Tool Box and Plane till

[Matt Evans]

I've been working on these for the past two years in my spare time, 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, etc. with a month or two between those short bits of progress. I finally decided to get them finished up ( or at least close to that point.)

I still need to do a little work to the plane till, and finish it. The tool box is in need of a base, but otherwise finished.

It has been a mixture of hand and power tool work. . .The glue-up was hand jointed edges, the dovetails were a power tool affair.

The tool box turned out a little different than I had planned, but that is what happens when that much time elapses between start and finish. Still very functional, and not too terrible looking, in my opinion.

The wood was all scrap cherry from a cabinet job. Wormy, some checks, knots, wild grain direction changes, tearout, lots of pitch deposits. . .

[Chris Hachet]

I like teh design language of teh tool box....kind of rustic, contemporary, and greene and greene all pulled together and proportioned well.

Plane till is good also, when I build mine it will have doors to keep sawdust off of the tools.

Thanks for sharing this!

Chris

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Love this! I am adding the plane till design to my "Ideas I Will Steal I the Future" file. I like the sliding locks.

[Joe Tilson]

Now that is really neat!
I do like it very much.
Good job.

[Reinis Kanders]

Pretty cool. How do you keep the sliding things between planes locked down?

[Thomas Schneider]

I love the sliding locks! Looks like that tool box will serve you well, nice job!

[Jim Koepke]

Very nice. Please do enlighten us further on how the plane till works.

jtk

[Christopher Charles]

I also really like both. Esp like the modular nature of the drawers. How are the drawers different than you expected?

cheers,
c

[Jim Matthews]

Submit the tool till design to PWW as a shop tip.
I don't think I've seen it before.

The modularity of it is genuinely clever.
Kudos

[Reinis Kanders]

After looking at this on my PC it seems that the top plane locks slide up against preset stop in the groves. Could be just a wood pin? Cool idea Matt.

Pretty cool. How do you keep the sliding things between planes locked down?

[Matt Evans]

Thanks, folks.

It is a wooden stop to hold the top stops in place. I will enlighten further later on.

[Patrick Bernardo]

I love the design too! Ingenious!

One question: do you have to lift up the top plane in order to get at the bottom plane? I'm assuming so, but just wondering if that part of this is a little awkward when you try to transfer the planes during use.

Also, I hope that bottle of Erdinger dunkel was consumed and not just forgotten up there!

[Hilton Ralphs]

One question: do you have to lift up the top plane in order to get at the bottom plane? I'm assuming so, but just wondering if that part of this is a little awkward when you try to transfer the planes during use.


One way around this problem (if indeed there is one) is to make the stops less wide. Then have the top stop slide in a different groove so it can overlap the bottom stop of the plane above it when removing it. I would also make the bottom stops less wide so there's less upward movement required to get the plane out.

[Matt Evans]

I love the design too! Ingenious!

One question: do you have to lift up the top plane in order to get at the bottom plane? I'm assuming so, but just wondering if that part of this is a little awkward when you try to transfer the planes during use.

Also, I hope that bottle of Erdinger dunkel was consumed and not just forgotten up there!

Erdinger never goes to waste! I find it so rarely. . .Maybe once every two years I find Erdinger, and even more rarely the Dunkel. . .

You do have lift the top plane, but it is not as awkward as you might think. There are stops in the tracks, and they lift out the same way whether there is a plane on top or not. The top plate only needs to move 3/4" or so, so you aren't really lifting the extra weight very much at all.

I will see if I can take a video of it in use and post it.

[Matt Evans]

I also really like both. Esp like the modular nature of the drawers. How are the drawers different than you expected?

cheers,
c

The template I used for the drawer slide installation ended up shifting a little, and threw the slots for the dadoes in the sides off enough that they weren't fitting well, or at all in some cases. So, I ran the whole drawer sides though the table saw with a slightly wider dado to accommodate the offset slides.

If That hadn't been the case, the slides wouldn't have come through the drawer fronts, since I had milled the slide slots before drawer assembly.