Thread: A chest of drawers for my hand tools

The chest sits on a demountable mobile base. I designed it that way thinking that the base might take some abuse and if so could be removed and repaired separately from the cabinet. Doing it this way also gave me a chance to practice the joinery that I would use on the bottom and top of the chest itself.

Here is the design of the mobile base. The corners are mechanically joined with sliding dovetails and schachi sen, which are tapered locking wedges. It might be difficult to see how it goes together so ask questions if my pictures don't explain it.

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A corner joint from the eventually hidden mitered ends. Sliding dovetails and mortises for the schachi sen (tapered wedges).
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The test assembled joint from one surface. The "T" shaped mortise is for a tenon on the end of a chest post.

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The other side of the joint in the picture above. A lot going on here and the joinery isn't finished.
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And with the Oregon oak schachi sen in place but not fully tapped home. They were sawed and pared flush later.

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The casters are antique cast iron made in the USA in I think the 1930's. The company is still in business under new owners. I bought them at an auction site and cleaned them up. I did have to glue on some strips to the base to accommodate their mounting plates. It was worth it. I mounted them with stainless steel screws.

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Sitting atop the mobile base is a frame constructed more or less like some Japanese timber framed buildings. There is a base or sill joined the same way as I did the mobile base except grooved for a dust panel. Posts then insert into mortises in the corners. On top is another frame constructed like the sill, also grooved for a panel, but installed upside down relative to the sill to hide the shachi sen wedges.


Here is a family photo of the mobile base, sill, and top frame.

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The dust panel in the sill is plywood (not shown). The panel for the top frame is solid cherry so I needed to provide space for seasonal movement. I wanted to avoid grooves at the panel edges that would collect dust and grit so I fitted the panel tight to the front and sides and left all of the gap at the back. The back gap will eventually be covered by the upper cabinet. Those through mortises were filled later by post tenons that were wedged and pared flush.


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The posts were connected to each other at the sides by multiple rails set flush with the insides of the posts. The rails have four jobs: to help prevent the posts from bowing in or out, to resist the frame wracking front to back when the chest is pushed or pulled around the shop, to guide the sides of the drawers, and to support the drawer web frames. I made the rails from quarter sawn sycamore because I have a lot of it and because it resists abrasion from the drawers.

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The sides are further strengthened against wracking by veneered plywood panels set into grooves in the posts, sill, and top frame. I hammer veneered the cherry to the ply. That was my first go at hammer veneering. I didn't know that these were actually fairly large surfaces for hammer veneering, but after a few missteps it went pretty well. The thin rail with the spear point mortise is there mostly for aesthetics. It carries the line from a drawer rail around to the sides.

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The back is covered by a mitered and through mortised frame with more veneer panels set tightly into the frame to help resist side to side wracking. The panel frame is set into a rebate in the posts, sill, and top frame. It is held in place with these white colored loose sycamore tenons through the frame and into the posts/sill/top frame to make it readily demountable.

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Next up will be the web frames and drawers.

Beautiful. Saws on the back of the doors?

Probably saws, yes, and rulers and other light but long tools.

Early on I considered using all full width drawers and metal drawer slides because I imagined the drawers when full of tools would not slide easily with wood-on-wood. But I don't like the look of side mounted slides and undermounts steal more storage space than I was willing to give up. And good ones are expensive. In the end I decided to use a conventional web frame to support the drawers and divide the lower drawer space in half to decrease the drawer size. In retrospect I think all full width drawers on wood would have been fine, and certainly less work. But since I prefer the look of the way I did it, I don't think I would change my choice. I did have to add a central stile front and back to support the two banks of drawers.

The web frames have cherry fronts and backs and sycamore sides. The sycamore sides have tongues that fit into grooves on the sycamore side rails mentioned before. That fully supports the web frame front to back. I also added grooves for plywood dust panels.
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Here is some of the lovely QS sycamore I used for rails and web frames. No one will see it but I know it is there.

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The web frame fronts have those odd little tenons on their ends, in addition to open spear point tenons. Those finger-like tenons was me being a little too cute with the joinery. I wanted to avoid using glue as much as possible so I tried to come up with interlocking joinery whenever possible. Those narrow tenons actually fit into mortises in the posts as well as work as draw bore pins in the tenons on the side rails. That is hard to describe and difficult to photograph but here is how it looks in Sketchup:
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This mostly worked but on assembly two of those tiny cherry tenons broke. A more resilient wood might have been fine. Or a better joinery solution. Or epoxy!

Similarly, I wanted to use the cherry tenons on the fronts and backs of the web frames to interlock the sycamore rails on the center stiles. There was even less room in the stiles to accommodate the joinery than in the legs. Everything fit and it was fun to try but I think it was either unnecessary or there was a better solution. Or possibly it was brilliant and I will be someday famous. Here it is without the stile to show the concept.

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Here is how it all looked during dry fitting:

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Next will be the drawer stops and drawers.

I wanted both push in and pull out drawer stops. For the pull out stops, useful for not dumping a drawer full of heavy sharp tools on my feet, I stole a design from Australian woodworker Neil Erasmus. They fit into mortices on the bottoms of the front drawer rails.

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The push in stops are my own design. They work just OK. Since they hit the middle of the drawer back they are a little bouncy. But they are easily removable if the leather needs to be replaced or their position adjusted. They fit by sliding dovetail under the back rail of each drawer web frame and are easily reached by removing chest back panel. Honestly, there are better and simpler solutions but these are functional and will stay.

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The drawers have thin (about 9 mm) Oregon white oak sides and backs with thicker cherry fronts. The white oak was beautiful but hipped badly going over the jointer and through the planer so I ended up hand planing every piece to thickness. Not a task I will repeat. The bottoms are glued up panels of sycamore. Because the sides are thin and the drawers will hold heavy tools I added sycamore slips to beef up the wood that holds the bottom panels. Seen from the back and side the slips look like this.

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I mentioned the decorative dovetails already but here was the inspiration: a picture of poster of Japanese dovetails a friend sent to me.

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Here is one finished
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I must have looked at hundreds of pulls in all different styles when a friend in Japan suggested using pulls made for Japanese tansu chests. Even narrowing down to that there were dozens of styles and sizes. In the end I chose the most common classic pull design. Solid brass with a black finish and tiny tack bumpers that keep the pull from marring the drawer front when it drops. I got these from a company in Japan that has been making them for over a hundred years. They were expensive (to me) but gave me the Japanese vibe I was looking for. They came with ugly white plastic screw covers for the inside of the drawer. I replaced those with steel screw caps that I painted black.
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And there you have it:

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And here is a link to the chest in action:

Tool chest finished - YouTube

(Before you ask: those little stubs sticking out of the top frame are for attaching the future upper cabinet).

I like everything except those black metal pulls. Good job though.

I like everything including the black metal pulls. The tack bumpers are a good idea.