will rip it down to glue up a quarter-sawn lid for the tool chest.

This is the very worst board of the four and will do just fine as ship-lapped floorboards.

I never knew my local death star sold 1/4″ and 1/2″ red oak boards.  Best part is, if you’re thorough, you can find quarter- and rift-sawn pieces for the same price as the flat-sawn BS that makes up most of the package.  Stable and straight, with no thicknessing required.

These are destined to be the middle and top tray runners.

The other thing on my agenda is an outdoor bench for a buddy of mine.  I’m using off-cuts from dimensional pine 2×4’s for the frame and will probably use a piece of leftover 1×12 common pine for the seat.  We’ll see.

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