Everything but the Lid

In the past couple of days I’ve been able to make some real progress on the tool chest. Let’s start from where I left off.

After I took the carcase out of the clamps I jumped a little ahead of myself and attached the lower lip.

When I finished I realized I forgot to cut out the notch where the fall-front locks fall. So I unscrewed the lip and marked my areas.

A little sawing…

chopping…

waste clearing…

and I was on my way to a decent looking stopped rabbet.

It’s hidden under the lip so ugliness doesn’t matter. I also cut out the rest of the notches for the fall-front locks while I was at it.

It probably would have been easier to do the notches for the panel battens at this point as well but I did it once they were already installed on the fall-front.

I added the front to the carcase and took a step back to admire my work from the front

and the rear.

Next was getting the back attached. I used my skewed rabbet plane to cut a rabbet a little more than 3/8 deep across a 5′ board.

I clamped it to the back of the chest and screwed everything in place using the whole board.

Then I used a flush-cut pull saw to get the right fit rather than measuring.

I added the opposing groove for the shiplap and finished up the back. At this point I was dying to see what it would look like with tools to I did some glamor shots.

This got me excited for the home stretch. After I fit the fall-front to fit vertically I clamped it and marked it out the same way I did the back panels.

I made the four lock catches out of one piece of wood that I cut the 2″ wide dado in…

before cutting them into individual pieces.

Like I had mentioned in the beginning, I used all dimensioned lumber from Home Depot and did basically no milling to any boards just so I could speed up this building process. I finally ran into my first snafu.

The board I used to get my full width for the front-fall had a little twist so I hit the catches when I tried to insert the locks. Speaking of which, up until today I’ve used pretty much every scrap and have not purchased any additional poplar. This left me short of wood for the lid, locks, and battens. Today I made another trip to Home Depot to get the remaining wood and decided to cheat in the thinner stock pieces and bought some already 1/4″ and 1/2″ pieces for the locks and battens. Anyhow, I took off the one catch and took off about 1/16″

I put it back on and everything fit nice!

One of the last things I did today was to install the strap hinges to the case itself. I measured the height at 9/16″ and marked my case to cut out the notches but when I fit them they were still too high.

I took off an additional 1/8″ and that made things fit just right.

Now all I need is the lid which is currently clamped and waiting. As much as I want to finish things up tonight I don’t think I’ll be able to. My loving wife has been patiently waiting for me to finish this chest so we can catch up on Breaking Bad and I think I owe her an episode or two tonight.

Sorry this post was so long but as this is really the accumulation of about 3 or 4 nights worth. If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with it to the end. Once the lid is installed all I have left is to paint. I am using milk paint and I can’t decided between slate or pitch black. Anyone have any suggestions?

Carcase Complete

A couple nights ago I wasn’t entirely productive but I did manage to knock out the remaining dados for the shelves.

However, yesterday was a different story. After I finished up the dados I did a quick dry fit to make sure everything was good. Only one of the three dados fit good right from the first fit. The rest I needed to take a little off the shelves to get a snug fit.

Another dry fit proved that things were coming along.

I took everything apart and clamped the sides together so I could cut the 30° angle.

This was one of those times when I proved how much I need a tool chest. Somehow I managed to lose my protractor and spent about 30 minutes looking all over for it. I had just used it the previous day but somehow managed to completely lose it because I still haven’t found it. Either way I just used the measurements from the plan and connected the dots and cleaned up it all up.

Once I was happy with everything I did another dry fit and prepped for glue up.

At this point I happened to notice that I made a little error in measuring. It wasn’t a matter of measure twice, cut once but rather the location of the top shelf. In the plans its shows the location for the bottom shelf on one side of the chest and the top shelf on the other. I didn’t notice that the top shelf measurement was taken from above the 1-1/2″ lower skid so I made my mark from the bottom of the chest. Now instead of having 6-1/2″ of clearance on the second shelf, I only have 5″. Not a horrible mistake but one none the less. At this pace there is a good chance I will be done by this weekend.

It Begins at the Big Box Store

Today I finally got moving on starting the Dutch Tool Chest. My day started at Home Depot where I got all my materials and hardware. Why Home Depot? That’s simple; my purchase was mostly free all thanks to my Amex. Due to the fact that I use it for about 98% of every purchase I make I easily rack up enough points for a $100 gift card about every 3 months. Lately we’ve been using them elsewhere so this time I felt like getting some financial assistance for my chest.

