The hardest part of building a traditional tool chest is to fit the 6”-wide lower skirt all the way around the dovetailed carcase. No matter how careful you are, it’s easy to end up with a gap between the skirt and case.
I have concocted at least five different ways to fight this gap.
1. Fill it with water putty.
2. Plow a groove around the dovetailed carcase where the top of the skirt goes. Glue a thin strip of wood to the inside of the skirt pieces at the top of the moulding that fits in the groove.
3. After assembling the carcase, run the whole thing through a wide-belt sander to true up the carcase.
4. Make the beveled section of the moulding a separate piece that you miter and nail on top of the dovetailed part of the skirt.
5. Add a 3/16” bead moulding that is stuck onto a 1/4” x 1/4” strip of wood – miter it at the corners.
This fifth solution is my favorite. Today I added this bead detail to a full-size tool chest I’m building for a customer. I had a small gap – a little less than 1/16” at one corner – between the lower skirt and the carcase. While the skirt looked tight in the dry-fit, something went wrong.
To fix it, stick the 3/16” bead onto the four long edges of a 1-1/2” x 1-1/2” x 48”-long piece of pine. Then rip the four corners off to make four pieces of 1/4” x 1/4” x 48” moulding. Miter, glue and nail it to the lower skirt.
The whole process took about 30 minutes. It adds a shadow line to the lower skirt and spares the water putty.
— Christopher Schwarz
6. Buy more tools?
Thats looking good.
It looks like some nice wide boards as well.
Well sh*t. I thought I was done with the exterior of mine…but now I’m not.
You can add it tomorrow. Bring your paint!
Shouldn’t “shoot” have 2 asterisks?
So Chris, how much does a Schwarz-original Anarchist tool chest cost, anyway?
It depends on the options (hardware, wood, joinery, delivery). If you are interested in one, feel free to send me an e-mail at chris@lostartpress.com
If you can’t join it, bead it.
Brilliant.
I think that may be more than half-witty Jason.
Brilliant for the next LAP t-shirt!
Number three is bogus. My widebelt opens to 6″ max! Hey, aren’t you supposed to be the hotshot with the handplane, anyway? LOL! The bead is an elegant solution. Quick, adds detail, looks fancy and hides all sins. Maybe even generates an upcharge! It ain’t the mistakes you make but the solutions you solve them with that separates the good from the mediocre. Ask me about my board stretcher sometime…
oh, yeah, and it justifies that quirk-bead plane You spent good money on, too!
I read the subject of this post and immediatly thought, I’d have to murder my rich uncle to get the money for the 1/2 set of hollows and rounds and that would elliminate the main gap in my tool chest. Then I read the blog entry…
Beautiful solution! Now, swell those pin nailer indents?
Hey! the man is trying to make some money here! Lets see you try to nail this micro-molding on with cut nails! At some point, you gotta let go of the puritan notions and get ‘er done…
Option 6. Look at the gap, shrug shoulders, say “Meh!”, then make sure the paint is thick enough to cover the gap until the warranty period expires. No, I’m not serious. I’d be throwing a party if a skirt gap was all I had to worry about 😉
Isn’t Roy’s interlocking skirt a variation of your option 2 even though it’s structural in his chest?
The bead adds a nice line to the piece. Well done!