Going Dutch
A place for my tools
I’ve been building up a set of hand tools that should allow me to construct a wide variety of household furniture, among other things. However, I don’t really have a nice place to store them when I’m not using them. I had been using an open “cabinet”, basically just a board with some dividers and retaining holes, but that doesn’t protect the tools from dust and rust. Dust holds moisture and moisture causes rust, so ideally the tools would all be held in a closed container.
Traditionally, this container would be a tool chest. Christopher Schwarz has written an interesting book on chests, The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, which I recommend if you want to understand some of the motivation for building a chest and how to go about building out a set of tools.
In TAC, Chris builds a “traditional” tool chest; a large box meant to sit on the floor that’s about 4'long x 2'wide x 2' deep. It’s a big chest and takes a while to put together. As a weekend / after work woodworker, it would take me quite a while to make. Meanwhile, tools be a rustin’.
Later, Chris built a Dutch-style chest, which is taller than it is deep and meant to travel. For whatever reason, I really took to this chest. It’s more mobile and could easily be attached to a wall with a French cleat. I’m in a basement shop, so floor space is at a premium, and a wall-hanging mobile chest would be really nice.
So, off to a local lumber mill I went, looking for some wide, inch-thick pine to make the shell. I found a local place with some air-dried 5/4 pine.
After cutting it to rough size, I let it dry for a couple weeks.
Once the wood had dried out a bit, I made up the panels for the top and front cover. Thankfully I had found some pine wide enough to span the bottom and sides without having to glue up a panel.
While the panels were drying, I started working on the case. First dovetails to join the bottom and sides.
Then dados to hold the two shelves.
And put the basic case together.
Once the panels were dry, I trimmed them to size and worked on the attaching them. The front panel slips into the opening and is held in place with a quartersawn oak retainer. The retainer slips down behind the front apron, through retaining slips screwed to the front panel, and then tucks in behind the bottom apron. It works surprisingly well.
At this point, the case was pretty much done. Time for paint.I used bright red milk paint from the Real Milk Paint company. It comes as a powder that you mix with water. I had a hard time getting the powder to incorporate into the water, but eventually found that a stick blender does the job quickly and without much mess. Here’s where we stand after a few coats of paint.
Next up, adding racks for chisels and marking tools, dividers for planes, and a saw till for backsaws.
