Build a traditional tool chest – completed

Dedicated shop time has been pretty sporadic over the last several weeks and this has somewhat delayed the completion of my tool chest. I’m not worried about this only mention it in case readers were wondering what happened. Two weekends ago we spent time at our other home in Melrose (Turtle Cove) and the weekend after that Susan and I took the girls to Universal for a family memory. Last weekend we worked on Saturday leaving just one day (yesterday) to relax, catch up on sleep and finish up the chest.

When I last posted, I had basically fixed the largest bottom tray. It took two other shop sessions to complete the last two trays. Chris’ (Schwarz) trays may have practically built themselves but mine were clearly not cooperating. I readily admit that I got off on the wrong foot with them (see last post) but I wasn’t through messing up either. I had previously milled the long sides and bottoms for the upper two trays and when I got back in the shop I began to assemble one of them. It was only after assembly I realized that I had messed up again! The sides were too tall. This mistake had been made previously but I didn’t check myself when I got back into the shop. So it was back to the table saw for a hair cut. Trimming the sides went smoothly and I called it quits for this session.

When I got back into the shop, I felt that I had finally gotten the hang of how to glue and hammer these things together. Third time is the charm. It was close but the top tray fit so I left the sides as they were and planed them to fit. To make all this work inside the chest less awkward, I went ahead and fit the chain to restrain the lid. This chain was left over from the shop lights I put up in my shop. Once I had stripped all the zinc, they took on that nice dark gray color matching the rest of the hardware.

A couple more short sessions in the shop were dedicated to removing (most of) the screws and plugging the holes. I used 3/8″ hardwood dowels from the big box store but when I ran out, I made up a whole big batch of pine dowels using a plug cutter on the drill press. Truthfully, flushing up dowels has not been one of my favorite chores. I now realize that my flush cut saw works well as long as the right side of the blade is against the work-piece.  If I use it the other way I end up marring the surface. I’m not sure if the set is supposed to be that way or not and come to think of it, I might be able to flatten the set on it. For now I just make sure I use my right hand and it works pretty well. I also found that the soft pine plugs I made were a whole lot easier to flush up than the hardwood dowels. in any event, there were a lot of holes so I got a fair amount of additional experience in this. I finished this session by pulling out a tube of wood putty to fill and smooth all the various imperfections I had subjected my chest to during the build.

By Sunday, the end was in sight. I muscled the massive box onto my rolling cart (see previous post) and sprayed on two coats of green spray paint.  If I were to do it again, I wouldn’t use spray paint. Advice I received a Fine Woodworking video suggests aerosol finishes are better suited for smaller projects and I see the reasoning.  In this instance, I already had the paint and was ready to get on with finishing the project, so I went ahead and used it.

I like the color but I could have used at least one additional can to add a third coat.  I was just glad to be able to wrap up the project.

I’m not sure these photos do justice to just how big this chest is. It’s a big honking chest and really too big for my humble shop. I’ve made a temporary if not idea space for it and I wonder how long it will take me to fill it with new tools?

You have been reading an excerpt from the shop journal of the Turtlecovebrewer.

Tool Tray Rebuild

Part of me was hoping to get a little farther along last night once but as it turned out,  I was just happy to get as far as I did. I used a couple of measuring sticks to find the target length for my bottom till and transferred this to my over-sized tray.

I had planned to cut both ends off at the table saw but given the height of the sides and the number of nails in the piece, I was uncomfortable proceeding. I probably should have used my circular saw and be done with it but again, I was uncomfortable that I didn’t have use of a saw guide and those nails concerned me. I started with a hand saw but the going was slow and inefficient. If I had a decent carcass saw I think it would have been fine, but what I had wasn’t working for me. I finally turned to the jigsaw which was sloppy but as least safe to use. I trued up the ends with a block plane. All of this took much longer than anticipated.

Here is the before picture, I re-posted it here to see if you notice any other problem with its dimensions? Astute you are Grasshopper! The sides are too tall! Not only did I make it too long, but I made it too high. This became obvious after cutting the ends off and introducing the (now endless) tray to the runner. At least this was going to be a relatively easy fix with the table saw. I hunted through the plans to determine that the sides should be 1/2″ below the runner above it which in this case is 4 1/2″. Set my table saw fence, blade height and keeping the bottom against the fence I ripped first side,  flipped it over and ripped the other side. No nails to worry about for these cuts.

By now, Susan was patiently waiting for me so that we could have our supper but I was close to finishing up the bottom till and I felt compelled to finish up. I went ahead and cut the sides, gluing and nailing them home.

