April 12, 2018
At the Bud Brown auction last fall I bought a point-of sale display for Lufkin rules. It is a really nice old display and it came filled with a lot of interesting rules; masonry rules, log rules, some metric, etc. The lid has a clever catch to keep the un-initiated from getting into it. The front glass panel opens like this. In February I went to another auction, and because they went inexpensive, I wound up with another pile of zig zag rules. They are all new-old-stock. So, what to do with this new-found collection?

Well, must make a display of some kind, right? I'll use the Lufkin display as a basic pattern. I'll make mine to hold more rules. The Lufkin cabinet only holds 22 rules. It's rather strange, with 7 slots for 3 rules (= 21) and then another single slot for 1 rule (total = 22). Mine will be 24 rules wide and 2 rules deep for a total of 48 6-foot rules in the one display. Here is what I have so far. I'm making two. Here is the first one. And, the second one is similar. Surprise, eh? The back has a small storage area; more work to be done.

The pictures don't show it yet, but the show faces are nicely figured quarter sawn oak. I bought a pallet of off-cuts of oak from Hearne's a few months back. The pallet had some nice quarter sawn stuff and some small project junk. I paid about a dollar a BF so I think I did OK. I have enough quarter sawn stuff for the show surfaces and flat sawn stuff for the insides and base. The biggest problem is the wood was already planed to about 7/8ths inch. Too thin to resaw in half and really thick, time consuming, to plane down to 5/8ths inch which is what I'm using for most of the dimensioned lumber. I think they will look nice.

I want a decal to go on the front of the cabinet like the Lufkin has. I have fooled around fixing up box labels with photoshop, but trying to enlarge a box label just does not produce satisfactory resolution. I bought this Stanley Zig Zag rule sign reproduction on Ebay. It is a shame they went to so much trouble to 'antique' the thing. It will take me a while to clean it up. I hope it will work.

April 18, 2018
The base uses up a lot of wood. Too big to resaw, I had to plane it down from 7/8ths to 1/2 inch. It just has a simple bevel on the edge for decoration. The doors don't have a lot of wood at the top. I was pretty careful fitting the floating tenons, making certain they are as tight as possible. I hacked out the mortise for the glass. They don't really need to be pretty as the back of the door can never be seen.

Clamping in the back pieces. Can't have too many clamps. Here the backs are done. Small brass hinges, hook latches, and a small brass knob. I had purchased the hook latches for use on some Miller's patent blade boxes, but the way they are stamped out means they don't work well for one set left and one set right. I changed the design of the blade boxes so they don't use the hook latches. Here's what the blade boxes look like. They are made from poplar and will be stained. I digress. The small brass pull is left over from a tool box project from many years ago.

Installing the section dividers was a real nuisance! The two cabinets were supposed to be identical but with all the little tweaks needed to fit parts together left the dividers different for each cabinet. The inside of the top has slots also. Since the dado blade stopped before the front edge, there is a notch in the divider for the radius left by the blade. Here's a fit check for the rules. There are six yellow No. 06 rules in the one slot. So, as before, the cabinet can hold as many as 48 4-foot rules. The Lufkin on the left is a 8-foot rule. That one would not fit in the original cabinet.

May 3, 2018
I finished the wood working effort by making the molding sticks to hold the glass. The cabinets pieces are both ready for stain and then the finish. I took them all apart one more time, stained them, and sprayed them. The figure shows up nicely in that last shot. Reassembled, they look pretty nice. The hinge bars are polished and lacquered brass; made from some scrap from my plane making efforts. The latches in the back work well and enclose a small space for added inventory. Nearly finished now.

May 16, 2018
I took two pictures of the Stanley logo mentioned previously. Stuck the two pictures side by side to get the highest resolution possible. After a spending some time with photoshop, I had the logo cleaned up and the color changed to a more appropriate dark Stanley green. They are printed on available hobby decal paper. The hobby stuff is, predictably, not nearly as good as a commercial decal might be, but given my various options, I think they came out reasonably well. The color is a little porous and the wood grain shows through. Given how crude my starting point was, they turned out rather antiquey looking which is just fine. The decal paper is sprayed with Krylon before applying them, then a couple more coats after they are stuck on.

The two cabinets are finished now. I added handles on the side; they are too difficult to pick up trying to get fingers under the base. This one has 48 Stanley rules; numbers 106, 167, 286F, 06, 856, 206, 167, and 804E-M. This other one has 32 Stanley/Defiance rules; numbers 1296, 1296F, 96, 804, 106, 167, and 856. For the record, each weighs 23 pounds plus weight of the rules.