I’m using our spare bedroom as an office / exercise room / workshop and it’s brilliant! However, tool storage is not ideal. For the last couple of months I’ve been using a plywood sheet on top of the bed as a surface to keep my tools on. It’s nice to have them all layed out to use, but it’s not exactly ideal and I don’t have a plan for when somebody wants to use the bed for its intended purpose. Hence my new project is a Dutch tool chest.
I started with PAR poplar and had to laminate them to get the thickness I wanted. I’m going a little deeper than normal to allow for an extra row of planes up top. Here you can see the poplar cut to approx length and grouped into their eventual components (behind you can also see the need for a tool chest!).
First up was joining my boards for first few sections and then flattening and thicknessing the resultant panels. I’m using the mini workbench I made with the extension out which gave enough room between dogs for the length I was working with. I’d love a bigger bench but this beats the workmate for workholding hands down.
Then onto dovetails for the bottom corners. Here to make it easy with the wide panels I rigged up a Moxon-like setup with some spare wood and some clamps. It worked really well and I’m thinking I may have to make a less hacky version as an add on to my mini bench.
Next I cut dados for two shelves, the upper shelf will hold my main tools (planes etc) and the bottom shelf is divided and will have two drawers. The dados for the bottom shelf stop short of the front so that the locking mechanism for the front (in a future update) can clear the drawers and the shelf.
From there I glued up the shell and shelves, going in a few stages as I didn’t really have enough clamps nor any long open time glue.
Next up I’ll be planing all the pieces to line up at the front and the back, and then onto the front and the back of the case. The most daunting tasks will come later with making the lid which has breadboard ends (never done before), making some nice drawers with half blind dovetails (never done before) and then fitting out the insides.