Tony Sade
03-19-2005, 10:18 AM
I’ve recently started adding to a small collection of hand tools, and as you can see, things have grown a bit. I haven’t been sliding down the slope nearly as fast and furiously as our friend from Arkansas who’s become hooked faster that a crack addict-and probably is spending an equivalent amount of cash ;>). I flat ran out of room to put all this stuff and decided it was time to build a tool cabinet. Over the Christmas vacation, I built a small storage shed so I could get the gardening implements out of the shop and assert my dominion once and for all over the garage (at least the part my wife lets me have). That left the wall you see, to which will be added another storage/shelf unit for other things-sanders, routers, drills and drivers, sanding supplies, adhesives, and other stuff that’s jammed about everywhere in my one garage bay shop. And maybe a saw till in between.
I looked around on this and other forums for ideas and I guess the one that seemed to make sense to me was the Chris Becksvoort hanging cabinet. I really liked the one Chris Schwarz did that’s shown on the cover of a recent PW magazine, but I wasn’t aiming for, and didn’t want to spend the time building, anything that handsome. Here’s what I came up with. (A very poor man’s, or at least a very poor woodworker’s, Becksvoort, if you will.)
It ain’t fine furniture by any means. Back and dividers are masonite; there are far too many brads used “to hold things together until the glue dried” and hidden badly with the wrong color crayon; and I’m not sure I’ve successfully covered up all my other screw ups. I wanted to do this with leftover stock and scrap I already had in the shop and was successful, other than buying a sheet of crappy birch ply from the borg. (That stuff was an adventure in itself. I sanded through the incredibly thin face veneer and hit, of all things, a pocket of ink. I noticed some blue color on the wood while I was sanding, saw it had transferred onto the sanding pad, and befuddledly kept on going. Soon there was more ink on the ply and the pad, and I noticed a void that turned out to be full of wet ink. How weird. Dried it out with a q-tip and plugged it with a filler/crayon.)
The doors are some cherry from a very small batch that I had picked up locally for next to nothing and which I thought was worth about what I paid, with birch frames. The cherry turned out to be fine and even has some very nice figure (quilting?) here and there which may not show up in the pix. I was going to do full raised panel doors-rails and stiles and the whole bit, and then add to 1x stock to create the depth necessary for the hanging stuff when I saw a post by C. Schwarz on WC suggesting that inserting a raised panel into grooves in plain stock turned on edge would be much easier. I used box joints-an excuse to build the micro-adjustable ShopNotes jig I’d been planning to make-reinforced with 3/16” brass rod through the joints to add strength. The doors are hung with double piano hinges (from Rockler) that I saw Norm use on his cabinet. The only difficulty with the doors was gluing them up after I had already stained the birch frames, since I didn’t want to change the color of the cherry. I added the rounded cherry strip to the left door to cover up the gap left when the doors turned out to be too narrow. (Measure once, cut twice? Huh?) I made the cutouts on the ends to leave the brass accents at the joints visible. The drawers are machine dovetailed poplar (I recognize the irony), with masonite bottoms, faced with scrap QSWO that has very little figure or fleck.
I’m still having nightmares that this thing is going to come crashing down (ergo the tip protectors on the lower row of chisels-‘specially the good ones!) I had to draft my teenager to help me hang it on the French cleat I lagged into the studs-thing must weigh 60-70 pounds empty. I added another cleat along the bottom of the cabinet for additional support. At first I thought I had made it way too big. As you can see, I’m about out of room. A hanging tool wall (a la Dave Anderson) is beginning to make more sense, quite frankly. Guess I’ll have to toss a couple of those #4s.
Finish on the ply and birch is Minwax provincial (can you tell I forgot the pre-stain condition on the now blotchy door frames?) and the whole thing is topped with homemade wipe on poly. The doors were (quickly) rubbed out with some paste wax and grey scotchbrite®.
Of course, the pictures also show some of the goodies I’ve acquired of late. Consider this a collective gloat on those scores. Thanks for looking.
I looked around on this and other forums for ideas and I guess the one that seemed to make sense to me was the Chris Becksvoort hanging cabinet. I really liked the one Chris Schwarz did that’s shown on the cover of a recent PW magazine, but I wasn’t aiming for, and didn’t want to spend the time building, anything that handsome. Here’s what I came up with. (A very poor man’s, or at least a very poor woodworker’s, Becksvoort, if you will.)
It ain’t fine furniture by any means. Back and dividers are masonite; there are far too many brads used “to hold things together until the glue dried” and hidden badly with the wrong color crayon; and I’m not sure I’ve successfully covered up all my other screw ups. I wanted to do this with leftover stock and scrap I already had in the shop and was successful, other than buying a sheet of crappy birch ply from the borg. (That stuff was an adventure in itself. I sanded through the incredibly thin face veneer and hit, of all things, a pocket of ink. I noticed some blue color on the wood while I was sanding, saw it had transferred onto the sanding pad, and befuddledly kept on going. Soon there was more ink on the ply and the pad, and I noticed a void that turned out to be full of wet ink. How weird. Dried it out with a q-tip and plugged it with a filler/crayon.)
The doors are some cherry from a very small batch that I had picked up locally for next to nothing and which I thought was worth about what I paid, with birch frames. The cherry turned out to be fine and even has some very nice figure (quilting?) here and there which may not show up in the pix. I was going to do full raised panel doors-rails and stiles and the whole bit, and then add to 1x stock to create the depth necessary for the hanging stuff when I saw a post by C. Schwarz on WC suggesting that inserting a raised panel into grooves in plain stock turned on edge would be much easier. I used box joints-an excuse to build the micro-adjustable ShopNotes jig I’d been planning to make-reinforced with 3/16” brass rod through the joints to add strength. The doors are hung with double piano hinges (from Rockler) that I saw Norm use on his cabinet. The only difficulty with the doors was gluing them up after I had already stained the birch frames, since I didn’t want to change the color of the cherry. I added the rounded cherry strip to the left door to cover up the gap left when the doors turned out to be too narrow. (Measure once, cut twice? Huh?) I made the cutouts on the ends to leave the brass accents at the joints visible. The drawers are machine dovetailed poplar (I recognize the irony), with masonite bottoms, faced with scrap QSWO that has very little figure or fleck.
I’m still having nightmares that this thing is going to come crashing down (ergo the tip protectors on the lower row of chisels-‘specially the good ones!) I had to draft my teenager to help me hang it on the French cleat I lagged into the studs-thing must weigh 60-70 pounds empty. I added another cleat along the bottom of the cabinet for additional support. At first I thought I had made it way too big. As you can see, I’m about out of room. A hanging tool wall (a la Dave Anderson) is beginning to make more sense, quite frankly. Guess I’ll have to toss a couple of those #4s.
Finish on the ply and birch is Minwax provincial (can you tell I forgot the pre-stain condition on the now blotchy door frames?) and the whole thing is topped with homemade wipe on poly. The doors were (quickly) rubbed out with some paste wax and grey scotchbrite®.
Of course, the pictures also show some of the goodies I’ve acquired of late. Consider this a collective gloat on those scores. Thanks for looking.