I honestly don’t like buying wood from any home improvement store (mainly due to price) but when it’s free, why not. I bought 24 linear (or board) feet of 1×12 poplar. There where two 7′ pieces that were straight enough for me to take and then I had a 10′ piece cut in half. Add some casters, screws, a set of strap hinges, and a couple of handles (which I will most likely take back) and I was pushing close to $200. Throw in my military discount and $100 gift card and I walked out of there spending about $80. Even though the poplar was $5.32 a foot, I still look at it as a win. Since it’s S4S I don’t have to worry about the labor of milling and it’s straight enough where everything will end up (mostly) square.

The seven foot pieces were perfect to give me the two sides, bottom, two shelves, the front, and lower skid with some material left over. After everything was cut to size I noticed that the boards were a little tapered in width. They were just over 11-1/4″ wide so I milled the boards to get them where I needed them to be so I could start the dovetails.

I clamped the two side pieces together and marked out the tails.

After I made all my cuts I kept everything together and cut the shoulder off the end tailsbefore I separated them to chop out the remaining waste.

I do wish I would have gone with a steeper angle for the dovetails but oh well. For marking the pins I had to pull my bench away from the wall in order to accommodate the length of the bottom of the chest.

When everything was all said and done and I attempted a dry fit. It was a little snug on the left side but a quick cleaning of the pins and another try and things were fitting well!

Next and last for the day was starting on the dados for the shelves. I currently have all four marked and ready to go and even got one started before I had to call it quits for the day. I’m real happy with the progress made today and can’t wait to get some more done tomorrow.

A Home For Tools – Why the Dutch?

When it comes to woodworking design, I have none. Most of what I build (probably along with most hobbiest woodworkers) is modification/redesign of something seen somewhere else. I do have a couple of “original” pieces but I consider them frankeinsteins of many different elements seen elsewhere. Sometimes it’s just easier to follow someone else’s plan.

Since I’ve taken up the hobby of woodworking I’ve managed to start a decent collection of hand tools. The problem is that I have no where to store or protect these tools. My most used ones are kept on a shelf below the bench; during projects they are basically stored on any flat surface that isn’t at the time occupied. It seems I spend more time making room and looking for tools then I do using them.

Once we had settled in our house here in NC last year I began thinking about how I wanted to store them. Initially I thought about building the hanging tool cabinet from the video series on Finewoodworking.com. However, there was one issue. Cabinets require organization and layout and as I am still building my tool collection my OCD doesn’t agree with that. If I were to build a cabinet I would need to have a space for all my tools as well as future purchases and since I don’t know when or what I will buy, I just won’t do it.

So my next choice was a tool chest. Of course like many other woodworkers I was drawn to the Anarchrist’s Tool Chest. Great design, solidly built and tons of storage. The estimated completion time is 40-60 hours or so (more like 70-90 for me) and since my woodworking time is about an hour and a half at nights (when I make it out there) and about half a day on Sunday’s, that’s a couple of months of shop time. That’s more effort than I want to dedicate right now. Then Chris Schwarz came out with the two day chest. This really intrigued me for time constraint reasons however as I don’t own any power tools I would need to go to the wood hobby shop on base. Definitley fesible but I really enjoy working at home much more so I was just waiting on my last option.

For anyone that follows the Lost Art Press blog (along with many other blogs that have built one), the Dutch Tool Chest is where it’s at right now (at least for me). It’s quick to build, requires little material, is straight forward in joinery and has lots a space. The article was to be published in the Oct issue of Popular Woodworking so I’ve just been waiting around. Imaging how happy I was when I checked my email two days ago and my digial issue was waiting for me!

Did I really need the plans to build this chest? No, of course not. It is a straight forward and simple design and I could have come up with my own dimensions based off the numerous articles and blogs as well as to accomodate my own needs. As I mentioned in the beginning, sometimes it’s just easier to follow plans then to come up with my own. I bet you’ll never guess what I’m starting on this weekend.

Indentity Crisis!

For quite some time I’ve been going over the idea of completely changing my blog. Not only the theme but the title/domain as well. I was never really happy with “Project Severed Cords” but it sounded good at the time. As you may tell, I finally made the plunge.

Although I’ve never been a dedicated blogger I’ve neglected this blog for the past couple of months quite more than I should have. I have completed a few personal projects since my last post but nothing documented. I think that part of my reason was how I originally wanted to handle this blog. Since that’s all in the past now it really doesn’t matter how that was.

So what’s new? Well besides the name, nothing really. I do plan to blog more often and cover more than just projects I’m working on. While I don’t feel my opinions or techniques matter much, my new title shows where I stand on that. I work some wood, I write about it and whether or not anyone reads this doesn’t change the fact that I’m gonna do it all over again.

