Right before Christmas I posted this blog asking for input on plans for a tool cabinet. Well, I took all the advice I received and have been furiously building over the holidays.

Here is where I stand—I have completed the actual “cabinet” portion of the project. The project isn’t really close to complete however, if you look at my plans from my last blog, there is still a lot for me to do. But, I wanted to get the base cabinet done so I could start utilizing it and free up some workbench space in my ever so cramped garage. I am pleased with the results so far and have already loaded this sucker up. It is working as I envisioned, and I can now see the entire top of my bench for the first time in many months…

Below is a picture story of the trials and tribulations that this project has bestowed upon me. (Pictures will be cropped from this site, you can click on them to see the full picture.) I ran into one problem (err, learning experience) after another. Most I was able to overcome, some I just covered up as best I could. The end result though is a new, extremely useful addition to my workshop.

I didn’t start taking pictures until the initial cabinet glue-up. In this first picture you can see the basic cabinet box being assembled. I went with 3/4” cabinet grade oak ply for this part.

In this picture you can see how I re-enforced the inside corners with blocks. This helped during glue-up and will also hopefully help prevent some of the twisting forces this cabinet will be subject to.

Here I decided to attach the wheels early on so I could move the project around and out of the way as I built it. I reinforced the bottom with 2×4 studs to attach the wheels to.

Reinforcing the cabinet box and trying my damnest to ensure it is all square. I also added the apron to the bottom to cover most of wheels. At this point I also used oak veneer on all the exposed edges of the plywood.

Here is a picture of me making sure all my drawers fit. Obviously this is a huge gap in the pictures. This is because I was spending so much time cussing, banging my head against the wall, and kicking my power tools that I didn’t have time to devote to the picture taking. These drawers were hell on earth to get right, and I’m still not even close to right (as you will see in later pictures). I screwed and unscrewed, and then screwed again all of the drawer slides so many times trying to get everything to line up, unsuccessfully. The best I can tell, the cabinet box wasn’t quite square, or my drawers weren’t very square, or probably a combination of the two.

Here I have all the drawer fronts attached. Thank goodness for drawer fronts, as they can cover a multitude of mistakes. I had to shim 4 out of my 5 drawers on one side or the other to get the drawer fronts to sit flush on the cabinet box. 2 of my shims were 1/2” thick if that gives you any idea of how out of whack my drawers were. The drawer fronts were made from ceder and I used and ogee bit around the edges. I chose the ceder for the drawer fronts just to add some visual interest to the cabinet…

Finally, the finished cabinet. I used minwax polyshades (polyurethane mixed with pecan stain) for all the oak. I used amber tinted shellac for the ceder drawer fronts.

Here is a picture of the cabinet fully functional and in use.

And finally, a picture of my biggest “oops”. This is one of the shims I was talking about between the drawer and the front.

And that is where I am at for now. Again, if you look at my previous blog, you will see that I still have a whole lot of work to do before this project is finished. But, at lease the hardest part is done and I have something I can use right now!

A couple of lessons I learned so far:

1. I am not a cabinet maker, nor could I even play one on TV.
2. If things are even slightly out of square, it all adds up.
3. Not square drawers will never fit perfectly in a not square cabinet no matter how many times you move the slides.
4. Kicking your table saw does nothing except possibly spraining your big toe. The table saw doesn’t feel a thing…

While working on my Xmas projects I needed a nail punch. I spent 3 hours looking around my garage before I finally found it conveniently placed underneath one of my shop gloves. It was after this and many similar frustrations that I decided I needed a good tool cabinet.

I searched all the stores (sears, home depot, lowes) looking for a good sturdy tool cabinet with features I could use at a price I could afford. Well, nothing was perfect…they were all too expensive, cheaply built, or lacking usable features. This is when I came to the conclusion that I could probably build a better, more useful, and less expensive tool cabinet and learn a lot from the project at the same time.