Finally a simple “self-built” bottom tray that fits and slides on its runners. Man that was easy!

Conclusion: It is easier to build a piece correctly from the beginning than it is to fix it after the fact.  It feels good that I was able to salvage the this tray and I’m now able to build the other two.

Build a traditional tool chest – continued

The build continues on the traditional 2-day tool chest. Since my last post I have had several shop sessions but these have all been limited to a couple of hours of work time so my progress has been measured.

Dust Skirt

One evening session I milled the stock and cut the dovetails for the lid dust skirt. When a fella is putting a shop together there are so many things that “he needs” or believes that he needs. So far I’ve glued up a table top and assembled a large tool chest carcass without any long clamps. I decided that I should address this, at least partially so I purchased 4,  3/4″ pipe clamp fixtures, and 4  6′ lengths of 3/4″ black pipe. The next day I hurried 3 of these into service gluing the dust skirt to the lid. I’m trying to limit my use of the 18 gauge nailer (although I did use it on the faux raised panel) if for no other reason than to stay somewhat “traditional”. In most instances I have used hammered nails as directed in the video. I don’t think there is a great advantage to this only that it is a skill for me to work on. I could have glued and tacked the skirt on but I chose to glue and clamp it instead as did Chris on the video.

Hing Mortises

My next session was devoted to cutting the 6 hinge mortises for the 3 hinges. At the time I cut these, I didn’t own a miniature router plane as demonstrated in the video but my wife loves me very much and having seen the video with me, decided that she would buy me one for a surprise. It’s a D3830 Shop Fox Router Plane and I can’t wait to try it out. A bit too late for this project, I will definitely have many applications for it in the future, especially instrument building. No doubt my mortises would (or could) have been a bit cleaner if I had this rascal.

Pickling the Hardware

I very much realize that it isn’t necessary to do exactly as instructed in Chris’ video, but I have chosen to follow along as closely as possible.  It’s just a decision I made early on, so when I came across the exact style of casters and handles he used, I bought them.  I did purchase green paint in lieu of black but in terms of the plans, I’m trying not to stray too much.  I liked the idea of removing the zinc plating to give that old-time traditional appearance but I didn’t have any citric acid lying around the kitchen. Chris indicated that it was inexpensive to purchase but really it isn’t all that cheap. I looked around the forums for alternatives and decided to give plain old white vinegar a try. I had it on hand and it really is inexpensive. I tried it and it  worked. I’m not saying do it, I’m not saying it’s as good, etc. I have nothing to compare my results to. I am saying that I left my parts in the vinegar over night and they were very much zinc free the next day. The plating was removed although the steel underneath was blotchy. Personally this doesn’t bother me one bit but I’m not sure what they would have looked like if I changed the soak time or used citric acid. I can say that vinegar was cheap, safe and effective.

I followed up the vinegar treatment by rinsing the parts in OSPHO metal prep and letting them dry completely. The screws came out almost completely black which I love and the rest of the parts mostly gray.

Tool Tills

If I have one criticism of Chris’ video it would be the way he glosses over the building of the tool trays. Building the carcass is very detailed and almost to the point of painful except that beginners need this level of detail. Brilliantly done. By the time he gets to the tills we are told they are so simple, “they practically build themselves”.  Not being experienced, I spent a fair amount of time rewinding the video for a look, and in SketchUp trying to sort it all. I wasn’t sure if I should have installed the runners first (yes!) or built the tray first.  I got ahead of myself and after milling all the tray stock, thought I would go ahead and build the bottom till.

This was mistake numero ono. My second mistake was hoping that I could glue and nail all four sides together and not have it set up before I squared it up with the bottom panel. Let’s just say by the time I glued and nailed all four sides, it was racked and it wasn’t going to be pulled square. No way, no how. I “showed” the till to the carcass, and the carcass said, “No way!”. I planed and planed but it is still hopelessly racked. Lesson learned, I now have 4 groovy corner clamps for the next two tray builds and beyond.

The good news, I have discovered the error of my decision and last night I installed the wooden runners for the trays. Conclusion, the lower tray wouldn’t have fit anyway, duh! I made it the width of the carcass, not the bottom runner.

That is actually good news, my plan now is to cut off both ends of the till square and put on new ones. I should have just enough length to do both sides but I’ll check carefully before cutting. The goal of course is to not only shorten but to square the thing up. (Notice how black the hinges are now that the zinc is removed and steel is exposed).

