Double Decker Tool Box

  The summer is winding down.  On this last week of summer holidays we have our grand children staying with us for a few days. There have been shop projects under taken and while one is artistic and the other clever, neither really merit attention outside of the family.   On the other hand, having a 5 year old girl and a 7 year old boy wanting to make things in the shop is absolutely a good thing, and one to be encouraged.

  My grandson's project had him cutting small pieces of wood in my mitre box and more importantly he was using a block plane to round off some edges. Our project is still rough and ready but now quality of finish is becoming important and doing more of the work himself has also become  important.  It is difficult to develop skills when you get workshop time only a few days per year.  When Kieran began working in my shop I resolved to provide him with good and  sharp tools. In keeping with that philosophy he uses my planes, I watch him like a hawk and have foam floor mats down where he is working but he gets to use the good tools.

  A while ago he and I made a small tool box for some of his tools and today I saw another tool box video that I wanted to share.  I like the mega-box joints he uses and the two piece design.

Double Decker Tool Box

  I like the design and the execution, as well  he gets along with a limited selection of tools, well used.  Sometimes I find myself tripping over tools and wishing for space and light and offering to sell my soul/tools to get those wishes granted. 

 Tomorrow we finish work on our latest project, a submarine with torpedo tubes, I'll share some photos once the paint is dry.

cheers, ianw

The Apartment Wood Worker

  I think I have a new woodworking hero, Curtis Hampton a.k.a. the Apartment Woodworker.

  Check out this video of him making a tool box and visit his site to see his other projects.

making a tool box

  In a blog on February 24 2012 I talked about an apartment tool kit and another time talked about the usefulness of a jig saw 

(April 2, 2012). I could and should have talked about the Black and Decker Workmate and the Kreg Pocket hole Jig and worth while additions to the apartment tool kit. Curtis certainly showed both tools to their best advantage.

 If, in the future I whine about my workshop space people are allowed to give me a cold stare and refer me to "The Apartment Woodworker".

nice bit of work there

 

cheers, IanW

Tray + Box = Japanese Style Tray Tool Box.

the necessary parts.

 Sometime ago I bought a few of these metal tool trays, now I am finally going to build some tool boxes to make use of these wood show bargains. 

 The tool box I ended up making is a Western/Japanese hybrid. 

Tool box and Rockwell Bench Jaw.

 The tray sits inside the box and the metal handle on the tray is the handle for carrying the tool box. All very ordinary, until you look at how the tray is attached to the wooden box.

 The box, which I painted grey is made from left over plywood and held together with brad nails so nothing special. The red board sides under the tool tray handle and acts as a lid and the little red thing that looks like a handle locks the tray in place while you carry the box. ( I painted the wooden pieces red to keep them from blending into the background in the shop)

  In this picture you can see the box without the locking pin in place.

 

  The tray is put in under the long side, then slid backward under the short side and the pin keeps the tray from sliding while it is being carried.  I got the idea from the Japanese Style box  I made recently for my smaller marking tools.

  

 When I was making this box I used my brad nailer to tack the parts together quickly, and easily. A nail gun makes two handed assembly easy and when nail heads showing doesn't matter it is the way to go.

  Now that I have the design worked out I think I will make another tool box with nicer materials because I still have a couple of trays left.

Good Friday - shop time

 In keeping with my efforts to clean and organize my shop I have been trying to bring the chaos of my computer/art centre desk under control too.  I have the luxury/curse of having too much stuff.

 This morning I went down to my work shop with the intention of making a small rolling computer work centre. The work desk would have room for my computer, keyboard, mouse, printer, speakers, extra paper and spare printer cartridges. The plan was for everything to be on one rolling unit.

 That didn't happen this morning. Let me tell you what did happen instead. First thing I had to glue my travelling coffee cup back together. Then I had to paint a pair of shoe lace sliders black to match my new running shoes. Then I began to seriously begin working on the computer table.

 My plan was to make a very compact work station and so it didn't need  materials.  After checking in the garage and the lumber rack I was able to gather all the wood together.

   However I did get side tracked by the mess in the back corner of my work shop.

 This is actually the cleaned up version, after an hour's work.  This back corner is were all the little bits and pieces are collected and saved for another time. There is a drawer on the desk fulled with various types of tape, another with handles and yet another with hinges. The rolling box under the desk holds router accessories and related items. The metal cupboard is filled with jars of screws, and washers and, and, and.

 So this morning I couldn't ignore the corner any longer. Also I really needed to uncover my desk top where I have my sharpening station.

  What remains is for me to get my grinder out from under my work bench and get it back here too. If all that sharpen gear is handy I will be more likely to briefly interrupt what I am doing, step over to the sharpening tools and touch up a blade rather than soldier on with a dull and growing duller tool.

