Travel Tool Chest / Workbench

[Orraloon]

A first class bit of work. Well made, practical and looks bleedin great.
Regards
John

 

[Dr Al]

That's both amazing and inspiring. Thanks for sharing

Thank you

Having been slapped on the wrist myself - have you got a way of strapping it down - threading the seat belt through the box? One emergency stop (or worse) and the box could take off at 30/40 mph and cause a lot of damage to you or your tools. Would hate to see those beautiful planes ruined by a pothole or a puncture.

When I took it away last time I put a seat belt around it and that seemed to work okay (I tried tugging sharply on the box and the seat belt lock engaged). Hopefully that will be sufficient.

A first class bit of work. Well made, practical and looks bleedin great.
Regards
John

Thanks John

 

[Rodpr]

I just love this idea of a shed in a box! Some excellent design work here, lots of clever solutions to make work more enjoyable. Chapeau!

 

[Cozzer]

Beautiful result, and superb idea originally.

If mine, I wouldn't dare actually use it....

 

[Screwed]

That's an absolutely fantastic job. Very nicely designed and implemented. Hat off to you Sir.

 

[AJB Temple]

I've seen the thread elsewhere from the early days, but that has turned out exceptionally well Dr Al and is a credit to you.

 

[Starjump]

Inspiring!

 

[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 few images.

The first one was made from Oak, with Red Oak for the liner and the splines. I mainly made it to test out the mitre shooting capability of the shooting board integrated into the tool chest:

I made two simple tea caddies, one out of cherry and one out of American Black Walnut:

Finally, I made a box with two drawers. The body and the drawer knobs are American Black Walnut, the back of the body and the fronts of the drawers are Maple and the drawer sides, back and bases are Sweet Chestnut (which I mainly used as I had a lot left-over from making the chest). The knobs were made on my home-made lathe after I got back home, so it isn't strictly completely made using the tool chest.

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:

 

[Chris152]

Fabulous work.

 

[Dan Adamson]

Wow! Masterpiece, can I ask how long have you been doing wood working?