Travel Tool Chest & Workbench with Integrated Vice

[Dr.Al]

Thank you for the kind words

[mwmkravchenko]

I labour of love for sure. Very thoughtfully designed. I have been a Cabinetmaker for over 40 years, and I have not ever taken the time to do something like this.
Hat is off to you sir.

Mark

[Jon]

Congratulations Dr.Al - your Tool Chest Workbench is the Homemade Tool of the Week!

Historically, it's been difficult for woodworking tools to win this award, but this excellent tool chest is an obvious choice this week.

Some more good builds from this week:

Lathe Tool Post Cap by hersch_tool
Knurling Tool by The Hobby Machinist NZ
Adding Pre-Flow to Spool Gun by Gadgeteer
Double Ratchet Lathe Chuck Key by Mook
Center Finder by orioncons36
Adding a Spool Gun to a MIG Welder by Gadgeteer
Tool Rests by The Hobby Machinist NZ
Brass Hammer by orioncons36
Converting a Mechanical Timer to a Countdown Timer by rgsparber
Miter Saw Stand by Making Stuff
Camera Gantry by hwmrob
Steady Rest by Make Things

Dr.Al - you'll be receiving a $100 cash prize, in your choice of Amazon, PayPal, or bitcoin. Please PM me your current email address and prize choice and I'll get it sent over right away.

This is your 4th Homemade Tool of the Week win. Here are all of your Homemade Tool of the Week winning tools. Congrats again

Slow Speed Grinder by Dr.Al

tags: grinder, disc

Tap & Die Storage by Dr.Al

tags: storage, tap & die

Shooting Handle by Dr.Al

tags: handle, plane

Tool Chest by Dr.Al

tags: tool storage

[Philip Davies]

Greatly impressed! I think that you can consider this a masterwork, so put your mark on it, where it can’t be seen! You mention some innovative ways to deal with humidity changes, what are they? It’s Surprising how light it is! I don’t think I could have done a better job.

[Dr.Al]

Greatly impressed! I think that you can consider this a masterwork, so put your mark on it, where it can’t be seen! You mention some innovative ways to deal with humidity changes, what are they? It’s Surprising how light it is! I don’t think I could have done a better job.

"Innovative" might be stretching it a bit - more "new to me". Most of the stuff I've made (or seen) has been four-sided solid wooden frames. The fifth/sixth side would be loose (e.g. a box base sitting in a groove) or relying on plywood's dimensional stability (e.g. plywood boards nailed into the back of a frame). I needed something that would be robust enough to clamp stuff to and to act as the fixed jaw of the vice, so the approaches I'd seen before wouldn't really work.

My approach was to have narrow slats with mortice & tenon joints into the top and bottom. They'll still expand/contract a bit across the width, but they're narrow enough that the expansion/contraction shouldn't be a problem.

Like I said, I doubt this is exactly earth shattering or patent worthy, it's just it was new to me and it was nice to find my own way to solve a problem.

[Dr.Al]

I haven't posted anything on here for a while, but I thought some people might be interested in an update on the travel tool chest / workbench.

I've just got back from two weeks' holiday in Brittany, during which we had quite a lot of time spent at the cottage (as my other half is recovering from a broken femur). All that time at the cottage meant I could spend some time making boxes and trying out the tool chest's workholding features.

Since I originally posted the tool chest on here, I've 3D-printed drawer liners for all the drawers to hold the tools that I want to take with me when travelling and to stop them knocking against each other and damaging sharp edges etc. There are a couple of photos below; to see all the drawer liners and read about the process of designing them, have a look in the tool chest build log on my website (the bit about the drawer liners starts on page 126 of the build).





During the holiday, I made four boxes which you can see in the next two images:





They were all made using the hand tools I took with me on holiday (although the timber had been resawn on the bandsaw prior to the trip). The two similar looking boxes are tea caddies (for storing loose-leaf tea). One is American Black Walnut (ABW) and the other is Cherry.

The smallest box is made of English Oak. It has mitred and splined corners; the splines (and the liner) are Red Oak. The main reason I made that box was to test the mitre shooting capabilities of the chest's shooting board (which worked really well).

The final box has two drawers. It's not quite finished as I need to turn a couple of knobs out of ABW (which needs my home-made lathe, which unsurprisingly I didn't take on holiday with me)! The body is ABW; the drawer fronts and the back of the body are Maple and the drawer sides and base are Sweet Chestnut.

I wrote quite a detailed description (with lots of photos) of how the boxes were made and added it to the end of the tool chest build log. If you're interested, it all starts on page 130.

A few random images of the chest in use, in no particular order:

Planing a bit of ABW:



Using the vice to mark out and cut tail sockets for dovetail joints:



Ploughing a groove with the router plane:



A lamp clamped onto the back to help with visibility on a rather overcast day:



Adjusting and fitting the inner shelf of the drawer box:



All the pieces of one of the tea caddies ready for assembly:



Using my home-made block plane with the mitre shooting feature of the shooting plane, when making the small oak box: