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On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

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#1 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
 

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#2 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Nice blog Smitty. I have never considered having a tool chest because I think of one as being made for portability and it was most certainly much used by journeymen carpenters in the old days. I could see a big advantage in having one if I still had my mountain cabin. I really enjoyed making stuff with hand tools up there even though I couldn't call myself a woodworker in those days.,Hand tools were a necessity there with no available electric. It seemed we always had some small repairs to do, benches to make or storage related projects. That said, I certainly see the charm in having a tool chest for excess, antique and or duplicate tools providing there is enough floor space available, which I don't have, but many others do. My hand tool collection is pretty small and uninteresting, but If I had yours I wouldn't be able to part with them, so your chest makes sense to me.
 

Attachments

#3 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Excellent blog, makes a lot of sense. I have looked athe tool boxed (especially the dutch box) and thought about making it but haven't been able to justify it yet primarily for the reasons you give. I don't take my tools on the road, although my daughter live about 400 miles away and always has projects when I get there. I think I have just posibly justified building a tool box. I walway sem to be short tools when I am there. Damn I may have to think on this.
 

Attachments

#4 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
An excellent read, Smitty! Thanks for sharing your perspective…very valuable information to a new hand tool user!

My tool chest is only 1/2 built, but I've already noticed that only my 'user' tools will fit, and not 100% of them. In order to take advantage of the dust seal on my chest, and the silica to keep humidity low on the inside, I will have to load the chest with tools every night, and un-load them in tha morning to resume work. Losing efficiency IMO.

However, after just visiting my Mom for the weekend, I certainly need a portable tool box. Smaller than the traditional chest I've started…you are correct about a newby NOT realizing how much floor space I was about to lose by building a 23×23x40" chest. Luckily it's on wheels! Currently being used as a side table next to the bench to hold tools on the top surface. Silly, huh!

But, my shop is in a constant state of change now, especially with a planned move cross-country, so I'm learning what works for me as I work. :) I'm pretty sure wall hung cabinets will be my solution to tool storage in the next shop. Plus the tool chest. Plus drawers underneath every work surface as close to the bench as possible.

Or maybe I should collect fewer hand tools?

Nah! LOL.
 

Attachments

#5 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Interesting topic here Smitty. Like most shop fixtures everything has a place … or it doesn't. I like the idea of a traditional tool chest but the functionality of it kind of hinders my thoughts on building one. Recently ive acquired a couple smaller tool boxs and a machinists style tool chest. Ive loaded all my saw sharpening files and accessories into the small tool box and loaded screw drivers, files, and other smaller measuring and marking devices in the chest. Im finding that smaller boxes are pretty handy for specialty stuff that I don't reach for often. Theyre not big enough to lose tools inside and don't require much digging to get to what I need.

The tool storage conundrum will go on forever. Its all about how you work, where you work, and what you need from time to time.
 

Attachments

#6 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
This is a great piece Smitty. I have just started to reason with myself that having 4-5 #4 Stanley Planes and 2-3 of the other #3, Jack Planes etc. is clogging my workspace up and not at all efficient to doing a project without useless clutter. I am aiming to reduce the amount of Handsaws, braces, etc. as well. I have decided to just keep up to task my favs of the bunch and keep them as my real users and store the rest.

I certainly can understand this situation of a lot of tools stored in a chest and not really using them as much. There are some interesting ideas in your writing and some really nice tools.

I would also add that every woodworker is different in how they work. So be at piece with your style and how you feel comfortable working. I say if it works for you and you feel good having your tools at your bench, than this may be the best fit for you.

Your projects are always looking great so your surely doing something right!

Be well and thanks for a really good article.

Joe
 

Attachments

#7 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
It's always nice to read your insightful and informative blogs Smitty. The thoughtful and philosophical way in which you approach your craft is inspiring to say the least.

Thank you.
 

Attachments

#8 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Smitty…... You have articulated very well that this is a very complex matter. Tony Konavaloff works out of a chest and has for years. He loves it. Schwarz literally travels all over the world, so a minimalist kit and a chest makes perfect sense for him. I woke up, before I built mine to realize that I am 69 years old. Have worked from racks and shelves for 35 years. Really no reason to change now. I also think what you build has a real bearing on what tools you need/use and how you should best store them. Everybody needs to work this out for themselves.
 

