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Thread: Tool Cabinet - WIP
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25th April 2022, 09:26 AM #31
Lookin' reeel good, Andy.
Much neater & less crude than my first attempt at a cupboard to house my tools, & it looks like there is plenty of scope for modifications down the track!
While the two inner doors at the top will give you some additional hanging space, I wonder if they might limit your future options? If you decided to add a slide-in unit of shelves or drawers in the top section the doors would be an obstruction. You've still got some unclaimed space in the main doors for saw storage, though your saw collection is likely to grow in the next few years . As several of us seem to have discovered, saw collections are as fluid as plane collections & often end up eventually needing a home of their own, so yours may not live permanently where they are now.
Just to illustrate the point - twice in the 20+ years since I built mine I've done a major re-model of the upper section (plus several more minor re-arrangements!), which was made easier because the units slide in. Planes are your nemesis; a few "old faithfuls" will stick with you from the start, but many others come & go throughout your woodworking life as opportunity & changed circumstances dictate. This is my current arrangement for what I swear is my last & final set of working planes .
Planes re-arranged.jpg
One of the better decisions I made when I conceived my current tool storage was to have lots of drawers. That was driven partly by where I was living at the time, my "workshop" was a bit exposed & any tool left out on a bench or shelf was likely to develop an unwanted "patina", but as long as they were in drawers they were fine. I made them shallow so I wasn't tempted to have inner layers, just a single layer of tools laid out so they make maximum use of space and remain easy to remove & replace. With my first couple of tool boxes I made the drawers unnecessarily deep & wasted about 50% of the interior space. For instance, they only need to be about 25mm deep (that's inner depth, of course), for "flat' tools like trysquares etc, & 35mm will accommodate things like chisels, rasps & files quite comfortably.
I reckon you've made a great start - you will almost certainly modify the interior in the coming years as your tool collection grows & changes, but that's all part of the fun....
IanIW
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25th April 2022, 09:39 AM #32GOLD MEMBER
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Hi Ian. What stands out to me straight away is the richness of colour of the timber handles. Joy to behold. Do you replace all your handles regardless?
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25th April 2022, 10:11 AM #33
Not quite, MA - there are a couple with original rosewood handles, which I very happily preserve, but a couple of the Bailey types came to me with broken or missing handles, so they needed replacement. The Veritas planes (top shelf) came with those 'orrible upright handles made for folks who don't use planes often (or for pretty short sessions, at least), so they got the flick - I still had some 'real' rosewood (Dalbergia sp.)at the time, so they got that.
I must admit, I do like woods that take a fine finish for handles - beech is an excellent wood for tools, for sure, but it can't match the lovely tactile finish the "finer" woods like rosewood & ebony take. My owner-built planes (which are getting to be the majority these days!), have a variety of species for handles & infill - she-oak, bull-oak & black wattle mainly. Two woods that look very spiffy, and take a really fine finish similar to the Dalbergia rosewoods are Solomon Island "ebony" (Xanthostemon melanoxylon):
No 3.jpg
And "western rosewood" (Acacia rhodoxylon):
PP1a.jpg
Unfortunately, the SIE is a bear of a stuff to work with, it's more like cast iron than wood, and inclined to be brittle. The western rosewood is also tough stuff, though nicer to work with than the SIE, but the trees are small and the wood is difficult to dry in large pieces, so I haven't ever had bits big enough for anything other than small planes. Don't be fooled by a photograph:
PPs cf.jpg
Cheers,
IanIW
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25th April 2022, 08:04 PM #34Senior Member
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Thanks MA and Ian.
MA, I don't know what what make the rasps are, they're bought from the forum marketplace some time back. Wood Rasps and assorted files.
As these are my first set of rasp (apart from a Shinto), I don't have anything to compare against. But they do cut quickly and am happy with their performance.
