Travel Tool Chest & Workbench with Integrated Vice

[Dr.Al]

This is a lovely build. I have three questions.
1. Since American black walnut is an import for you, and considering it is even here an expensive wood for a domestic product with widespread distribution, I am curious about your selection. In your neck of the woods, is it used as a less expensive alternative to English walnut, or does it command a premium price as an import?

It is an expensive wood - probably about twice the price of oak (which itself is probably 50% more than Sweet Chestnut). However, it looks beautiful and is lovely to work with, so I do like using it where I can. I think American Black Walnut trees are more productive than English / European Walnut, so ABW can be cheaper and easier to get hold of than the native stuff.

3. What is the approximate final weight?

I haven't measured it, but I would guess that the chest itself weighs 10–15 kg and fully loaded with tools it weighs 25–30 kg. It's definitely not something you'd want to carry on a long walk, but I only really envisage moving it from house to car and from car to holiday let, neither of which would be a long walk. It was a conscious decision to accept the weight: I wanted to take a good selection of tools and I also wanted the chest to be robust enough to withstand hammer & chisel use on the top surface as well as planing.

2. Do you sell the plans to this build?

No, but if you're interested in the details, I wrote it up as I went along on (in exhaustive "warts an' all" detail) on a woodworking forum I frequent. It's interspersed with comments and (useful!) advice from other forum members, but everything I did to make the chest is documented. The thread is here: https://thewoodhaven2.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=7477 - there are 22 pages of it though, so you'd need a reasonable amount of time on your hands to read it all!

[black echo]

Very good information. Thank you. And I adore American black walnut.