Wall Hanging Tool Cabinet

A Home for My Tools

I spent all that money on nice quality hand tools, and they're sitting on a shelf in my basement. The problem here is that dust sits on them. Dust contains salt which attracts water which rusts tools. So I need to build a cabinet to keep them cozy.

I had decided to make a wall hanging tool cabinet before I ever read The Anarchist's Tool Chest, and Schwarz's words in favor of floor chests didn't sway me. Even my wife agrees with me. Besides, it's a cramped space and I need all the floor space I can get. Wall space is in abundance.

I'm making the cabinet out of cherry and poplar (for the drawer sides, backs, and drawer webs). I milled it to width and thickness using power tools and I'm going to attempt to do the rest by hand -- wish me luck.

So far I've done a little smoothing with the hand planes (and it isn't going super great, but I'm learning).

There's a glue seam where I joined these boards together and all I wanted to do was flatten it out.  It turned into a 2 hour long aerobic workout.  This particular board ended up looking pretty good, though it's a little thinner than the original 3/4" I had planned.  The second board I tried had a few knots in it and I've since learned a few tricks to deal with grain tear out (again, credit goes to Schwarz).

Dealing with Tear Out

1. pick wood that's easier to plane
2. use a freshly sharpened plane blade
3. increase the blade angle
4. tighten the mouth opening
5. take lighter cuts
6. and don't skew the blade

I've been following She Works Wood as she builds her own hanging tool cabinet, and our cabinets are almost identical, with very few exceptions.  It's been really interesting to see how this project is going to play out by watching someone else do it first.

I made a mallet.

A wooden mallet.

Hammer time!

I had some quartersawn white oak leftover from Brandi's mirror so I laminated a couple bits of that together and made this in a couple hours. I wish I spent more time on the handle ergonomics, but it works fine and gets the job done.

Dovetail Markers

Dovetail Markers and a Saddle Square

Dovetail stuff

In preparation for starting to cut dovetails by hand, I decided to make (instead of buy) dovetail markers. These little doohickies allow you to draw the angle for the pin or tail while also drawing the corresponding plum line without having to switch between a bevel and a square.  Since I wasn't sure which angle I preferred, I decided to make one of each of the popular ones.

In order to determine the angles, I didn't use a protractor. I hate math. I just drew a few points on a piece of scrap wood. From the corner, I marked a point 1" in, and another point 6" up, and 8" up. Then I used my bevel gauge to connect those dots for the 1:6 and 1:8 markers.

For the 14 degree marker (a popular dovetail angle) I had to do a little more work. I don't own a protractor, so I opened up Sketchup and drew a 14 degree angle, then drew a guide 1" over, and figured out how far it was up the point where the guide meets the angle (just over 4"). So I went back to my scrap wood and drew that.

Using the bevel gauge, I transferred the lines onto these little blocks of wood. Then I lined them up with the miter saw blade and cut them. They turned out perfectly. That miter box is awesome.

Because I had extra scrap leftover I decided to make a 90degree saddle square. These are handy for when you need to draw a line that wraps around the edges of a board.

Workshop Helpers

From left to right: Shooting Board, and two Bench Hooks

Helpers

Holding wood still while you work on it is step one. Bench hooks, holdfasts, vises, and clamps hold wood still. Making square cuts is step two. The shooting board has a 90 degree fence so you can plane the end of a board squarely.

I had some scrap plywood so I whipped these up in a few minutes. They work. As that was all the thought they required, that's all the thought I put into them.

"Schwarzian" Saw Benches

English-style "Schwarzian" Saw Benches

A couple saw benches

I made these with some scrap Hem-Fir that was leftover from my workbench project. I followed Christopher Schwarz's plan from Popular Woodworking Magazine, though I'll admit I found the instructions confusing and the design lacking.

Compared to the other stuff I've been building, these saw benches are pretty flimsy, and while I understand the need for a simple design (Schwarz was teaching a class where you build a saw bench with nothing but hand tools in a single day), I guess I just don't agree that the shortcuts were worth the end result.

He has since tweaked the design a few times, but if I did this project over again, I would have added cross beams to keep the legs apart and stable. I'm not a huge fan of the screws and plywood either.

But in the end, it gets the job done and the saw bench is perfectly functional. It doesn't require more thought than has already gone into it and it won't be replaced unless it breaks.

I think my complaints about the instructions being confusing is that I'm mostly just not accustomed to following plans in general.  I had a similar problem following Norm's plan for the blanket chest.  My typical process is that I'll build an entire project in Google Sketchup, developing my own understanding of how everything fits together, and exporting a cut list of parts before I ever touch a single piece of wood.

Following someone else's step by step instructions doesn't allow for the big picture understanding and it feels like I'm blindfolded, being guided through an obstacle course by a back seat driver.  I don't find it very comfortable and I end up getting frustrated when I don't understand the next step.

A Dovetail A Day

Practice Practice Practice

Schwarz wrote an article. I mulled it over. I waited until I had my workbench. I waited until I had my saw. I waited until I had some scrap wood. I waited until I had some free time. I even waited until I had a marking knife and a marking gauge.  It might seem like I waited too long, but I was busy.  I wanted to make sure I had enough room in my brain to really pay attention and learn.

Finally, I started cutting some dovetails by hand. I'm learning little bits here and there, but I think I skipped ahead too fast and I need to go back and do The Night of 100 Cuts, and polish up my sawing before I focus on the more complicated geometry of dovetails.

I'm getting better at handcut dovetails, but the thing I'm noticing is that my sawing isn't square across the board, resulting in a need for paring with a chisel - which introduces errors/gaps.

I keep repeating in my mind Ebenezer's lessons to John Gay, hoping they start to sink in.

Bedroom Closets

Cape Cods Contain Characteristically Cozy Closets

So we kicked in the wall in one of the eaves upstairs and built a 15 foot wide, 5 foot deep, 4.5 foot tall closet that can fit 10 huge rubbermaid tubs, my tall dresser, and 11 feet of clothes rod. The existing closet got turned into a glorified shoe closet with the addition of multiple full length shelves. I also added 3 large shelves in the nook in the upstairs bathroom where Carolyn promptly put pretty baskets containing various items.

At the same time we ventilated the entire attic (which wasn't ventilated at all), reinsulated the entire attic, gutted both bathrooms again*, revented both bathroom fans, evacuated 2 bats, sealed the windows, reinsulated the bathroom walls, re-sheetrocked, primed, painted, and added tile to the shower and tub surrounds.

*(A couple winters after we originally remodeled the bathrooms we had an ice dam above the upstairs bathroom which caused water damage to both bathrooms. 5 years in and we had to remodel both bathrooms a second time. /annoyed!)

I'm still working on the 3 enormous sliding closet doors that will close off the eave closet. Another weekend or two and they'll be done.  <em>Boring</em>.