Marilyn of She Works Wood fame asked for a video that shows how the crab lock (aka grab lock) works. So here it is. This lock was made for this tool chest by blacksmith Peter Ross. Unlike many commercial crab locks from the 20th century, this one operates super smooth.
— Christopher Schwarz
Juggling a book and a furniture commission is like juggling two balls – pretty easy and not all that impressive. These last two weeks have been a full on circus: two books in overdrive (Peter Galbert’s “Chairmaker’s Notebook” and Don Williams’ “Virtuoso”) and two all-consuming projects, some three-legged chairs and a tool chest for Popular Woodworking Magazine.
The tool chest is a joint project between myself and Jameel Abraham at Benchcrafted. I built the box (the easy part) and he created a carved marquetry panel for the lid.
The chest itself is a new traveling design based on a bunch of old examples of chests I’ve studied and measured. After a lot of calculations, I found a chest size that will hold an impressive and nearly complete set of furniture-making tools in the minimum footprint. And it has nice lines and is a bit easier to build than an “Anarchist’s Tool Chest.”
I’m not giving up my floor chest. It is too much a part of the way I work. This smaller chest is going to be ideal for woodworkers who have limited floor space but want to hold a lot of tools that can all be accessed with one hand movement (just like the full-size chest). What’s the downside? There’s not a lot of room for moulding planes.
I’ll write up a full description of the chest’s inner workings and post a video on it when the sucker is done.
Jameel’s marquetry panel arrived about a week ago, but I haven’t had time to install it on the chest because I’ve been a slave to Adobe’s Creative Cloud software. But when I couldn’t stare at a screen anymore, I sneaked to the shop to install the hinges and attach the lid to the carcase.
The hardware is from blacksmith Peter Ross – Jameel and I decided to go whole-chicken on this project. I’m not going to show the lid here. That’s for the magazine’s editors to reveal. But you can see some glimpses of Jameel’s gorgeous work on the lid on his blog here.
This morning I convinced the lid, carcase and hinges to work nicely together and released a huge sigh of relief. Now I just have to attach the dust seal to the lid. And add the crab lock. Paint the sucker. Attach the chest lifts. And write the article. No problem.
After three hours of 100-percent concentration on these hinges, I’m ready to work on something that has an “undo” button. Yeah, InDesign and Photoshop sound like a good idea.
— Christopher Schwarz
As you design your tool chest, a little bit of cypherin’ can make a tool chest seem like the Tardis – way bigger on the inside than it should be.
This traveling chest carries a remarkable amount of tools in its 28” long x 18” deep by 16” tall carcase because it imitates a lot of older tool chests I’ve observed. Those numbers above are one of the typical sizes you’ll see for a working chest (plus or minus a few inches here and there). Another set of common numbers is found in my Anarchist’s Tool Chest.
Where do these numbers come from? Our tools and our bodies, which is to say, from our bodies. The 28” length allows you to fit a long jointer plane and your panel saws inside – a critical dimension. The 18” depth is a standard depth for carcases, it also creates a box that one person can lift (ignoring the weight of the loaded chest for a moment).
The height? When this chest is complete with its lid it will be 18” tall. A square profile view is another standard form you’ll find in furniture, and it creates a stable case compared to a much taller carcase. I’ve also noticed how many chests seem to be divided into thirds along their vertical axis. The bottom third (about 6” or 7” of height) is for heavy tools such as bench planes, the big dinosaurs of our tool chest strata. The middle third (another 6”) is for the medium-sized tools in a big sliding till – braces, hand drills, some joinery planes and hammer. The top third is for the little bits, such as layout tools, knives, little planes and the like.
Today I finished fitting out the interior of this chest by adding a till for backsaws. I made it much like the till for the panel saws, except there are two bits of wood and the wood bits are wider because I want to hold three joinery saws.
The wooden holders are arranged so the saws can go into the rack either with their handles on the left or the right (I want them on the left so their horns are protected).