Next Up…

Tonight I’ll probably start but cutting off the ends of the built tray and see if I can get it rebuilt to size. As time permits, I’ll cut the rest of the stock (sides and dividers) for the other two trays and maybe even get one or both of them glued up. After all I have it on good authority that, “The trays practically build themselves!”.

You have been reading an excerpt from the shop journal of the Turtlecovebrewer.

Build a traditional tool chest in ? days …

I can tell you right off the bat that I had no real expectation I would complete this Christopher Schwarz style tool chest in just 2 days. I didn’t want to feel pushed and I have nothing to prove. My wife is constantly telling me, “it’s not a race”. Obviously build speeds will tend to increase as skills and shop instrumentation develop but otherwise, I’m not putting myself under any time pressures. My goal is to simply learn, have fun and hopefully end up with a serviceable build. Saturday morning Susan and I rose fairly early as she had work, and I had a chest to start. My first problem was how to process the two full-sized plywood panels. I knew that it was going to be a challenge but when I started really looking at the (massive) sheets, I realized that I hadn’t thought things through…. at all. I figured I could cobble together two saw horses, but that wasn’t going to get it done. I’d need 4 to make that work, and I didn’t want to spend all morning building saw horses if I could help it. So looking around my car port it came to me that rather than building 4 saw horses, I could just reassemble the dilapidated picnic table I was storing. A few deck screws later, I had half the problem solved. Now I needed a matching table for the falling pieces. My wife has a lot of cool stuff that she has accumulated and I remembered a folding table that I was storing in my shop. It was perfect albeit a bit too short. Again I was fortunate enough to have a piece of scrap that was actually perfect to support the cutoffs. Let the rough cuts of sheets goods, proceed.

 Saturday – Build Day 1

The bonus information to the DVD that Chris provides is perfectly adequate for this build but this is not to say that one doesn’t have to use their head. The Sketch Up drawing has the sheet goods optimization for both the 3/4 and 1/2 ply but you need to have your computer close by to make sure you don’t mess up. I tried to print this out but that didn’t turn out to be all that usable because the dimension text was a bit small and there are a lot of measurements you really want to have handy. Anyway I did a bit of running between my computer and my saw to make sure that my cuts were where they needed to be; the last thing I wanted was to mess up and need a another sheet of ply. I took my time with this phase. I was also careful to mark a note about the size and purpose of each of the panels because once you have 4 or more of them, it is very easy to get them mixed up. And hours later you’ll be sorting through your stack again looking for the correct piece.

Now I shouldn’t have been surprised the dimensions are clear for anyone to see, the chest is 24″ x 38″. Heck, I’ve even watched the video several times but let me just say this sucker is HUGE! I mean it’s big and so big in fact, I have no clue where I’m going to put it in my tiny shop. So my next challenge was working with these larger pieces without a shop assistant. I was hopeful that my two largest F-clamps would reach along the chest’s length but alas it was an inch or two shy so I just had to wing it by propping the face piece on two sides and getting a screw in to hold it. Of course, you can’t forget the glue.

I had another handy little table that was strong enough to keep the carcass off the ground but low enough to work comfortably on this rather large piece. When I cut down the full sheets, I left everything a bit oversized which meant that I had to cut them to size before assembly. I could use the table saw to rip them in the narrow dimension but at 38″ I still had to use the circular saw to cut them to length. So out came the saw again but truthfully, with my shop-made guide these cuts have been quite good. Pressing on.

By early afternoon I had the sides and bottom in place. It was time to cut me some skirt. I chose to use the home center “select” pine which really looked very nice and was least expensive of the lumber. I might have gone with poplar but not only was it more expensive, they didn’t have the 1×12 pieces I required. I didn’t feel like getting creative, especially as it would have cost more to do so. I have no regrets, the pine is lovely.

I was going to rip these on my table saw but I first cut them to rough length to make the boards easier to handle. I took my time and this processing all went smoothly so it was back to the DVD to review the section on how to cut the bevel. Chris explains it adequately but he doesn’t give a suggested bevel angle which would have been helpful to me. I started at about 20, then moved the fence in a little closer, adjusted the bevel to 25 then finally to 30. I think Chris used an even higher angle but I didn’t want to continue experimenting on my build pieces and went with what I had. It looks fine but I could have saved a little of time if he had given a suggested angle. No harm done, its good to learn on one’s own also.

After the skirt material was ripped to proper width and one side beveled, I ran my block plane over the edges to clean up the teeth marks and clean up the imperfections from my less-than-stellar table saw work.