Below are my plans for my tool cabinet as they stand right now. I scoured the web looking at different ones and finding features I liked in each one, I then took everything I liked and came up with these unique plans. Now mind you, I’m not the best with creating plans. I wing a lot of stuff. I can’t use google’s sketchup on my windows vista box, so I just use powerpoint. I converted my slides to pictures, and hopefully they won’t get chopped when I post them here…If they are chopped, you can click on the picture to open the full size picture.

This first picture is just kind of a general overview with varying dimensions.

This second picture is a closer look at the base of the cabinet with some details.

This third picture shows an exploded view of the upper “hutch” portion of the cabinet.

This fourth picture shows an exploded view of one of the drawers. The method I’m going to use for the drawers can be found on a tool cabinet plans found at American Woodworkers website. Here is a link to the PDF file.

This fifth picture is an exploded view of the cabinet base.

Some details I’ve left out of the plans: I plan on using 1/2” plywood for the majority of the project. I’m trying to save money, yet still build a strong cabinet that will last for a long time. I might try solid wood edging on the plywood, though I’ve never done that before. Certain parts of the project may get solid wood (like drawer fronts) for the sole purpose of looks. I don’t need this to look like it belongs in my living room, yet I don’t want it to look like my 11 y/o built it either…

I have never done a project like this before. I’ve never built drawers or even a cabinet of any type before. So what I’m hoping to get on this blog is some critical thinking. Please, study my plans, ask me questions, and let me know if there are better ways of doing things. I’m still in the planning stages here and probably won’t start this project for another 2 weeks, so it is a lot easier for me to make changes now. I thank you all in advance for guiding and teaching me this wonderful art.

And, as I suspected, LJs cropped the right side of all my pictures, so you’ll have to click each one to see all the details…

So, today between baking pies and pumpkin bread, I managed to cut all my pieces to length, rip them to width, and miter the ends. Not bad for a days work.

Heres some pics/teasers…

1st pic: Here is all my project woods cut to length and riped to width. From left to right I have red oak (friends knife case), padauk (Mother’s trinket box), and walnut (step-father’s trinket box).

2nd pic: This is dry assembled after I cut my miters.

So, not too bad a start. I’m feeling allot better about getting them done in time now. Heck, who knows, maybe tonight I’ll be able to sleep again!

So tonight, it’s the woodwork that’s keeping me up. Christmas is coming soon, and because of recent deployments, I’m getting a very late start on building Christmas gifts for the family. So, there are 3 in particular that I really want to get done and in the mail before the big day gets here.

Watch my blogs because I am going to attempt to work 3 separate projects concurrently. Starting tomorrow I will be building a small box for my mother, a small box for my step-father, and a knife display case for my best friend.

The good thing is that I can make the two boxes the same size (although I will be using different woods) that way I can make my cuts at the same time and save some time setting up stop blocks, jigs, and the like…

I will be using the same type of joinery for all 3 projects (mitered/splined corners) which should also shave off some time.

So, I guess my question of the day (or night) is: How many projects have you all worked at the same time? I’m not talking about you pros, just average joes like me. To this point I have built all my projects one at a time so I could ensure all of my concentration was put into it.

The sled was fairly simple to make with the hardest parts being the runners and the rear fence. The runners I cut slightly thiner than the tracks. I then pushed them toward the blade using folded sheets of paper and I raised them slightly using thin cardboard shims. I was then able to glue and screw them and got a tight fit with no side to side play.

The problem I had with my fence was that the poplar I used for the fence was slightly warped. Not a good thing when trying to square it with the kerf of the blade. So to overcome this problem, I put one screw up from the bottom of the sled into the fence right where the kerf line was. I then squared the right hand side of the fence and screwed it in. after that I was able to bend the wood on the left hand of the fence, square it, clamp it, and screw it. After I made sure the fence was completely squared to the kerf, I ran some more screws up and down the length. Finally, I removed the original center screw so it would not interfere with the blade. Surprisingly after all that, it turned out very square.

Now I have learned a tremendous amount from making this box, and if I were to do it again tomorrow, it would be a lot different. There are many obvious flaws that I see and that I think I could do a lot better. But I guess we all have to start somewhere. This has definitely been my hardest project to date, but on that same hand, it has also been the most rewarding for me to finish. Well, enough of my blabbering, on to the pictures:

This first pic is of the front and the top of the box:

This picture is of the top/lid/shadow box portion. Inside you see my brasard (the piece that says “FP” on it). I wore that on my shoulder/arm in Iraq. The FP stands for “Force Protection” and the Arabic writing says “Military Police” (probably not a literal translation, it could say bu**-head for all I know). Also in this picture is my Iraqi campaign medal and two squadron coins I received from from out commander and our chief.

The third picture is showing the dovetails on the side of the box. Now if you notice the grain difference from the front of the box and the side of the box, it is because I used red oak on the front and back, and I used poplar on the sides.

The fourth picture is a front view. You can see the brass clasp I chose and the little brass feet underneath.

This picture is just showing how I mortised the hinges on the rear of the box:

This picture is to show you the inside of the opened box with the friction slide, velvet on the bottom, and the mortised hinges again. As you can see, I did not stain the inside of the main part of the box. Since I made this box for myself, I left it unstained so I could reference the different woods both stained and unstained at a later date for future projects…

And this final picture is just kind of an overall shot showing the front, side, and top all in one pic:

And that does it for this project. Right now I have a knife display case to build for a friend, but when it is done, I plan on building many more boxes. They are very challenging and this one has taught me many woodworking skills I may not have acquired otherwise. I hope you all enjoyed!

I’m not sure if it’ll make me a better woodworker, but it sure can’t hurt! :-)

Every Ridgid product I’ve purchase has been outstanding so far, and with the Lifetime Limited, I just don’t think you can beat ‘em. But that is just my opinion and I’m sure everyone on this board has their own preference on tools.

Anyhow, I’m giddy as 5 y/o on Christmas. Well, time to go cut some wood!

My original plan was to connect the lid to the box, close it, and sand all the edges flush so that everything fit perfectly. After sanding I was going to take everything apart again and then stain and finish all my parts separately. Then after all the finishing was completed I was going to reattach the hinges with the added strength of some gorilla glue to ensure the small brass screws don’t back out over time.

Well, the first problem I had was lining up the lid to the box and attaching the hinges. I attached the hinges to the lid first, then laid the lid on top of the box. Now can anyone tell me how to screw the hinges to the box with the lid shut to ensure they are lined up properly? Well, I sure couldn’t figure it out, so I tried to eyeball it (and I’m sure you all can guess how that turned out). Suffice to say, after attaching the hinges to the box, the lid was crooked. Crooked enough to be very noticeable, but not so much where I could just unscrew it, drill new holes, and screw it back in. If I were to attempt that, the new holes would be too close to the old holes, making very big holes.

So, now what? Well, I pondered this problem for several hours in disgust, then it hit me: I put some glue on some tooth picks and stuffed them in the screw holes and then broke them off. This gave me some more wood to drill against when I reattached the hinges. It worked great too, and on my second attempt, I nailed it and got the lid lined up very nicely to the box.

So then came the next step, sanding around the edges where the lid and the box met to ensure they were perfectly flush. No problems here as the lid and the box were finally mating correctly.

Next I was supposed to remove the hinges again so I could stain and finish the lid and the box separately. Well here is where my second problem occurred. As I mentioned before the hinges are very small (1”X1/2”) and made of soft brass… So when I go to unscrew them I realized that I bunged up the head on some a couple of the small screws. Now I can’t remove separate the lid from the box for finishing, and worse yet, I can’t reinforce the hinges with gorilla glue during reassembly. Oh well, I can still finish with the lid and box connected, so I guess I’ll just hope the hinges hold strong over time…

I would post some pictures, but I didn’t remember to take any. So I guess you all will just have to imagine this blog in your head! I started staining tonight, and so far so good. I will take some pictures and update you all on the progress in the next day or two or three! ;-)

So anyhow, I had to wear a brasard (the thing on my left shoulder in my picture) that identified me as force protection. The brasard has Arabic writing on it that says “Military Police” and since we were the only ones who wore them, everyone could readily identify us. It is a very unique item since so many military deploy and only a very small percentage of us wear the brasard.