 Sitting beside the sharpening tools is my scroll saw. It was on my work bench for a few weeks and always in the way. If I moved it once I moved it 47 times. Now the saw is out of the saw but still handy for making hippos and rhinos.

 As I organized and vacuumed I sorted things out. I found my next small project staring me in the face. 

 Sometime ago I bought a few of these metal tool trays, now I am finally going to build some tool boxes to use these trays. There is the tray and wood to make the box ready to go. You can never have too many tool boxes. ( or clamps)

 I also found a piece of maple and glued it into a turning blank. 

  The computer desk idea has not been abandoned, it is just going to get some design reconsideration while I work on some other things first.

Another Good Reason to Have a Woodshop

  With Christmas coming our house will have a few extra folks around. Getting all the appropriate decorations out and arranged will also help fill the place up and so it is a good time to do a little bit of organizing. ( not too much, I'm saving bulk of that job for my retirement)

 Many years ago, nearly ten years ago we were at our local Ikea store and Ikea was selling off one of their small drawer kits. We didn't need the kits at the time but today, ten years after the fact I assembled the last two of the kits.  I believe that we bought six sets of these discontinued products, over time they have been built and adapted for various needs. 

  The product comes flat packed cut to size with nails and screws included. For one of the units I decided to stain the outer box with Varathane wood stain  and give it a coat of orange shellac. 

  You can see the difference between the finish box and the raw one. I am going to use the finished box for my art supplies and the unfinished box is for the Grandchildren's art and craft things. They are here this weekend and I'll invite them to paint their own craft box.

 The title says another good reason to have a work shop. Things like these kits can be assembled on the kitchen table but it sure is nice to go down to the shop, spread the parts and pieces out and not have to worry about getting done and out of the way by dinner time. It is also nice to have a shelf with stain and shellac handy to add that little bit extra to a kit project.

  If you have the urge to organize thetoolstore.ca has a pretty good looking tool box:

Cantilever Tool Box

for a pretty good price.

  The serious Christmas count down is happening.  Don't get stuck with a lost minute solution, we still have time.

cheers, ianw

P.S. a cheap woodworker tip. Ikea has an AS IS room. That is were I buy all my finished dowels, you can get a bag full for a dollar. (20 -25 dowels)

Home Made Router Plane

 

Poor Man's Hand Router

  If you are working in a small shop area there you can make a good argument for a Hand Tool shop. If you search the Internet you can find dozens of sites that feature D.I.Y tools and short cuts for making hand tools.  Paul Sellers  has a you tube channel where he shows some of his projects and in the above video he shows how to use a chisel to make a hand router plane.  If you had to cut many dadoes it is cost effective to buy a router plane, if you occasionally need to clean out hand cut dadoes this shop tip is a way to save money and get the job done.

  Winter seems to have arrived a bit early.  We've had several days with wind chills below zero. I want to remind you to bring your iron and steel tools in out of the garage.  If your tools get warm, when you heat the garage while you work and then cold over night with the heater off your tools will get condensation on them, and then RUST. 

 I think it is easier to have a tool box that you fill with steel tools and bring in at the end of the work day than it is to remember to clean and oil all your tools at the end of the day.  It is also cheaper to move the tools than it is to heat the garage 24/7.

 

Dewalt Tough System

     A tool box system like the Dewalt is not cheap,but replacing your auger bits, drill bit, planes, knives and chisels is more trouble and expense in the long run.

  Get out there and build something.

cheers, ianw

newest look for the shop???!!!

 

  

 

Wrapping Up Some Jobs

 During the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with several small jobs all at once. This weekend I got them done.

 First Kieran and his sister came to stay with us for three days and he and I got busy and finished his tool box.

  On his last visit we worked on other projects but on Saturday morning we drilled all the holes and screwed the ends on and nailed the sides on too. This is the collection of tools that fill his box now.  He has a hammer, three pliers, six screw drivers, two different squares, a block plane, black saw (still too big for him), a sanding block and his own cordless drill driver. He just turned five and is pretty good at drilling holes and driving screws.  This was the first time that he had many brads to drive and he also did a pretty good job.  Oddly enough, he doesn't like sanding either, he gets bored. (a typical woodworker).  Usually I hold the drill and he pushes the trigger to drill the holes. This time he was confident enough that he wanted to hold the drill by himself. I don't know who was more proud when he had finished drilling all those holes, by himself, him or me.

  I also spent some time painting, the puppet theatre needs to be ready for next weekend, so it got another  coat of paint and then Eva makes the curtain.

  There is a 3/4 dowel as a handle for moving the theatre about and a 1/4 dowel for the curtain.  The paint is good now, one more coat will make it excellent.

  Spread out on my saw horses are the two rub rails off the Pinzgauer.

