Travel Tool Chest & Workbench with Integrated Vice

[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: