Mid-Sized Tool Chest via Japanese Style Carpenter Box

For the past 5 years, I have been happily woodworking in my garage (my little slice of paradise).  Lately, I can see where I might want to work elsewhere.  There were two immediate drivers for this:

1.  My dad needed to rebuild his garage when a huge tree destroyed in the backyard fell over and destroyed it.  Figure 1 and 2.  When he rebuilt it, it was larger and he purchased an nice woodworking bench for hand tools.  Since he's an hour away and I visit weekly, I'd like to do some woodworking projects there.

Figure 1.  The tree that crushed my dads garage.

Figure 2.  Just to give you an idea as to how big that tree was.  The base was no more than 30 feet from the garage.  Given all the directions it could have fallen, my dad was lucky.

Figure 3.  The aftermath after most of the tree was removed.  Sadly the 56 Ford pickup took the brunt of it.  It has since been restored (at considerable expense).

2. I was planning to take a class in Jul 2020 at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking to make the Anarchist Tool Chest (ATC) (to store my other hand tools that I don't use that often or are duplicates).  I am not a tool collector but I do have more than I need (who amongst us doesn't?).  I had signed up in Nov 2019 for this class.  Who knew Covid-19 would happen.  The class was canceled.

When I started working on all of this, it was before Covid-19 was a thing.  The goal was to make a tool chest that would be of medium size and hold most of the tools I use.  It was not to be a minimalist tool kit but it wasn't to be a full blown tool chest either.  I spend a lot of time thinking about the tools I wanted and laying them out to figure out the size.  There will be a future blog on the tools in it.  I ended up wanting a tool chest with the exterior diameters of 29" long (driven mostly by saw length), 14" wide (driven by what I wanted in the bottom), and 11&1/4" tall (driven by the 1x12 material I could get).

I debated between poplar and pine.  One day at Lowe's I saw two beautiful pine boards.  Part of the edges were damaged on each (that I thought I could work around) so I got them at 50% off.  That is ultimately what drove the decision.

As to the construction design, since I would be making a large size traditional tool chest in the class (via the ATC), I wanted to do something different.  The two designs I pondered were a dutch tool chest and a Japanese style carpenter box.  Figure 4 shows my decision.

Figure 4.  My mid-sized tool box.  I used the YouTube videos by Treebangham to make this.

It was based on Treebangham's YouTube video (well worth watching for this as well as his other content):  https://youtu.be/bbeDvPNFbdI.  For Christmas 2017 I had made small versions of this as boxes.  As such, being familiar with the making process was a heavy influence.  Also, I like the simple construction design of this sturdy box.  I wanted this to be a sturdy piece.  It's beauty would be the simplicity of its design.  Also, garnet shellac as a finish would make it look good.  I debated on painting it.  Decided the ATC will be painted on the exterior.  For this shellac it would be.

As for it's construction, it's a lot of cut nails and screws.  The bottom is 3/8" plywood that is screwed on so that if need be I can replace it.

The bottom (Figure 5) holds the saws, hand planes, router, small plough plane, and a few other items.  1/2" thick strips of poplar and 3/4" thick pine off cuts were used to make spaces for the individual tools.  Then there are some runners to hold 4 small boxes made of 1/2" poplar.  Something funny happened.  I made the four poplar boxes not thinking too much about them.  When I showed my dad and brother, the commented "ooh, dovetails."  Having done handtools now for 5 years, I don't think of that as a special joint.  I mean, how else would one make a box (yes, I know there are other ways, but really).  There is a clever trick I used for the bottom that I learned from Paul Sellers videos.  I took some 3/4 pine scraps and ran 1/4" grooves in them via my small plough plane.  Then, the 1/4" bottom plywood is housed in this.  I didn't want to nail the plywood to the bottom of the box but I didn't want to go through the hassle of needing some blind dovetails.  I just made the grooved pieces, glued them in the bottom and then inserted the plywood during box glue it.  It's easy and a good solution.

Figure 5

Figure 6  The boxes that hold the top layer of tools.  Ultimately 4 boxes were organized by commonality of tools so that a box can be removed and taken to the bench.

I like the lid locking system.  It involves a piece of wood tapered along the length and width.  It's simple and holds all in place. Figure 7 & 8.  One side of the lid has an angled width making it easy to grab and the other side has a "hidden" hand grab area.  As such, it's easy to remove.  The finish is just garnet shellac on the outside and clear shellac on the inside.  I ran out of garnet shellac during the finishing process so I used what was at hand.

Figure 7 and 8.  Simple lid locking system and lid removal.

Though I haven't weighted it when full of tools, I am guessing it weights about 70 pounds.  As such, I can lift it but I wouldn't want to have to carry it far.  I had a number of ideas as to how to transport it.  Then, I lucked out.  The collapsible wagons that come up for sale time to time at Costco were a prefect fit (Figure 9).  If I were doing it over, I would definitely have taken this into consideration on the design specs.  Glad luck turned my way on this one.

