Projects in progress or in planning...

Wall Mounted Tool Cabinets

I've taken over the upper foyer, as we call it. That is the area that was the second story of the two-story foyer we had. It is now called the upper foyer, or tool room two. There is a bookcase, window seat, and the second of the two Hamacher Schlemmer work bench/tool boxes up there now. The tool box sits on an otherwise blank wall. I wanted something to go on the wall, around the tool box, but something that would allow the tool box to open properly. I've decided on a pair of wall hung tool boxes. Here's the basic plan. They will be walnut frames similar to the HS tool box, with birdseye maple veneered panels. Uses up some more of my recent yard sale veneer purchase. The veneer looks pretty bad at first blush. Cleaned up a little and properly flattened out, it looks pretty good when glued up in panels. These panels are for the doors and the sides.

October 30, 2017
I haven't done much on the cabinet project. All I have done is go through my lumber stash and cut boards up into rough dimensions. Most of the pieces for the cabinets will be 2-inches wide when finished. Cutting these to rough dimensions and letting them sit is advantageous as it allows the wood to stabilize after tensions in the boards are released. Makes the wood less prone to movement during planing. The pile...

November 22, 2017
I finally got back to doing a little work on the cabinets. I completed assembly of the side panels. The sides are frame and panel. The panels are MDF with veneer. The outside veneer is birdseye maple and the inside is just maple.. I think. I made what I call a lamb's tongue on the edge. It's the same detail I used on the HS tool box and the same detail I've seen on other early cabinets. It is made with a router, 45-degree cutter, and a little ramp for end stops. Pic 1, Pic 2. I use a horizontal router to make the grooves in the parts that carry the panels and floating tenons I use to assemble everything. I don't think I've talked about my horizontal router gadget. I made one years ago out of the Robland parts I had previously and I made this one using the mortising table from my MiniMax jointer/planer. I had thought about the design for quite a while and was reluctant to spend money on the amount of metal needed to support the 100# mortising table. I finally settled on a Harbor Freight 20 Ton H-Frame Industrial Heavy Duty Press for the frame. Here's the back. It provides a lot of metal to hold the mortising attachment for only a little money. I modified the base to shift the position of the legs. I added a cross piece to the front of the frame, added wheels to the back, and some teflon slides in the front to be able to move it around. The frame carries a vertical melamine panel mounted to the press frame and some additional angle iron. The router is mounted in the melamine with the existing holes in the router. A melamine panel is mounted to the top of the mortising attachment and a T-track is let into the melamine allowing the use of a miter square from my old Delta stuff. When you take a piece of quarter inch MDF, actual dimension unknown, add various yard-sale veneers to either side, you end up with a panel of indeterminate thickness. Using a smaller straight cutter in the router, it is pretty easy to make two passes and get the dimension needed and very precisely. A dial indicator mounted below the table allows very tiny and precise table movement to facilitate routing any size groove needed. Here's the set-up and some of the completed parts. All this to say I completed the side panels. Still need to cut off the tenon ends and sand them.

December 22, 2017
I've made a little more progress, but I've been remiss in my picture taking. I made the top and bottom for the cabinets. Nothing fancy, just a couple boards with an ogee pattern cut into the edge. I'm using biscuits to join them to the sides. I punched in the biscuit slots. Here is my first fit-check for the sides and top ogee pattern edge. I glued up the pices for the two shelves that will carry the drawers. They are 3/8ths inch thick and are just butt jointed scrap wood; seem to work OK. I cut the mortises for the shelves into the side panels. I used a router and a clamp board as a guide to route a pair of sides at one time. All but one of the shelves require stopped mortises. I just marked the end with a piece of masking tape, ran the router to the tape, and then finished the mortise with a chisel. Here's what the sides look like now, and the mortises near the one end. I'm working on the hanger boards. The completed wall cabinets will be held on the wall with molley bolts through what I'm calling hanger boards on the top and bottom of the cabinets. I've started making them. They will be glued to the top and bottom boards with biscuits. Sometimes the wood I use has only one good side! I'm hoping to finish gluing up the main carcass frame this weekend. I still need to make the two main interior shelves, install threaded sleeves to hold the removable shelving system, glue up the top and bottom hanger boards and then glue up the whole shebang.

