I started building before the book was published. For that and other reasons, mine is not an exact copy, but it's similar and certainly based on what Schwarz built, which in turn is based on historical examples.
Prior to building the chest, my tools were scattered around the basement. Inefficient to say the least. I thought a lot about the tools I would put in the chest as I was making it, and even more so when the chest was complete. I considered every tool I had and asked myself "am I using this tool, or do I expect to in the near future?" If so, it went in the chest.
I made a second pile for tools of two types: I had never used the tool but thought I would some day on an appropriate project, or it had some collectible value (very little of that). Eventually I made a six-board chest to house those tools. It's a humble piece of furniture in the house, useful as a small sitting bench.
The third pile: junk. Buried in a cardboard box out of sight out of mind.
Over time I have rearranged a few things in the chest, acquired new tools and demoted old ones. These photos are from just filling up the chest for the first time, so not entirely current, but gives you the basic idea.
toolchest1.jpgtoolchest2.jpgtoolchest3.jpg
As Jude said, it's pretty large. You need some real estate near your bench where the tool chest lives. Like Schwarz I put casters on mine so it could be rolled around, but it has to go
somewhere. You do have to bend down to get things out of the chest, so if just the thought of that makes your back hurt, it's probably not the storage option for you. If you like every tool you own to be immediately visible, you probably won't like the sliding tills and the bottom back area of the chest below the tills (traditionally for moulding planes). If you cringe at the thought of tools rolling provocatively against each other with reckless abandon you
definitely won't like the tills, unless you get into french fitting, but that's something the ATC is strongly opposed to.
Schwarz has said a number of times that he never really expected anyone to build the chest. The real purpose of the book was to describe the basic toolkit necessary to build most furniture, and encourage people to own fewer but better tools. After reading the book, building and working out of the chest, I began to think more carefully about adding additional tools. Do I really need that, or can I do the task satisfactory with what I already have?