I hope to keep up on this blog more so than I have in the past and hope at least one person can gain a little something from my inevitable mistakes to be made.

A Home For Saws

As I’m still in the progress of getting my shop organized there is one thing that I’ve been putting off and on the back burner to other projects; finding a home for my saws. Currently they just sit where ever they fit and that’s usually on top of the cutoff bin.

Even after I used a good portion of the wood from the bed for the assembly table, I still have a lot left so I thought it would be a good project to use a lot of the smaller pieces I have.

I first thing I did was make four panels with three 1×4 pieces. I’m not even sure what the overall length was but I managed to get three panels flattened to 5/8″ and one to 9/16″ thick. Before I moved on I began to think about design. My initial intent was to make a typical saw till. One where you stand the saw on their handle vertically and rest the blade in the kerf of another piece of wood. I had laid out my pieces and used my saws to get an idea of the overall size and shape but my pieces were looking like they might be too short for what I was wanting. I could have made it work but I started looking for other ideas. Long story short I found an old Popular Woodworking article about storing saws. In there I saw this picture and knew where I wanted to take my design. I don’t know why but I just liked this type of stroage better. Following this design the first thing I needed to do was get the angle that would best fit for the saw to hang. The first number to pop into my head was 22°. This was not steep enough for the angle of the handle so I tried again. I used a protractor to best determine the angle and came up with 35°. To test it out I laid a ruler until it made contact along the handle of the saw and lined it up with the 35° line I made on the panel. Looked vertical enough to me. Now that I had my angle set it was just a matter of figuring how I would put it all together. Two of the panels that were 5/8″ think would be used as the side and would be rabbeted into the front 9/16″ panel and the last 5/8″ panel would be the top. I decided not to enclose it completely and leave the back open. Keeping it all together I used a 2″ wide piece and connected the top by dovetail (don’t mind the horrible rabbet)

And also about midway down the backside.

After a couple of dry fits to make sure everything fit together properly it was time for the glue up.

Fitting the top actually occurred after this even though there is already one picture of it a little bit ago. For this I cut the rabbets and then kept planing away material until everything fit. That probably doesn’t make much sense but it worked for me. Once I had a snug fit I needed to make the kerfs for the saws to rest in. I currently have 6 hand saws that need a home and since the wife told me I was cut off from getting anymore I space everything out evenly for only six and no more.

This was actually perfect because it gave just enough room for each saw without overcrowding. The cutting of the kerf wasn’t wide enough to allow all saws to be seated at once so I used a thin file to widen things a bit until every saw fit without being forced in. The last thing to do was glue the top on. To keep things evenly spaced I used pennies between each kerf.

When it was all said and done my saws seem comfortable in their new home. Before you ask, yes a couple plates are a little bent but I wanted to try my hand at straightening them (at some point). Like most of my shop gear, she may not be pretty but she gets the job done!

Taking it All Apart

I’ve been using my assembly table for a couple weeks now and this weekend I felt it was time to try and finish it up. I don’t know why but my brain somehow managed to take that to mean let’s take it all apart and start over. Not completely start over but close enough.

Like I had mentioned in my last post I never glued any of the joints so I thought that’s where I would start so I won’t be able to take it apart again. I had also mentioned using a hook type of mortise and tenon (not sure if it’s an actual type of joint) and didn’t get any pictures but since it was all apart I got a snap in.

With everything glued up I decided I wanted to start on the cabinet portion. What seems like what should have been an easy solution actually took me about two days of brain storming. Again using only what I have on hand my idea just happened to work perfectly. It’s just two pieces of plywood that were already the perfect size to be notched to fit in the top rails.

I don’t know exactly how tall they were since everything was just relative dimensioning. All I know is that they were tall enough to fit securely and short enough at add spacers on the top without interfering with the table top.

With the carcase done it was time to work on the the drawers. Again, being horrible at actually documenting as I work, I knocked out the first one without a single image of the progress. It all went together smoothly other than the fact that it’s a little narrow in the back. I measured about 1/8″ short but you can’t tell by just looking at it.

As you can see I still haven’t added a bottom but here’s one down, not sure home many more to go. It’s a little deep at 5-3/8″ but that’s what I had on hand and didn’t feel like ripping it down. I can just add a sliding tray later on if need be. Maybe one more this size and the rest with the 1×4 boards. Well the kids are down so I guess it’s time to head back out to the shop and start the next drawer.

