Long overdue update on this. The skirt is three pieces, rabbeted and glued the same as the carcasse. I’ve also stuck some brads in there to help with strength.
I replicated the moulding on the lid for the skirt - fillister and smoother. I like the way it looks, somewhere in between modern and traditional. Functionally it keeps that corner robust while removing a sharp edge and reducing surfaces dust will accumulate on.
The paint was extremely fun to make - there’s another thread for that so I won’t go into it but it’s well worth a try if you’re interested and can get your hands on the pigment.
General thoughts after a couple of months’ use:
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The chest lives on top of two saw horses to bring the top to about hip height. I haven’t really used this on the floor, and I don’t really want to. The Dutch tool chest is superior in that aspect I think - storage underneath main compartment is built-in.
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I like that I open one thing - the lid - and it’s all there. Sure I have to move tills but I don’t have to find a place to keep the fall front while I work like I do on the DTC.
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It’s not as good as the DTC for storing moulding planes. There isn’t the height for a corral plus tills (I could go with just one till, but you’d lose a lot of storage), and I can’t fit my plough plane in at all. Some of this is because I put a tool rack in which reduces the space at the back, but honestly getting any of them out is a challenge. Maybe I’m storing them wrong. The DTC wins in that regard.
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I don’t store my saws in there. There’s not the room for my panel saw (again, I need more height under the tills), and I’ve ended up keeping everything in the French cleat on the back of my bench. Not great, and the DTC doesn’t have this problem.
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The tills really do soak up all the small awkward things which my last tool chest didn’t really have a place for. The tool rack is something it shares with the DTC and is my favourite thing - keeps all the edges on my chisels safe - although you do have to be careful reaching into the bottom back corner for things. That could be solved with a thin panel though which I’ll probably put in at some point.
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I can’t find a good place for my brace, but braces are awkward, angular things and that would be true of any chest.
Some of these problems could be solved by building a full scale Anarchist’s Tool Chest, which I don’t have the time, room or patience for. Otherwise I think it’s hard to compare this against a DTC and conclude one is better.
The other problem is that it’s already pretty full, and I have ambitions to build more tools. But that’s not something which can be solved by a different design of tool chest.