That was easy.

Yesterday, New Year’s Day, I decided to get started on the right track and celebrate the day with a little bit of woodworking, and that meant getting my new Dutch tool box started. Of course, it is freezing in my area, and with it snowing as I type this post, with temperatures expected to dip down close to 0 degrees F, it’s not going to get much better, so yesterday I thought ahead and set a space heater in the garage to warm it up before I got started. Even with all of my preparations, the garage was still a little uncomfortable, and my very stable Aspen still warped a touch. It wasn’t such a big deal, but when I ripped the stock down to rough width on the table saw, it left the edges out of square corresponding to the slight bow in the board. You wouldn’t think that something so minor would be very noticeable, and usually it isn’t, but I needed to have those boards perfectly square in order to dovetail them correctly, so I knew that I would have some work ahead of me.

The first thing I did was to rip the boards to width. I was aiming for 11 1/4 inches wide, so I set the fence 1/8 wider to give me some wiggle room to not only plane off the tooling marks, but also to square up the edges. I ripped the panel into two equal pieces, and then crosscut them to just under 24 inches. With that out of the way I chose two boards to use as the side panels, with the others set aside for the bottom and the shelf. I picked the clearest boards for the side panels, sandwiched them together, and placed them in the leg vice to plane off the tooling marks and square them up. For that job, I used my jointer plane to get it flat, and I smoothed the edge with the wood try plane I made last summer. Shockingly, I had both sides finished in just a few minutes, so I repeated the same thing with the other boards I had set aside. Originally, that was all I had planned on doing, but since things were going so quickly I decided to move onto sawing the angles on the side panels.

edges planed square and smooth.

To saw the angle for the front lid, I used the table saw and miter gauge. Rather than sawing each angle individually, I once again sandwiched the two boards together, set the miter gauge at 30 degrees, and sawed both angles at once. My saw blade is fairly new and very sharp, so it still produces a nice, clean cut, especially when cross-cutting. In just a few moments the angles were finished, so while I was still rolling along I decided that I may as well saw the dados to hold the shelf.

To saw the dados I again turned to the table saw and cross cut fence, but I used a dado stack rather than nibble away at the joint piecemeal. My luck was holding up yesterday, because it took only two test cuts to get the dado perfect, with only one extra shim added to my first attempt to get the fit I wanted. I had both dados finished in no time, so I brought the two boards over to the workbench to clean up the dados with my router plane. I have two things to report: First, using a router plane with a newly sharpened iron is a joy, and even across the grain it produced a perfectly clean and smooth bottom to the dado. The second thing is even better: This is the first project I’ve attempted since the tool tray was added to my workbench, and I’m happy to say that there was absolutely no change in how I worked. In fact, I honestly forgot for a moment that the tray was even there. The tray did collect a few shavings, I admit, and I had them vacuumed up in about ten seconds. Otherwise, my bench performed just fine, though I definitely need to add a few more dog holes for versatility, as my short row of four holes forced me to work in one spot. In any event, I had both dados cleaned up and ready to go quickly and easily.

Smooth as silk

The shelf fits, and is square to the sides

With the dados cleaned up and everything fitting nicely, I decided to call it a night as far as the tool box was concerned. All in all, I was really impressed, and happy, with how quickly everything went together. I was so far ahead of schedule that I decided to sharpen both my jointer plane iron and the iron for my wood try plane, just to see if I could frustrate myself a little. The only downside to yesterday turned out to be when I sharpened the jointer, and I came to the realization that my jointer iron, which is more than 100 years old, is probably going to need replacing sooner rather than later. I estimate that I can sharpen it maybe a dozen or so more times before it needs to be reground, and there really isn’t much iron left for that operation. So I may be ordering a new iron from Hock in the next few months. But all in all it was a good day woodworking, and it occurred to me that once I get the dovetails sawn and fitted, the bulk of this project will be finished. I estimate that it should take around an hour to get it all done, and then I can glue it up and go from there.

The other really good news is that I am taking my time on this one, mostly because I have the time to take. I have no new projects on the horizon, mainly because it is going to be too cold to really begin any project of depth. So I am going to really go at an easy pace, not because I have the time, but also to fuss over the little details. I’ve been doing everything out of my head without a drawing, plan, or cutlist, though I took the dimensions roughly from the plans in Popular Woodworking magazine. No offense to those plans, but they are too ambiguous, and once I decided on the size, I didn’t even bother to look at them anymore.

I will continue the project on Sunday morning, and I should be able to have it glued up and ready to go in just a few hours. In the meanwhile, Lee Valley is currently offering a free shipping event so I will order the hinges from them once again. I am guessing that by the time they arrive the tool box will be ready to receive them. With that, it is already looking like a happy New Year.