Attachments

#9 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
You have a wonderful collection of tools. The tool boxes have a character all their own. Nice work.

helluvawreck aka Charles
http://woodworkingexpo.wordpress.com
 

Attachments

#10 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Necessity and ease of use are the driving factors for me. I went on a mission trip to Mexico to help remodel a house for an orphanage many years ago and I built a toolbox to take with me. I wanted to be able to lock and secure the tools I did take and the top also had to function as a sawhorse and work bench. Since space was limited, I took only what was necessary. But those functions were no longer convenient or necessary months later and it was dismantled. I now travel frequently to carving seminars and other places to carve and of course need a variety of tools, depending on where I go. I built a rack to hold gouges and knives on my bench and sized it to fit in my tool bag, so it is easy to transport and all my favorite tools are in familiar places and order. My larger gouges are in a tool roll that fits easily in the same bag, and I still have room for gloves, tape, strops, and a clipboard. I carry my power sharpener, fold-up carving bench, and other tools separately. I like to use a lot of the plastic storage boxes that can be easily stacked and can be used for tools, to protect carvings, and for spare wood. Now days, a concern is with size: the boxes have to be of a size and weight that I can carry, sometimes up a flight of stairs, by myself! I love a beautiful toolbox, with all the custom fitted holders and compartments. But maybe it's just a display case, if you don't actually use the tools or it's not suitable for how you work? My last tool rack functions better and holds more tools than my previous versions. But it will be modified, rebuilt, or replaced as tools are added or replaced. In carving, you really don't have to have a lot of tools to produce your work; several instructors I've had, bring all their tools in a cigar box.
 

Attachments

#11 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Thanks for the write up, Smitty. There is something to be said about forcing yourself to pause your regular patterns and workflow to attempt to learn something from those of yesteryear.
 

Attachments

#12 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Kudos to the commentary, lots of personal insight being offered. And thanks for the kind words on the blog itself.
 

Attachments

#13 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Smitty, I thoroughly enjoyed your Blog "Tool Chest Refurb", installments #1 - #19, the Save, Restore and Consequential Refitting of the interior and the finale, which rendered a Chest, liken to a museum quality display of the traveling master carpenter's essentials.
I also looked forward to each posting of your "Wall Hung Tool Cabinet" Blog, #'s 1 - 21, which in itself was as much of a marvel. The evolution of an old Hoosier cabinet topper, to that of a Fine, yet user friendly, Woodcraft Shop storage solution was North of brilliant, IMHO.

Kudos to both projects and your Blogs will forever live as tutorials in preservation, to our good fortune.
Each storage solution having merits of their own, I personally prefer the convenience and accessibility of a cabinet in my own shop and totally understand the quandary of the topic of this Blog.

The Chest is a 'Traveler' by intent and makes available those essentials when offsite of the Shop.
All things being what they are, and they are, daily routines in the shop, working out of a portable chest would be a monumental PITA, of course this is again, just MHO. ;-)

...you say potato, I say potahto…

Best Regards. - Len
Work Safely and have Fun.
 

Attachments

#14 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
And remember, Len, when you say potahto, I stain wood with it.

:)

Brevity being the soul of wit and all, I'd agree that reaching for things any deeper than the first two tills is indeed a pain in the arse… And a most humble thank you for your comments.
 

Attachments

#15 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
^ just not used to bending over :)

Roughly 90% of my tools are in my chest. I've not had any regrets working out of it. It helps to pause and plan what I'm going to do. I'm just finishing a traveling chest, my intentionis to fill it with wooden planes and the like to hold doe the weight. At least that's the plan.

Smitty thanks for the insightful ruminations. I've followed your postings since arriving at LJ's and they have guided me I my endeavors. Thanks
 

Attachments

#16 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
^ just not used to bending over :)

- theoldfart
And I blame myself to a certain extent, as I need to get in shape and optimize the layout inside the chest. That said, when all is said and done, getting inside the bottom of the chest (on wheels) by sliding tills while taking a knee is not as convenient as a cabinet that's chest high.

I marvel at the way you've totally integrated work and tool chest, it's amazing. You've got much in common with Mike P. above - modify and adapt as required.
 