You can see the rails in this photo. The rails I sanded and finished with tung oil are clear and will stand out nicely against the typical olive drab paint.

Once the paint was sanded off these birch rails sucked in plenty of tung oil.

  The last job but certainly the one that was most important for world security was the refit of the aircraft carrier. I found a nice piece of Baltic birch plywood and replaced the splintery deck that we'd put on the boat last time.  Rushing the job to keep a five year old happy just meant that it had to be done again.  Have you even noticed how some customers behave like five year old kids, and then are grumpy when the result isn't want they wanted.  I had a painted friend who used to say, you can have it quick, you can have it cheap, or you can have it well done. But you can only have it one way.

  Incidentally Kieran learned it was refit because the hull and the control tower were the same, only the deck was changed.

  My plan is to take a couple of days to work in the yard and to slip away for a couple days bike riding in the warm summer breezes.  It has been an excellent August so far, good for gardens, good for biking and cool enough that we've only turned the air conditioner on one for two days this summer.

  

  When I get back to the shop I am going to look at Jack Houweling's tool caddy plan. I think that he is on to something good.

cheers, ianw

A Very Important Project.

Today Kieran, his sister, Mum and Oma are having 'A Day Out With Thomas'.



 While they are out for the day I have been working on a very important project.  For Kieran's Fifth birthday I promised him that we would build a real tool box and begin filling it with real tools so that he can work with Opa in the shop. His birthday was at the beginning of the summer and this is the first time he will be here with time to work in the shop. 

  The tool box is 16 by 6 by 8 inches.  The ends and bottom are made from 1/2 Baltic birth plywood and the sides are 1/4.  I have cut the whole thing out and marked all the spots that need to be drilled for assembly.  Drilling is something at which K is good. He also likes to use a drill to drive screws, the box will be partly glued and screwed and partly glued and nailed.  Once assembled he needed to sand the assembly and then we'll finish it with shellac. 

  To keep the handle small but sturdy I am using 1/2 copper pipe rather than a wooded dowel.  I also kept the tool box narrow so that a small person could carry it without it bumping their leg.

  In an ideal world he and I would have cut the parts out together but sheet stock is awkward to handle, and is dealt with best by bench tools.  A keen 5 year old would not have had a positive experience in the shop doing the cut out stage. He would have been stuck sitting on a chair watching the work get done.   Maybe down the road he and I can make a tool box from real wood and he can do all the work.  He has done some cutting with a hand saw and used a block plane once, developing those skills requires time and stronger hands than the little boy has, yet.

  There is nothing radical about this tool box, he will now have a version of the tool box his great Grandpa had, (its in the shop), his Opa has, his Uncle Leroy made in public school wood shop and next we'll have to make one for his Daddy. 

  This is the selection of tools that will go in his tool box to start him off.  Kieran was quite excited to think that he was going to have 'real' tools so he could help in the shop. Most of the tools are not new but all of them will help him build and fix things until he finds his way in the world and decides what he needs for his shop.

  I hope that it rains tomorrow so he will want to play in the shop with me.

cheers, ianw

Glass Workers Tool Box

   Some people are doers, and some people are watchers.  My wife is a doer, she is always busy on some sort of project, except when she is surfing the net looking for the next great deal on a trip. So on the doing side she knits and bakes, I once made her wooden knitting needles because she couldn't find the size that she needed for that project, I've also make wooden spoons and spatulas for the kitchen. Recently she had taken up stained glass and so needed a box to hold her tools, glass and projects.  She had been hauling stuff around in a big shopping bag, okay for groceries but terrible for tools.
  
   I have always believed that an organized and portable tool box is the first step in doing good work and so since I am a wood worker I made her a Stained Glass Tool Box.  As I reward she made me a whole bunch of oatmeal cookies.

    
   This is the box filled with the gear that she hauls with her to the Centre where she has her stained glass class.  You know that you are a woodworker when you can go down stairs to your shop and whip a tool box like this up out of stray bits and pieces of wood.

    The handle is a piece of broom handle that I kept from years ago, you never know when you will need a bit of heavy, semi straight dowel. So there, its makes a good job with only a little bit of sanding.

   The sides are reclaimed wainscoting from a bundle that I picked up at the Re-Store a few years ago.  I didn't get enough wainscoting to do a big project but...it has come in handy when I wanted some thin stock, for example to made the sides of a tool box.

   I used my router table to plow two dadoes into which I slid a couple more pieces of the wainscoting to provide two compartments   You can see that is where the glass and the current projects are carried, while the tools sit in the middle section.

  The ends, which are painted in that lovely contrasting white are made from the last cupboard door that I kept when we replaced my Mother's kitchen cabinets two years ago.  I hate to buy sheet stock so I hoard it when I find it for free.  The bottom that you can't see is made from some really nice pine that was a futon frame once upon a time.  

