Lost Art Press

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

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