Assembly/Finishing Table (with a long back story)

Over the past couple of months I haven’t been all that active in the world of woodworking and even less here on my blog. I spent so much time and effort to complete my bench towards the end of last year that when it was all said and done I think I just burnt myself out. My next goal was to get my shop organized. Project one was lumber storage and I knocked that out in a matter of a weekend though the lack of functionality of how everything was set up was still bothering me. That and I can’t ever seem to keep things clean out there. So instead of moving piles of crap from one work surface to the next, I decided that I was finally going to move my whole shop around. Here is what I was putting up with to start out with.

The front left side of the garage is pretty much dedicated to lawn maintenance and machinery. I had my lumber storage and saw bench here and would transition to my workbench after cutting my pieces to size.

Here is where things got really messed up. I get my woodworking funding from selling frames. The table in the back is supposed to be my finishing table but as you can tell, it was just full of crap. EVERYTHING was done on my bench. That really sucked because if I had more than one project going at a time then I was just moving things from one pile to the other. That little cabinet you see behind the roll of craft paper was supposed to house my framing supplies but turned into a crappy tool storage.

My woodworking area ended at the shelving where all my CIF gear is at on the floor next to the boxes. The mat cutter on the wall was supposed to be the next stop in the frame building with the cabinet being the last stop where I would get everything assembled and ready to ship. If you couldn’t tell, everything was supposed to flow from left to right and be productive to frame making. It lasted about a day and everything just turned to a mess.

Here is the last area of the garage. Not shop area, garage. Notice those bed pieces? They’ve been hanging out in the garage for quite a few months now. I had built three beds for my kids while in Pensacola but after we moved here my wife wanted to get the kids bunk beds so they’ve just been collecting dust because I knew I could find a use for the wood. And boy did I!

I’ve been wanting to do a few shop projects for a while but lacked the funding since I haven’t been all that productive. When I started moving things around in the garage I had thought about where to put the bed pieces when I dawned on me; break the beds down and use the wood for a piece of shop furniture! So simple I was mad I hadn’t thought of it sooner. Luckily they were built with a dowelmax and getting them apart wasn’t that difficult. These were one of the last things built while I still had all my power tools so everything was pretty square and straight. That was especially important because I wasn’t digging the stained pine so I ran my #7 over these boards until most of the stain was off. I didn’t measure or check square because it was just shop furniture and that’s just how I roll. The entire basis of this table is based off of available materials. The height, width and length are all determined by what I had on hand only. Here you can see that my design aspects slightly relate to my bench.

The beds may have been built with a dowelmax but the joinery here is all mortise and tenon.

I really didn’t take many other pictures of the building progress but here she is mostly done and already full of crap. The top is two sheets of MDF screwed together that I’ve been trying to use for what seems like forever. I also screwed a skirt around the top as a temp look. I’m gonna glue some planed boards to the top but as it was mostly done and I really needed to use it I just threw those on to cover the edges of the MDF. Although I didn’t go for the haunched dovetailed tenon, I did feel it needed a little jazzing up.

Nothing pretty but again, shop furniture. I’m not a furniture designer but I did go with the dovetailed tenon for a reason. With my bench, the base is nice and stable because the tenons on top of the legs sit in the mortises of the benchtop. With these legs, there was no tenon so I added two rails under the top that hook into the legs to give support to the top as well as help square things up. These aren’t exactly mortised but rather hook into the base. I didn’t get a picture of the rail hook but here is it’s mating piece. The main reason for both these types of joinery was to still use what I had on hand only, or lack there of. In this case clamps. If I had done basic mortise and tenon, I would have had to glued and clamped them down all at once. I don’t have enough clamps that long. So with the hooked rails to the top, I could establish the distance of the the length of the top and since the bottom stretchers are dovetailed, I could just hammer them in from the side without worrying that they would spread apart. Make sense? Well in the world of Dan it definitely does. It’s not complete because I am going to add a cabinet on the bottom where all my finishing supplies are hanging out right now. That’s gonna help me use up some plywood that I’ve been trying to get rid of as well. That will most likely be a trip to the hobby shop though so I can knock it out in an afternoon. I hope to have this all finished up by the end of the month so stay tuned for that. I’ll also have an update on the reorganization of the entire shop soon.

Cutoff Bin/Wood Storage

I’m sure you’ve never noticed but I didn’t exactly have the best system for cut offs and shorts.

Well in all reality I don’t have a good system for any of my wood but we’ll talk about that another day. With the bench built, I’m starting to get the garage in a more productive state. That was pretty hard with a good amount of my wood in a two trash cans. It was impossible for me to know my own inventory and of course once I dumped everything out, there were pieces in there that I completely forgot I had. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Since most of my projects are small, once I get milling, I never really have pieces longer than 48″. I looked for some ideas for cut off bins but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I was also limited on materials. I had 8 pieces of 3/4″ plywood that measured 24″ x 35″ as well as one full sheet. I brought these with me from Pensacola and I have no idea why those were cut at those dimensions but I needed to use them up because they were just taking up space. So I began laying them out on in various ways on the floor and after about 30 min of doing so, I thought I had an idea. I came inside and put it into SketchUp and came up with this design.

I wanted something for wide, rough cut boards I could lay down and also some vertical storage where my cut offs and misc pieces would go. The 24″ x 35″ pieces account for the guts and I used the full sheet for the sides. Each section is spaced 8″ apart and making it took about a total of 2-1/2 hours. Other than that spacing and the sides, I did not measure anything; nothing was even checked for square (and believe me, nothing is). The first thing I did was screw the back and bottom pieces so I had the basic shell and lay it on its side. Since the bottom two pieces are the same length, I measured up 8″ and made a mark. I placed the plywood on the mark and then got the vertical piece and placed it flush with the back.

I used that for my relative dimensioning, marked and cut my piece. That piece would then in turn be used for my next relative dimensioning. I marked 8″ from the back piece, put the board I just cut on that mark and then placed another along the bottom piece and marked it. That process was done until I had all my pieces.

What made everything a huge PITA is that nothing was screwed so my boards were constantly tipping over as I’m trying to get things marked and spaced. It would have been impossible to screw things as I went since my spacing was only 8″ and my drill was at least 10″. So once I had all my pieces, I marked 8″ on the opposite side of the board to get things a little even and started my screwing from smallest to largest pieces. With all my pieces as 35″ long, I knew the sides had to be 35″ x 35-3/4″ without actually measuring the overall size. Once it was time to get screwin, I realized I didn’t have enough wood screws… But then I remembered I kept a box of 100 pocket screws from a kreg jig I bought a while back. I only used it once and didn’t foresee myself using it again anytime soon so they volunteered to finish the job.

It may be ugly, but it gets the job done!!

This project was much needed. My cut offs finally have a home! Next is getting my full sized boards off the floor…

FINISHED! The Split Top Hybrid Roubo

As the year comes to an end, so does my biggest woodworking accomplishment to date. It’s been seven months in the making (well five if you don’t include the two months I was gone) but I can finally say that my bench is done! At this point in time, I’ve decided not to use a finish on the bench. I’ve read many discussions and articles on the topic and to my own conclusion I’m leaving her al naturale. As you can see, I did decided to add the chisel holder on the side where I mis-measured.

It almost seems like it was all intended. Making it was quite easy. There was the set up.

The layout.

And then cutting the dados.

Yes, the magnet is a bit of an overkill for just a ruler but since I had it on hand I figured I might as well use it. I attached it with two wood screws and basically fixed my mistake.

The center piece worked out better than I hoped.

The space between the two tops was 2-3/8″ so just shy of using three laminated pieces of 3/4″ stock. I used S4S pine from the big box store to knock this out. Only the center pieces were milled to get a snug fit. In order to get the flush fit on top I needed to notch out the space where frame was.

Again some simple dados.

Once these two projects were knocked out it was time to attach the top to the base. For this I took off the top and measured 6″ from the sides and centered on the base and drilled through with 3/8″ auger bit. I put back on the top, marked where the hole was on the bottom of the top, removed the top, drilled that hole in the top, and reattached the top. I would have liked to sink the lag screws into the frame but I didn’t plan ahead so there was not enough clearance to drill from the bottom. They are attached with 1/2″ x 3-1/2″ lag screws but I’m gonna extend those to 4-1/2″ at a later time.

With everything done, it was time to flatten it all. Overall it wasn’t too bad but my left side was sitting a little low. About 20 min worth of planing produced a flat top.

And here’s a shot with the center piece flipped.

It extends 3/8″ above the surface and works great. I actually used it to finish up the chisel holder.

IN SUMMARY:

This bench was built entirely with hand tools. Not a single power tool was used. Plans were modified by me from Fine Woodworking’s Hybrid Roubo Bench. Other than a couple of S4S pieces of pine, all the wood used is construction grade 2×6 from a big box store. Vise hardware for the wagon and leg vises are from Lie-Nielsen. I wish I would have documented actual build time but it took five months of weekend and after kids go to bed shop time. Thanks for looking.

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