   The moral of the story is the entire project cost ZERO dollars in materials and maybe an hour of time.  And, it is the right tool for the job, no more carrying glass around in a shopping bag worrying about the whole thing falling over and your work crashing to the ground.

as a PS.

another wonderful carving from the Niagara Wood Carvers Association Show.

Tool Box, again.

  I suspect that the quest for the perfect tool box/chest is only surpassed by the quest for the perfect work bench, and maybe the Holy Grail. Or is the perfect bench, the Holy Grail.  Over the last couple of years I have written about both topics several times, I have shared my ideas and ideas that I have collected from around the world on the internet.

   I have come to an important conclusion about both benches and tool chests.  There is no perfect version, every time you change the type of shop projects you do, you no longer have the "perfect", the perfect set of tools, bench and tool box for making furniture is quite different for the ones needed for carving or making jewelry boxes.  In some cases, like large scale scroll saw projects seating comfort and lighting is very important, and a person that only works in a shop doesn't need to move their tools about, so cabinets and shelves are all that are needed for storage.  A woodworker/carpenter that gets involved in on site renovations needs to have a portable tool box and something like a workmate for their bench.  Thus the quest is unending.

   On my current to-do list is to make a tool box for my wife's stained glass tools and incomplete projects.  

modern stained glass window in Cologne Cathedral, not made by my wife. 

She is taking lessons locally and now needs a way to get her tools and projects forth and back to the studio. 


 Now these aren't even woodworking tools but they need a tool box.  Many years ago  I made my Mother a box for her to carry her art supplies forth and back to her lessons, that box was a great success and is still used.  The tool box that I traveled from apartment to apartment with is still kicking around, but the worse for wear but survives none the less.

   History has taught me that if I get the design right, it can really have a long life. I am going to start with a basic woodworkers tool box and then make some adjustments in the design,I think.

the standard carpenters tool tote, I have one, don't you?

  Some of the basic changes need to be reducing the weight of the box, glass is heavy to carry.  Since the box won't get battered around on a job site it will not have to be made from 3/4 stock with a beefy bottom and feet to keep in out of the wet, 1/2 poplar will be more that up to the task.  The other thing that I'll need to do is make a couple of slots in which to stand the glass projects and their frames. The slots will have to be on either side of the handle to keep the box from being awkwardly unbalanced.

 

   Another possible twist is the wooden briefcase where the glass projects can lay down to be carried.  The problem is of course, this has a limited maximum size, but it does look cool.   Maybe I need one for my carving tools, or my laptop. ( you know, it my free time in the shop).

   There are tonnes of commercially available tool boxes out there and I will look carefully at them too, but either way the first step is to identify exactly what characteristics the tool box absolutely must have before you begin to execute the design or put your money down at the store. And then live with the reality that the specialty tool box will only really work in its specialty situation.

   I was nice to be off for a week, but it is good to be getting back to home base, I should be back in the shop tomorrow, bright and early.

Wood Working Tool Chests - Gerstner

   As I was surfing the net a while ago a came across this web site.

Wooden Tool Chests 

   I immediately had drawer envy.  Their tool chests are a wonder to behold.  The site was also impressive, easy to use and well laid out.  I suggest that you make the time to watch their video on making the tool chests. It shows quality work and careful construction.  Things that are very nice to see.


    Another thing that the video showed was how it is that they can make such fine tools.  Have you ever contemplated making a multi drawer tool box?  I have, several times.  Each time the huge number of steps and stages of construction have put me off. I look at the time and effort needed and usually end up buying a box or bag to serve the purpose. Until I watched the video I felt a little bit guilty for not making my own tool chest.  I don't feel guilty now.  Gerstner has shown that they can do this because this is what they do and their shop is dedicated to doing this alone. Just look at that .wonderful rotating clamping rack. To do the glue up for all those little pieces in my shop would tie up every clamp I own for a week.

    All the drawers are fitted with dadoes, all the same size and all made on a single machine dedicated to that use.  I would have multiple set ups on my router table. The video goes on and on to show all the people and tasks involved in making their quality tool chests.  

    One day I will tie my shop space up making a very nice tool chest for my good tools, but not for the foreseeable future. Too many other things to make.  On the list currently is a small wheel barrow so my grandson can help with the gardening. A fine tool box would be satisfying to make and should go on my workshop list, a bright red wheels barrow for the boy will be more satisfying.  I'll keep you posted on the progress.


Disclaimer:   Neither theToolstore.ca or I have any affiliation with Gerstner USA, we did not ask for, or received any compensation from Gerstner USA or any related companies.  I just really like their site and their video and thought you would too.