Now that the upper and lower skirts were prepared I began gluing and screwing them to the carcass.

Working off this lower table was helpful but maneuvering the carcass all by myself was dicey. I can left it but my shop is small and I had to be careful not to ding it all up during construction. As was suggested in the DVD, I used shot lines to plan out where to place my screws. I “mostly” got it right but more on that later.

This is as far as I got on build day 1. I felt like things had gone pretty well and I was looking forward to seeing how far I would get on Sunday. I knew from the start it wouldn’t be finished but I was still curious to see have far I’d get.

Sunday – Build Day 2

Sunday morning Susan and I slept in as long as we wanted. This was our only opportunity of the week and the first day of public school starts Monday so it was now or never. Spending time with Susan is important to me so I didn’t mind getting a late start on chest. I was completely refreshed when I began but this did not stop me from making a bunch of mistakes. Something happened between my thoughtful work on Saturday and my “easy-I-know-what-I’m-doing” doing work first thing on Sunday. My biggest mistake, and one that I’ll pay for was not reviewing the video section again on skirting. The front lower skirt was properly installed but I neglected to present the side skirt to the work and mark to cut it to final length. So I glued and screwed it proud, to be dealt with after the fact. Didn’t seem wrong at the time but the bottom line is that I still suck at hand tools. With an overhang that is too big to plane and too small to saw, I was in trouble. I’m not embarrassed to admit my mistake but I also didn’t see fit to take pictures of it either, so I guess I’m only half honest about it. The good news was that I learned and did cut the upper skirts to proper length before installing. I also decided to go ahead and mark the beveled overhang and whacked it off with my band saw before installing. That was genius, I really wish I had learned this lesson without messing up the bottom skirt. Chris suggests using a flush cut saw and demonstrates that method. I previously mentioned shot lines and mostly getting it right but It might help others to point out my experience. To hit a 3/4″ plywood edge I measured in 8 mil. On the beveled side, I measure in 22 mil for my shot lines. These worked out and I was happy with them. You have to be care to place your screws where they don’t interfere with each other. I drilled a couple of extra holes before I realized I was going to have to change my pattern. I also put two rows off screws on one upper skirt and one row of screws on the other upper skirts. I was in robot mode and didn’t bother to check before doing the second side. These mistakes are all correctable with plugs and filler but just a word of caution. And one other point which was not mentioned in the video (I don’t think) but when you’re drilling and counter boring the skirts, you really need to make sure that you don’t drill all the way through into your chest. When drilling the edges you’re fine but in the middle you going through the skirt and directly into the carcass. If I hadn’t checked my bit depth it would have been too deep.

Skirts finished it was on to the lid. Out comes the circular saw and saw guide to cross-cut to length before ripping to width on the table saw. So far so good. Next I cut the faux raised panel insert and prepped it for glue up. Chris secures the panel using a few finish nails but he also points out that they are almost too long, so he hammers them in at an angle. I have a 23 gauge brad nailer and didn’t see why I should use it to circumvent problems. Glue is slippery and I didn’t want that thing sliding around while I tried to hammer nails. I also didn’t want to miss (I know myself by now) and put smiley faces on the lid. But problems I did have. My nailer was shooting blanks so the glue was drying while I was diagnosing the problem. I finally figured it out and was grateful that I didn’t shoot myself with any brads in the process. Apparently I hadn’t seated the clip of nails deeply enough in the track. Even with the top nailed, I noticed the panels weren’t completely flat so I added a bit of insurance to the top while the glue finished setting.

Well you know it’s funny but I seem to have a bit of sixth sense when it comes to time and something was telling at this point that my shop day was about over. Sure enough it was just after 5:00 PM and I was ready to call it a day, get cleaned up and spend the last evening of summer with my wife. But before I cleaned up, I pulled out a lid hinge to see how hard it was going to be to cut the 3 mortises. I don’t have a groovy mini router plane although I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy one as they would be very useful for instrument builds. I toughed it out using a series of shallow saw cuts and hand chisels. I only cut one and it didn’t take long as the hinges are only about 1/16″ deep (probably less than that).

So here is the weekend’s work. I figure I have another day or maybe two before the chest is completed. I still have a fair amount to do. I’ll finish the hinge mortises and mounting the hinges then work on dovetailing the lid dust skirt. After that it will be on to building the 3 trays and paint… well I’ll report on those activities when they occur.

You have been reading an excerpt from the shop journal of the Turtlecovebrewer.