The initial reasoning for the inner doors is to maximise storage space since cabinet is quite deep (~390 mm). But it does become an obstruction, hence I am now leaning against it. Still need to find a workable solution to organise bulky planes (plough, rebate and combination planes) effectively. I don't like separating the fence & rods from the main body as chances are I'll be spending more time looking for them when needed...
By the way, I ended up using 40 mm long particle board screws to attach the hinges to the plywood carcase.
Cheers,
Andy
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15th August 2022, 12:44 AM #35Senior Member
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Thanks to MA's prodding, here's a bit of an update: cabinet drawers to fit underneath the tool cabinet.
This was a rough & ready project using whatever leftover material I had on hand. The carcase was made of a smorgasbord of melamine panels screwed together, with masonite backing.
IMG_20220514_110519255.jpg
The two small drawers were converted from unused internal doors of the tool cabinet (decided not to use them to keep the tool cabinet space flexible for any future modification). I installed pine trims on the big melamine drawers and the carcase front edges just to make it a bit fancier than it really is.
IMG_20220618_181053226.jpg
For a facelift job, front pine panels were screwed onto the front face of the drawers. The panels were made of my favourite free material: discarded bed frames. I ripped them up on the TS and glued to laminate. I'm now quite comfortable to square up narrow stocks, but getting wider pieces flat is still a bit of a challenge. Work holding is one of the issues.
IMG_20220702_120541498.jpg
Here's the cabinet with the panels on. Running out of 5/32" screws, so the bottom two drawers are without drawer pulls. Will possibly leave it as it is, accidentally knocking my ankles and knees on the knobs wouldn't be fun.
IMG_20220725_112411305.jpg
It looks alright overall, but upon closer inspection the flaws are obvious. The front panels aren't flat. To exacerbate the problem, the melamine drawers are also not completely square. Hence there are gaps between the front face of the carcase and the front panel. I had to glue thin strips of wood in some of them.
IMG_20220730_183628151_HDR.jpgIMG_20220730_183715827.jpg
Cheers,
AndyLast edited by Andy_B; 15th August 2022 at 12:50 AM. Reason: Pictures didn't appear.
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15th August 2022, 01:05 AM #36Senior Member
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Happy with the tool cabinet and drawers, but the existing "built-in" cabinet next to them - while not exactly an eye-sore, it is definitely a nose-sore.
IMG_20220729_114932545 (1).jpg
It's poorly built with lots of opening, and while dismantling I found the source of the oh-not-so-lovely fragrance. Piles of cockroach poo galore at every nook and cranny. I ripped it up completely and replaced it with open shelves. Some of the timber pieces are re-used for the shelving (after soaking them in bleach).
It's much better and there's some semblance of order now. One can only tiptoe and contort one's body to negotiate the mess for so long...
IMG_20220814_211141684.jpgIMG_20220814_211110359.jpg
Cheers,
Andy
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15th August 2022, 08:39 AM #37
All looks very neat, Andy (will it stay that way? ).
Any 'mistakes' with the workshop furniture are only going to be noticed by a select few & better to learn there than on something you want to take pride of place in the living room....
Cheers,IW
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15th August 2022, 08:52 AM #38GOLD MEMBER
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Thanks for posting Andy. Great progress. An old boss of mine used to keep an eye out for hard rubbish days and old beds on the piles. He picked up lots of beautiful Oregon (bed rails) and Tasmanian Myrtle (heads and ends).
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15th August 2022, 12:32 PM #39
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16th August 2022, 01:01 AM #40Senior Member
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Thanks Ian, MA & Graeme,
It's a good learning exercise indeed.
Good point about being functional. Being rough & ready, it's not as painful to see it suffers inevitable damage in the shop. (I naively used a tiny hammer to de-nail a piece of hardwood and the handle duly broke. The head bounced on the concrete and hit the.... you guessed it: the newly installed front panel drawer, leaving a nice ding).
Cheers,
Andy
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16th August 2022, 08:45 AM #41
Ah well, like us, our gear inevitably gathers a few dings & scars with time. They're badges of honour, showing we've weathered the storms......
IW
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