December 23, 2017
That didn't take too long. Gluing these things up is always exciting. Once the glue is added shifting parts for alignment is always more difficult than without the glue. I glued the hanger boards to the top and bottom. I drilled the holes for the molley bolts in the hanger boards, then glued the hanger boards to the top and bottom boards. At this point, any clean area in the shop becomes a work surface for glue up. I installed the threaded inserts on the inside of the top board and the upper shelf inside the cabinet. I started the carcass glue up by gluing the two main shelves into the sides, then the other side, then I pounded in the drawer shelves and finally added the top and bottom boards. All's well that ends well. Here's the finished frames.

January 4, 2018
Back to working on the wall cabinets for a little bit. I'm working on the backs of the cabinets. I want the backs to be removable. It will make the spray finishing easier. Spraying into a closed box produces tremendous bounce back and poor finish results. With the back removed the problem is eliminated. I used a piloted router bit to make a 3/4-inch deep dado in the sides, top and shelves to carry the removable back. The dado is a little rough in places but I can probably fix it or live with it. I finished making the frame pieces for the back; I had made up the veneered panels a while ago. I used my made-up horizontal router. Notice I made up a better-working dust collector for it. It is an improvement and catches 90% but it still makes a mess. Gluing up the frames was uneventful, floating tenons again. This is what the inside will look like. The backs will be screwed in. I'll need to be careful in placing the screws as there is not lot of room for error in the placement and angle. The backs are not pretty, but they don't need to be. I rounded off the corners of the back panels rather than chisel out the cabinet to make the recess square. Easier? Yes.

March 19, 2018
I finished the doors. No pictures but they are my standard floating tenons with lamb's tongue embellishments on the outside. The inset panels are birdseye maple on the outside and garden-variety maple on the inside. Installing the hinges was a little tedious, as all hinges are prone to be. I was able to use the electric router on the doors but there was not enough room on the carcass so I had to use the chisels and a little hand router. I had to do most of the work in what I call my clean room side. (Need to remember to vacuum!) I used a knife, chisel, small router, and a file. My work area has been reduced to balancing my meager tool needs on a stool! Here is a first look at the cabinets with the doors installed and the fancy knobs.

I made some brass stops for the doors. They are adjustable for depth. I thought they might help take out any small warping in the doors should that develop, by keeping the two door's edges aligned. They are brass with a felt pad on the front edge.

I'd made some last minute changes to the design. I decided I needed a front flush mounted shelf, so I added that. I forgot I needed stops for the drawer fronts underneath the shelf so I added that.

Starting on the drawers. I labored over how to make the drawers in order to maximize the interior dimensions; the drawers are pretty small. In the end I opted for conventional dovetailed ends and a simple plywood insert for the bottom. I sliced up a pile of wood and let it sit for a couple days. Using my cheap wood you never know what you are gonna get. Looks good on the outside. but the inside may not be usable, eh! I use this really large Veritas dovetail jig to make my tiny little drawers. Overkill, perhaps, but it works well. Here's a pile of drawer parts. Usual efforts with the horizontal mortiser to make the slots for the plywood bottoms. Here's a pile of glued up drawers. Here's the same pile with the birdseye maple veneer glued on. I made the six outside drawers first. I then made the middle drawers for a snug fit. Here's a first look at a full set of drawers with the hardware installed. Here is the pair of cabinets with doors and drawers installed. Another shot of the newly finished drawers.