Attachments

#17 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
I think maybe I'm a bit taller than you since I don't need to take a knee to get to the bottom of the chest. i use a three point stance, two legs and one hand on the chest edge. As far as the "modify and adapt as required.", I'm new to the trade so I didn't have to overcome prior habits. Good thing to since I don't change readily.
 

Attachments

#18 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
if only I was so organized!!
 

Attachments

#19 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?



Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:



It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.





Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.





That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.



There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.



Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.



I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.



The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Thanks, Smitty, for the insightful post.
As our shops always morph to accommodate our latest tool acquisitions, it does make it hard to finally settle on just how much capacity we need. A perfectly laid out tool chest design is subject to endless revisions, especially when we find great tools that must be stored front-and-center.

When I think of the dozens of configurations I've used over the years, everything from tackle boxes, akro-bins on shelving, pegboards and exclusive wall-hung contraptions, file cabinets, roll-aways, etc, one thing has become clear to me: I need to be ONE worker, doing one dedicated woodworking discipline.

Trying to be everyone's woodworker has been my tactical error forever. I need not have dozens of scraping tools in case somebody wants something refinished. Carving tools in case somebody wants a fancy walking stick. Lathe tools in case there's a need for a newell post in the house. I'm spread so thin, that I have NO direction anymore, and this ridiculous over-abundance of tools (and the need to store them well) has minimized my enjoyment of the craft.

I too, wish to build a nice anarchist style toolbox, and wrap my woodworking lifestyle around it, rather than be driven to try and get my money's worth out of every redundant tool to justify owning them.

I think I understand what you are saying, Smitty. It's a long journey to finding your woodworking soul.
 

Attachments

#20 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
^ I've seen pics of your displays, looked pretty darned organized to me!
 

Attachments

#21 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Seems to me like working out a chest only makes sense if all your tools can fit in there. If not, that's not the solution you need.
 

Attachments

#22 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Well this is a hornets nest getting stirred but I'll chime in with my opinion. My tool chest works for me because I've cut back on my tools and I keep the prized users in it. No need for four sets of chisels, just put the #1 set in the chest and use them. I've got a minor saw hoard so I put my 4 joinery saws in and put the others in a saw till on the wall. Examples go on and on.

I think the point is to look and think about how you want to work and what type of tools you want to use. If you like having 6 smoothers (who doesn't?!) then filling a chest with them will not be very efficient. You need to store those tools somehow, can't be using all of them at the same time. If shelves work, or a cabinet, or a tool chest … Who cares, to each his own. But make a real decision about want you want to do, not just pile the tools up and dig around for the one you want.

Great post, thought provocting .
 

Attachments

#23 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
I ve got a minor saw hoard so I put my 4 joinery saws in and put the others in a saw till on the wall.

- kenn
Lots of good points, kenn, and that statement made me chuckle. No sure how to quantify a minor hoard, but it gets the point across. For me, if I put the #1 chisels in the chest, the #2 and #3 sets would be at the bench. I'm at the bench most, so why put lessers there? And so it goes. For me, I don't want the chest to have such a lesser anything that it's meaningless to pull anything out with which to work. A critical step that I seem to be at currently.
 

Attachments

#24 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Really enjoyed your blog smitty.
You have a serious amount of tools,
so it looks like you would need a gigantic chest,
or something with the properties of a black hole.
I tend to side with mpounders view,
if you travel a good secure tool-chest is invaluable.
Cabinetmakers and Carpenters were traditionally expected to build their own toolbox/chest
as part of their apprenticeship.
I have seen some beauties with detailed inlay work,
and tiny dovetailed drawers.
So in keeping with that tradition, I suppose building a chest becomes an exercise in
fine-tuning your cabinetmaking skills and the storage aspect is secondary.
Thanks for posting.
Cheers, Jinky (James).
 

Attachments

#25 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Very interesting blog Smitty.

One thing that I noticed was that you mentioned something to the effect of "buy tools without a place to store them, figure that part out later." Check! That happens here.

PoopieKat also mentioned "too many tools for too many different tasks, spread too thin, not enjoying the journey" that (for me) equates to "jack of all trades, master of none." Check! That happens here too.

