Travel Tool Chest & Workbench with Integrated Vice

[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.