The cabinet doors get an assortment of tool holders. I started with trying to layout a single tool holder for some Bridge City lay out tools, but I couldn't make it work. I wound up making three individual holders to go on one lower door section. I made one holder for some spoke shaves I made a long time ago. This holder has spacer pieces that fit into the mouth of the spoke shave to keep them aligned. They will have magnets installed to keep them in place. There will be two chisels sets. SWMBO was surprised when I explained that these were bought way back before I began keeping records for my hand tool purchases. This first set is by Freud. The second set is Two Cherries. You can see a set of 3 inexpensive gent's saw there, too. Here's another pic of the spoke shave holder and another holder for a pair of Adria saws. Another door gets this holder for some spoke shaves from years ago. A couple of them are St. James Bay kits.

What's next? Install the threaded inserts for the tool holders on the doors. Touch-up sanding of all the parts in preparation for spraying the finish.

April 2, 2018
I did all that. Installed the threaded inserts, sanded all the parts. made all the jigs for spraying, and finished the spraying. Spraying was mostly uneventful... but not quite. Each spraying project presents its own unique challenge. In this case the cabinet frame or carcas was a little difficult. I needed to spray it standing up, at least that was my thinking, as I wanted access to both the front and back in order to hit the insides. I needed to stand the cabinet upright for spraying, but how to do it. My solution was to lay the cabinet flat and spray the bootom of the cabinet. When dry, I set the cabinet on some 1-inch mdf that I cut precisely to fit the bottom and rounded over. This worked well, preventing the spray bounce back from messing up the already finished area. Worked well!

Here's the MDF plank and rolling contraption. Here's how it looked with the frame / carcas installed. Here's the pair of them. In spraying the tool holders making fixtures that work well is always problematic. In this case I had finished the backs first. Then I turned them over and stuck them to some scraps with masking tape. In this picture you can see how I stuck them to spacer boards, but you can also see how the bounce back from the sprayer messed up the finish on the backs of the hangers. The doors came out well.

Tomorrow I can start assembling the cabinets and hanging them. A satisfying effort without a lot of consern. I'm not looking forward to running the gimlet into all the hinge holes to allow for the deeper screws. I'm certain I nearly wore out the holes for the shorter screws with all the test fitting I had to do in getting the hinges layed out.

April 5, 2018
In hanging these things I had decided to use toggle bolts so I could lay out symmetrical brass nuts top and bottom. There is not enough space in the small area where these are supposed to go to be able to hit a stud and still have the symmetrical layout for the hardware. I did put some extra drywall screws into the studs as I'm not sure how secure the drywall installation might have been. In some cases they used screws in others they used nails. I don't know if they used glue or not. After getting them hung I decided to see what is the weight limit for toggle bolts. Too late, of course, but you gotta know these things. The googles tell me between 50 and 150 pounds for a 3/16-inch bolt. That narrows it down, eh? So with 6 bolts I should be good for 300 pounds. I weighed the cabinets as I assembled the pieces and came up with 70 pounds for each cabinet. Well within the limits for the toggle bolts. I doubt the tools will add another 50 pounds. Anyway, looks like I've gotten ahead of myself.

Milk crates, MDF boards and cardboard shims to level them. I turned the toggle bolt screws around and put brass cap nuts on the other end. I used a very long 1/8-inch drill bit to mark the holes and then a 1/2-inch drill to open the holes up. I don't really know how much to tighten these things. Too loose and the cabinets will slip out of level, too tight and I crush the drywall. Anyway, they are hung and still level. The brass cap nuts look a little puny, eh?

It didn't take long to install all the hardware, doors, drawers, cabinet latches. Here they are fully assembled. The birdseye maple and walnut combination finished nicely and I like the looks of it.

The cabinets were originally intended to display the planes I have made. They evolved to hold more tools and have become a display like in the Tolpin Tool Box book. They are not fully loaded yet. I'm planning on making a few more planes at some point. I hope to get a good one eventually! Here is cabinet number one. Here is cabinet number two. There are only nine planes. The twelve shoulder planes I made are in boxes like this. Here is the overall picture of what as become the tool room annex. This narrow area was originally the upper part of a two story foyer. It was just a big box with a light hanging down. I'm much happier with it now as a combination library and tool room.