I am in the same boat, I have both problems. My shop is a mess. Work areas get cluttered with the latest opportunity. It drives me crazy, but I haven't been able to change the way I work (even though everything I build seems to come out OK). That is why I am going to rough cut a bunch of unmilled lumber for my PowerShop Bench, even though I don't have a place to store it. Mill it later, just make sure it is ready. In fact, the uncut unmilled lumber is currently serving nicely as a charging station for the cordless tools and provides a nice surface to store all the scraps that I use for clamping. Maybe I will build a chest to hold it all, it seems pretty likely I would finish that first…
 

Attachments

#26 ·
On Transitioning to a Traditional Tool Chest

Not going to pretend any of this is ground-breaking, just jotting a few notes to LJs that others may find interesting or useful as part of their own, unique journey. Building a tool chest is one of a number of 'trend' activities that have captured the attention of a significant number of people. Just like building a Roubo, constructing an auto-adjust leg vise and using a portable twin screw vise (or "Moxon") specifically for joinery or a 'bench on bench.' There's a particular interest in the Dutch form of travel-ready chests too, in addition to the traditional English variety. That C. Schwarz has blogged or written about each of these topics is not the point of these comments at all. It's that I have a tool chest (product of a rebuild blogged about here) and have struggled somewhat to make it anything more than glorified tool storage. Is that necessarily a problem? For me, it's more of an admission than a problem, but one that I'd like to correct over time. And that's what this (long) blog explores.

So You Have a Tool Chest, Now What?

Table Wood Flooring Floor Wood stain


Familiarity with hand tool woodworking is a must to me. The precision that comes from a truly sharp plane, chisel or saw enables trim-to-fit precision with one-off pieces that's unequaled. There's a close connection between worker and work piece, I think, when hearing protection isn't required. Just the 'schhhhck' of the plane… Nice. And when you have hand tools piling up on and under the bench, the merits of storing them in a tool chest vs. pegboard or wall cabinet became apparent. A toolchest could very well be the answer to storage problems in a small or large shop, but I've reached an impasse with mine: Love the idea of a tool chest, it's a welcome addition to the shop, but it's simply not the place I reach for first when I'm at the bench and have a task to do. Without re-inventing the wheel, why?

Tools come first, then the challenge of where to put them settles in. I have a window rack for hand saws, an open plane till, a saw till, under-bench storage and two wall cabinets. Part of the reason for not depending on a tool chest should be apparent: I have other places to put tools that already support the way I work. Take, for instance, the tool rack that's nailed to the back edge of my bench:

Wood Carpenter Tool Flooring Floor


It's a pine hack-job of a project, but holds a bench pup, several sizes of dividers, every screwdriver I normally reach for, two sizes of combination square and my everyday mallet. To insert the tool chest as the de rigueur starting point for every task, the tools in this rack would be in the top drawer of said chest. Have I moved those tools and emptied the rack? Nope. Going to? Double nope. And that's the opening bar of a recurring theme: Unless my 'favorites' go into the box, what's in there won't come out. But tool chests aren't an all-or-nothing proposition, at least for me. It's a battle for relevance, then, and not supremacy. As long as a tool is accessible, I win.

The second (and probably largest) contributor to tool chest disuse is my Roubo cabinet. It has drawers dedicated to purpose, like a chest would; marking / measuring, hammering / cutting, drilling/chiseling and filing / shaping. Here are the top two, then a decent view of all five drawers as well as the bench and block planes that sit between the cabinet and bench top, always at the ready.

Wood Electrical wiring Gas Audio equipment Font


Shelf Shelving Wood Drawer Hardwood


Logistically, I couldn't fit all of the tools from this cabinet into the tool chest even if I wanted to; there are more than what could fit AND the dimensions of the sliding tills within the chest aren't right. The largest till has an inside height of 3"; I had to carve the bottom out for the knob of my favorite brace (an Oak Leaf model from my dad's shop). Not sure where to go with all this, but that's been the problem exactly. I have four sets of chisels; they're not all going into the chest. The two most-used sets are in the Roubo cabinet. One set is in the chest, but in a tool roll inside the bottom compartment, so I had 'cats and dogs' in the top drawer and none of those got used either. So yesterday I pulled the roll to the top till and the stray chisels were removed altogether. A positive development for sure.

