My favorite part of a project isn’t the joinery – it’s the assembly. Today I got to attach the lid to the base of my traveling tool chest using hinges made by blacksmith Peter Ross.
These are, in a word, bada%&.
Unlike simple butt hinges, these hybrid butt-straps (as I like to call them) are designed to resist the typical stresses on a chest lid. The weakness of using a butt hinge in a tool chest is that the screws in the carcase tend to wrench out – especially when the lid has an integral stop system to keep the lid standing open.
These hinges from Peter resist those forces. And they look awesome. Peter is now working on the crab lock for this chest. So stay tuned on that front.
I also attached the cast iron lifts to the ends of the chest today. These vintage lifts were given to me by a reader, who acquired them in a box of stuff. The funny thing about adding all this metal hardware is that it seems like it should make the chest more difficult to lug around. But the opposite is true. The lifts and hinges make the chest a svelte thing to move around by myself – just like my vintage traveling chest.
My plan is to sneak down and install the steel banding this week, though I probably will be thwarted by you, the loyal reader. We have almost 1,000 orders to fill for “Mouldings in Practice” starting tomorrow morning. So my woodworking will be taking a backseat to my taping and cardboard-folding skills.
Lots of people have inquired about how I’m going to install the steel banding. Here’s the straight dope: I’m going to butt joint it and screw it to the chest.
Why not weld the corners? I haven’t seen any extant chests with welded corners.
Why not dovetail the steel corners? I’ve done steel dovetails when building infill planes. I know it’s easy. But I haven’t seen any extant chests with dovetailed steel corners.
Why not join the steel corners with my heat vision? Sadly, I have no superpowers.
Oh, speaking of the fact that I lack superpowers: I screwed up this tool chest during the glue-up. I’m telling you this because my students take a crazy amount of gleeful delight whenever I make a mistake. When I glued up the carcase it ended up out of square by 1/16” over the 18” depth. That’s not enough error to see with the naked eye, but it is enough to mess with the construction of my two sliding tills.
So I’m going to make my tills as parallelograms in plan view. Fun on a bun.
— Christopher Schwarz
Chris –
Looks nice! Are you going to match the color of the banding to the hinges and the lifts? Also, I think you missed one of your screw heads when you clocked them.
(That should keep him busy for a little while. 🙂
Jonathan
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Two questions. How are you going to finish this chest? Is that a full size Lie-Nielsen miter box saw?
Andrew,
It’s going to be painted dark blue or green. The LN miter box saw goes with my Millers Falls miter box. The original saw was WAY too soft. I was sharpening it every couple weeks.
Do, like the table you made from Furniture in the Southern Style.
green*
So which tools get to ride/live in the new chest? (Or is this really just a way to sneek a couple of extra cats out of the house? )
Patrick,
This chest will hold the same set of tools I use at home. I’ll have to leave some moulding planes at home, but otherwise it will hold a complete set of tools.
Butt strap hinges? is that sort of like a thong for your tool chest:)
Chris,
Would you be willing to share what you paid for those hinges?
Jason,
I don’t remember. About $150 I think. Peter could tell you.
Dude, super badass!
Your lucky to work with the best and use all their cool tools
Regards,
Michael Morin mmorin.il.1950@gmail.com
You clocked your screws? Good man! My kind of persnickety curmudgeon. A few years back, I saw a mahogany speedboat here in the Pacific Northwest that a guy had built. All the hull planking was fastened with exposed FH slot-drive bronze screws. Must have been 10,000 of them and every one was perfectly clocked and perfectly set. Sweet!
I hope I can describe this adequately. I notice that the lower portion of the hinge, that‘s on the interior wall of the tool chest, is standing proud at an angle to the wall surface. Is this the way the hinge was designed? Just wondering. It actually looks cool that way, but I wasn’t sure if it would interfere with anything such as a till drawer.
I think what you’re seeing there is Peter’s elegant tapering iron work.
The leaf tapers in thickness. It is thick at the top where the hinge bends and then thins out as it flares out. It won’t interfere with the tills — unless I need an extra 1/16″ I didn’t anticipate.
Great chest! That’s on my list this year…alas, it’s a long list.
Where can one get the till pulls shown in the last photo? Is that one of Mr. Ross’ creations, too?
Nope. Those are VERY inexpensive ring pulls from Lee Valley. Made in Italy. I just cleaned off the rust.
Forgot the link.
http://www.leevalley.com/US/hardware/page.aspx?p=40248&cat=3,43520,43521,43559
These are the 28mm pulls.
I found them on LV site. Thanks! Would you mind shooting video of the installation of the ring pulls? And put some good guitar and fiddle music in it, too.
I like the hardware. Please forgive me for saying my opinion, but I know you appreciate honest feedback. For what it’s worth, I can’t shake the feeling that this project looks like a casket for a contortionist. Perhaps the paint job will soften my appraisal….
I think most of the low chests have a casket-like look to them. The handles at the ends don’t help.
I can’t take the blame (or praise) for the dimensions or proportions. Those are pretty much set by the tools and whole-number ratios. (The end is a square. The elevation is two squares wide.) And the details are all typical for tool chests.
Hi Chris,
I have looked, though perhaps not thoroughly enough. The idea of a Traveling Tool Chest implies carrying it up the stairs, out the doo, rand lifting it onto the wagon, or other such conveyance. For the (as yet) uninitiated, how much does your travelling tool chest weigh (full and empty). Do you think using white pine instead of poplar woul dhave much impact on the overall weight?
Thanks,
Ian
Ian,
The vintage traveling chest weighs about 175 pounds when fully loaded with tools for a class. Two people manage it with no problems.
If I had my choice, I would always use white pine for a chest. It is definitely lighter in weight compared to poplar. And both species are plenty strong for a tool chest.
Thanks I was wondering the same thing. Glad to hear it’s a two person job, I was thinking that I was to big of a wimp to move even a partially loaded chest by myself.
Just used those ring pulls on my tool chest. Really like the traditional look of the clinched ring pulls. Went on somewhat easy, unlike a nail , you really can’t pinch the nails with one shot with a metal plate. You don’t want to drive the rings into the drawer face. I just went back and forth a few times, and on a couple I used a nail set to tap down the clinched side of the nails.
But they work great and will never come loose or fall off.