In the future I will have a blog showing the tools that fit inside of it.  Given it's weight, I am already in the process of making a smaller (much closer to a minimal tool chest)  tool chest that will be based on the ATC design.  That way, in the future if I take a class on making the ATC, I will be familiar with it and that should help me in the class.  Also, that way if I don't take a class or build a full size tool chest, at least I have a mini one in that traditional design.

Very Happy to be a Hobby Woodworker

NOTE:  Sorry for all the writing.  It's something I wanted to document (so hopefully some day my daughter can read it).  There are pictures of my little slice of heaven below if you want to skip to that.

In my early 40s, I have a watershed moment.  My daughter was about 9 months old an in daycare.  As most parents with young children can attest to, my daughter and my wife and I caught all kinds of colds for the first year or so while she was in day care.  There was one cold that after two or three weeks was handing on and on separate weeks I had taken some sick days to rest.  This was very unusual.  Typically if I take a sick day and rest up over the following weekend the cold subsides. This one wasn't, as such I called my doctor. I had been using the same doctor for 15 years and really liked her.  I considered to be my age when in actuality she was 15 years older.

When I called to make an appointment, I was informed that she had died from breast cancer.  I was stunned and without words.  Here was someone my age who had passed away.  We all know this happens but this one hit home.  There had been many things I had been putting off doing.  I was living in a condo and wanted to be in a house.  By having a house, I could woodwork.  Yes, I know it's possible in a small space but at the time I wasn't thinking of hand tools.  Also, my doctor dying made me think of the other things I had wanted to explore.  I was thinking that in my last 10 or 15 years of a working career I might want to be a woodworker or teach college chemistry.

Again, the impact of the death stuck with me to the pint that within six months we had sold the condo, I was teaching one night a week at a local college.  After a year or two in the home I had remodeled the garage and bought my woodworking tools to start my woodworking journey.

I learned a few things: 

 I still liked my career but I had to move to a small start up to appreciate that.  I had loved the big company I was at and am very grateful for my experience there.  In order to feel revitalized, I needed to be at a small startup when I could leverage all that I knew how to do to help a small band of folks push the frontiers of medicine.

I liked teach college chem a lot -the one night a week I teach at my almamater is very fun and I have great faith in the upcoming generation.  I didn't want to jump into it full time.  When I "retire" my dream is to teach two (possibly three) days a week.  It's so much fun. Plus since I don't depend on the money, I don't worry about getting laid off or if I don't dot the i's and cross all the t's.  I really do focus on trying to do the best job at teaching the students.  I don't care about all of the other stuff.

And for woodworking, I gave serious thought to doing it full time.  I have decided I will keep it as a hobby.  I enjoy working my hands and the pride in making things.  I have decided that I don't want it to do it for a living.  What I like about doing it as a hobby is that I really do get to pick and chose to do what I want.  I can take as long as I want and not have to worry about pay.  If I screw up and have made a piece of hardwood firewood, I don't worry about it eating into my profits.  I typically do a morning session, long lunch, then an afternoon session.  Three to five hours in the shop on one or both weekend days makes me a happy camper.

If you have been patient enough to read all of this, below are some recent pics (Jun 2020) of my workshop.  It is really just a wall or two inside the garage.  I can work with the cars being in  but I like to pull them out.  In a future post I will talk more about what I like and would do differently (ac, off a cement slab).

Life is good.  I still think about my poor doctor.  I feel sad she died young but I have taken that event to make changes in my life that I think she would be please with.  Now if I can just loose the weight she would be even happier as she looks down on me.

Figure 1.  The main workbench.

Figure 2 To my right side some tools I use less frequently.

Figure 3 The junk bench.  At some point I need to clean up this area and build a proper bench for the space.

Figure 4.  Two and half shelves I have to store my wood.

My Childhood Tool Chest

I was born in 1968 (makes me 52).  When I was about four years old, my dad purchased me a tool chest designed for kids.  It was a very common item during that time and I have seen similar ones on eBay.  My is special because it was, well, mine.  They can easily be purchased even to this day though.  I hadn't seen it in 15 years as it was still in a moving box I hadn't unpacked.  Recently, I was going through a moving box (more free time due to Covid-19 so like many I'm cleaning up and organizing more) and found it.  I was very excited.  Even as an adult in the early 2000s I was still using this kit from time to time.  

Now that I have 4+ years of experience with hand tool woodworking, I can look at this kit with a different eye.  It has a lot of useful tools with it.  The current project and the one in the batter's box are fixed.  What I would like to do in about six months time is to make a project of decent complexity using just the tools from this tool kit.  To help me make this kit more flexible, I will use the tools in this tool kit to make a poor man's router and poor man's plough plane like Paul Seller's teaches.  

I don't plan to tell my dad about this.  I plan to show up one day with this tool kit was well as the project I made from it.  I know that will make his day seeing this old kit and what I can do with it.

I have absolutely no objects if folks want to use machine tools.  A big problem we have as a society is getting off the couch where we watch tv and doing any sort of hobby.  I am happy when I see anyone do a hobby.  What I do like about hand tools is that the skills I am learning and within my body.  I should be able to use these tools and do a good job.  We shall see.