Food Wood Ingredient Flooring Floor


Wood Publication Office supplies Shelving Paint brush


That move allowed me to reorganize everything in the top till according to useability. I don't foresee a pressing need to keep a curved spoke shave handy at this point (it isn't sharpened and I don't know how to use it yet) so it came out. To others it makes sense to fill a tool chest as you see fit and live with it a while. At some point the day may come (like it did for me) that contents get dumped onto the benchtop and culled for keepers vs. 'other.' At that point there's progress towards making the chest a real contributor.

Unless You Are a Minimalist…

… you'll have more than one copy of most of hand tools. Some will become favorites, too. I can't imagine the Dutch chest is anything more than a smaller set of otherwise-favorites tools that travels easier than a traditional chest. That's not a bash, but a realization to share. Building a tool chest won't redress the natural tendency to accumulate quality tools. To the contrary, it will highlight the fact that a builder may have too many tools. Stuff them in if you'd like, but that ease of access will suffer. Two suitable wall cabinets help me keep a handle on unique, but seldom-used tools that aren't in the Roubo cabinet or the tool chest. And it's an on-going challenge to limit myself to what fits. I doubt it gets any easier over time, but I remain committed to outfitting the chest with user tools that I want to reach for.

Cabinet vs. chest boils down to choice, of course, but even that reality is sometimes transitive. Take my handsaws (please!), for instance. I chose to build a sliding saw till inside the tool chest. It's cool, and took a decent amount of time to assemble and fit.

Wood Wood stain Hardwood Varnish Art


There are two full-sized saws inside, a rip and a cross-cut, so all is well, right? Well, not exactly. I actually prefer 20" panel saws over these full-sized examples, so the chest is not required for the typical sawing task. Ah, another blow to utility… It's not a big deal, but I've decided not to change the till to fit smaller saws. I have decided, though, to sharpen the saws in the chest to enhance their user appeal… And there there are the backsaws in the main compartment.

Wood Wood stain Plank Hardwood Rectangle


Having saws buried in this way is already a user-loser when compared to the window rack and saw till, but bear with me. These backsaws are Cincinnati Saw Co. (re: Geo. Bishop) models and represent my first forays into vintage tool buying.

Brown Table Wood Wood stain Floor


I put them in the chest as a reward of sorts, but now I don't reach for them. Why? Because they're hard to get to AND because (until yesterday) there was a chisel roll on top of them. Ah, now we're getting somewhere!

So What's the Payoff, Anyway?

Here's the irony of the entire situation: celebrating the use of a tool chest as if it were inherently virtuous to do so. Some will no doubt build a chest without realizing they're big, really big actually, and take up floor space that otherwise might have more productive uses. And those builders may, at some point, get rid of the chests in some fashion. I'm guessing that's what happened to 90%+ of the chests that were otherwise common at the turn of the last century. Without purpose, nothing survives in our workshops very long.

I'm not one to celebrate ornamentation over purpose. I want the chest to represent capability, in a sense. I'd like to be able to point to my tool chest and state with confidence that I could build a table or bench or whatever using only the tools inside. That's efficiency and proficiency, and I can't get there if the chest doesn't become something that is opened and orchestrated on a regular basis. A long-term objective, one I don't think I'll be giving up on. Do I ever envision taking the chest somewhere and working out of it? Yes, all the time. Will I? Doubt it. But the idea that I someday could holds value for me.

Musical instrument Keyboard Musical keyboard Wood Drawer


The saga continues, then! As always, thanks for reading.
Smitty, I've got the pegboard walls, commercial one hole fits all metal racks, plastic french cleat box hanging thingamabobs, numerous home made wooden devices including an L shaped ladder that wraps round the drain from the washing machine above to hold clamps..AND my gramps tool chest that I put wheels on (it's become storage for plane bits and pieces) oh and a couple of mechanics top chests on shelves, IT'S NOT ENOUGH ! I agree it's a very personal thing, just like general shop layout, but it all comes back to your point about the users being right there at hand. If your favourites are in a chest then how often will you use them. There are "things " in my mechanics chests that are oft forgotten..oh, sheep dip, didn't need to buy that AGAIN…
Thoughtfull again mine friend !
(and I like Freakazoid's "I can complicate anything" me too !
 

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