Now to the part where this project comes in to play… When I returned from my tour I was allowed to keep my brasard. Also, while I was over there I earned a couple of medals and was also awarded a couple of coins (another military tradition). So I came up with this idea that I wanted to display these items as this was a particularly special deployment for me. I also wanted a place to store all of the mementos I picked up while I was over there (stuff like Iraqi money, Iraqi cigarettes, and the like). The idea I came up with was to build a trinket box to store my mementos in and a display case for my brasard, medals, and coins. Well, I actually decided it might be kind of neat to combine the two, so I decided to make the lid of my trinket box into a shadow box.

About 1 month ago I stared working on this project. Having never built a box before, I started combing the web looking for ideas. Well, I haven’t found anything really similar to what I’m creating…But, I have found that there are a lot of jewelry boxes that share many of the design features I wanted to incorporate into my box. So I started googling “jewelry box” and some of the results I got back led me to this site. Kind of funny how things work out huh? So, after poking around this site for awhile, I decided to join and the rest is as they say, history…

Now on to my box (finally…). I started this box about a month ago, which means that I’ve gotten pretty far on it prior to me finding this site. Essentially though this means that my first box has come a long way without the wonderful advice I could have received from you all. Just for this box I purchased a Porter Cable dovetail jig (as not only is this my first box, but also my first time making dovetail joints). I chose to make the box out of poplar and red oak. I chose these for 2 reasons, first because I wanted my dovetails to really stand out, and second because lowes doesn’t have the greatest selection for wood… Here are some pictures of what I have so far:

This first picture shows the basic box I have made using the dovetail jig. I think it turned out okay. Don’t mind my horrific glue lines inside the box as they will be covered with another 1/4” board wrapped in black velvet.

This second picture shows the long side of the box. I used the oak for the long sides and the poplar for the short sides. And yes, I didn’t do through dovetails, just half blinds…

The third picture shows the lid or the shadow box portion of my project. As you can see, I built a sub-frame which will accommodate the glass on one side and on the side that is showing will sit another board covered in velvet (where my brasard and medals will sit). So, again, don’t get hung up on the horrible glue as it will not be seen when this is assembled.

This 4th picture shows the mitered frame which will sit on top of the lid and lexan/glass. I used a cove bit on both the inside and outside edges to give it a little character.

The 5th picture is of the box with the lid and frame sitting on top as they will be when it is finally assembled.

The sixth picture is a top down view with the lexan in place so you all can see how the frame is going to sit.

The 7th picture is showing how some of my dovetails are pulling apart. I think I used a little to thick of a shim when I was gluing the sub-frame inside the lid. I guess now that it is all glued up, I will be forced to use some wood filler to take up those gaps…

This 7th picture is showing me in the process of using polyurethane on the inside of the box. I had no intention of staining the inside of the box. On the left you can see the oak plywood that will cover the velvet wrapped cork board in the lid portion of my box. When you lift the lid/shadow box to get to the trinket part of the box, the oak ply is what you will see (the bottom part of the lid).

And finally, in this picture I am holding two sample of stained oak and stained poplar. The stain is Minwax “Sedona Red” which matches up to my bedroom furniture very well. I am still trying to decide if I really want to stain the outside of the box or not. Maybe you all can help me with this decision. The things running through my mind are: 1. It will be in the bedroom, it might be nice if it matched the other furniture. 2. If I stain, will there still be separation between the red oak and the poplar? (In other words, will the poplar stain lighter than the oak?) 3. I actually like the growth lines in the poplar, but as you can see with my stained sample, you really can’t see them anymore… So what do you all think?? Also, this is only one coat of stain and if I do stain I will probably go with at least two coats to give it a deep, rich coloring.

So, that is what I’ve been working on for about the past month. I am very open to any suggestions, (kind of the reason I joined this site). Please let me know what you think so far and also where you think I should go from here. Oh, and I hope I didn’t bore you all to death with this super long blog… Thanks for looking!