And yes, the wood is white oak – it’s what I have on hand after making the tills and runners. Several readers have questioned the wisdom of using oak because of its pH and tannin content. I’ve seen a lot of oak in old tool chests, and here is my reasoning:
If you use your tools and keep them wiped down with oil, like a responsible mechanick, you will not have a problem with corrosion. If you plan to store your tools for a long time without using them, consider Tupperware and rust-inhibiting paper. Wood is acidic. Period. But if you take care of your tools, oak isn’t going to give you any trouble.
Now I just have to turn the handles for the carcase and wait for the lid to arrive….
— Christopher Schwarz
Because saws are delicate rust-magnets, storing them is a balancing act of protecting their bendable, rust-prone sawplates and still making them easy to get in and out of storage.
There are many good solutions. This is a simple one that gobbles up the least amount of precious real estate in a small chest. It’s made using one piece of tough 3/4” x 2-1/2” x 5” wood and two screws.
Kerfs in the block of wood hold the toes of your saws. The heel of the saw rests on the floor of the chest. The weight of the saw keeps it from slapping around when the chest is moved. The saws would be more secure if you added a second kerfed block near the heels. Also good additions: magnetic chewing gum, making the thing from transparent aluminum and airbrushing a buxom librarian/barbarian somewhere on the saw or chest.
I have seen this form of simple till in many surviving chests, and the block of wood usually has some rudimentary decoration. I decided to shape this one like the blades of some 16th-century try squares I’ve been building this year.
First I made a sample block to see how much wood I could remove and keep the saws stable. I decided to end the kerfs about 3/4” from the end of the block.
After cutting the block to shape and sawing the kerfs in it, I secured it to the chest with one No. 8 x 1-1/4” wood screw into the front wall of the chest and a second one through the floor of the chest and into the block.
That’s all there is to know except one important detail: If you are right-handed, put the block on the left side of the chest. That will make it easier for you to fish the saw out of the bottom of the chest.
— Christopher Schwarz
Please don’t let your children (or your fetal acetates) read this blog entry.
I’m finishing up the interior of a traveling tool chest this weekend and put in the tool rack that’s affixed to the back wall of this particular chest.
The rack is on the back wall because the front wall will be consumed by a large crab lock. But that’s not what this entry is about. It’s about the details of building the rack.
Normally, the tool racks I make are a single piece of 1” x 1” stock that I pierce with 1/2” holes on 1-1/8” centers. This sort of rack appeals to my desire to keep my tools all upright and evenly spaced – I have a lot of German blood don’t you know.
But this rack does limit the ability of the rack to hold a lot of tools.
Two years ago when Megan Fitzpatrick built her chest, she didn’t care much for my arrangement and so she decided to do something different. One night when I dropped off some manuscripts for editing she showed me her rack. I was impressed.
It might be the most thoughtful and capacious rack I’ve encountered.
Instead of plunging a 1/2” bit into a stick of wood, Megan took a “negative space” approach to her rack. There’s a single wooden bar that is offset from the wall of her chest with small bits of wood. And the whole thing is screwed to the wall.
I took some measurements, filed the information away and went home.
This morning I started playing with the variables to make a rack that would hold the maximum number of tools and place them at the right height so you could easily grab them, without stressing the parts of the rack and loosening the screws that hold it together.
So I gathered all the handled tools I could and started measuring them. I wanted the tools to wedge into the rack and keep their tops at a certain height so you could reach in there and finger them without too much fuss.
Here’s what I came up with: The wooden bar is 1/4” thick x 7/8” wide. The wooden bits that offset the bar are 9/16” thick x 7/8” wide. The 9/16” space between the wall and the bar was one magic dimension. The other important dimension was putting about 7” between the wooden bits. Any more than 7” and the wooden wall flexed in a way that made me uncomfortable and put a strain on my screws.
Then I positioned the rack so it was 5-1/2” from the top rim of the chest. I screwed it to the wall.
This setup accommodated every tool I could find. They dropped into the space without any trouble and the tops of the handles ended up in a grabbable place.
— Christopher Schwarz