Hand tool storage Archives - Les Ateliers Bonzai

March 25, 2018May 15, 2018

New cutting/serving boards and inspiration

So to start with, it’s been busy on the cutting/serving boards side of the shop were a few ideas were sprung in the past last week. Here are a few pictures. Many of you have seen some but here they are

Planche à charcuterie avec saucisson et fromage au barbecue
Charcuterie board with dried sausage and cheese grilled on the bbq

Wine Bottle formed cutting/serving board

Small Cutting boards – Planches de services

New Wood

To make some of these cutting/serving board, I went to get some wood and brought back some extra species for more projects.
Some Blood wood for some accents in the cutting board but also some other accents for futur build.
The Pao Amarillo is a Yellow wood, also used mostly for some accents in the boards.
As for the Khaya, this has some very nice tight straight grain, with the dimensions it has, offers a few good possibilities for some nice projects.

Tool Cabinet

Well it’s mostly finish. Need to finish some drawers and this one will be complete. Already have most of the storage I want to do for the current tools I’ve got done and the tools are in.
There will always be some adjustments to be done and already planning for some additions of tools that I would need and was already in the plan. I’ve already got the perfect spot for them and kept it free for these tools. Standby, should come shortly.

The inspiration

The inspiration portion has been pretty good in the last few weeks. Been listening to the Made for Profit podcast and they have been landing very good interviews of people crushing it with there business and through different practice with there social media accounts.
Discovering these people through there website and different social media account got some ideas going which will come pretty soon on my side. My wood working is still very part time but plan to grow it. Many good insights for some of the practices in the interviews with Brad and Mike. Subscribe to the podcast and go see them with there respective presence.

July 13, 2017

Tool Cabinet – Doors and structure

The main cabinet structure is finally assemble with a back and the front doors are progressing.

Structure

The shell of the cabinet is finally assembled and the back is now in place and screwed to the main structure.

The shelf is in place for the place till and serve as a divider for the lower part of the cabinet. The Interior shot has the 2 sides for the plane till (not visible too much, but present). The panel of the plane till can now be placed on the 2 support and rest on the back and shelf.
The interior organisation can now start to be built according to plan. Most of the structure will be built as per plan but the tool holding will vary as my tool set differs. As I build the different components, the organisation is also being taught off and should progress as there is progress and got some time to put on the cabinet.

Doors

There is 2 front doors to the cabinet that also doubles as tool storage. Again, the exact tool storage strategy is not quite defined yet. As with the main cabinet, they are still in the planning phase.

Joinery of Frames of the Tool cabinet door

Face Frame Joinery of tool cabinet doors

Pictures above are some of the shots showing the progress. They are only dry fitted for the time being and the next step is to put some glue to finalise the setup. They are also missing a small hand plane pass to remove the marks for the proper assembly of the parts.
The face frames are also missing the panels that are not cut yet. The wood is selected, still in the rough state. Before the glue up for the face frames and then to the other frame, the panels will be assembled and rabetted to fit into the groove inside the frame.

April 19, 2017

Tool Cabinet – Outer Shell Redo

Here is the outer shell after the first glue up

Outer shell of the Tool Cabinet on edge — Tool Cabinet on edge

Well it is not anymore. I was able to salvage the sides and top/bottom for different parts but for the outer shell, I had to mill more lumber to be able to redo it.

Why Redo the Outer Shell

There are multiple reason to have done this.

Not square from the get go
- When I originally glued up the outer shell , it was not square although I did a dry run
- the shelf was cut too long and not properly fitted in length when glued the outer shell together
Crappy dovetail
- Personally, there gaps that I am willing to tolerate, but not that much. I should of not glued it up like that from the get go and should of cut the strip to redo them

So back to square 1.5…. Not quite from scratch but pretty close. But I am not really discouraged by this, just doing what I should of done from poor job and maybe trying to go too fast or too tired when cutting the joints or what ever the reason.
Even though this is shop furniture, I still like them too look good and don’t want to redo it in whatever time because I did a not so good job. It does practice and shop time and good organisation of tools.
The lumber is now dimensioned for the outer shell and the dovetails are layout on the main vertical members and now time for sawing to perfection.
Enough writing, lets go woodworking.

April 12, 2017

Simple is better

Some times, simple is better. Trying to overcomplicate things is where you loose time for something that is not really worth it.
Sometimes it is worth it to try a new technique or something that you are learning, but not this time for me.
Around Christmas time, I received some gift certificates for a local tool shop (Outils Pierre Berger) and had spotted some sets of screwdrivers that I had been looking for a while. They are Wera screwdrivers set. I had tried these screwdrivers and felt good in my hand and was the occasion to pull the trigger on them.

Installed the screwdrivers near the workbench

They came with sets of hangers that you can hand in different places. Until I started redoing my tool cabinet to store the different tool set, I found that I did not really have a good place to fit it in. Did not really want to make new tool holders to fit in the cabinet.
They have since been lying on my workbench without a proper place to hold them and when I was reaching for one of the screwdrivers, I always reminded myself that I had to do something to hold them properly.
So I started with French cleats and tried to arrange something with some scrap wood lying in the shop to construct the assembly and would be long enough to span between the studs.
Well I tried and failed with the french cleat. I will not go into the details of the assembly that I tried but finally decided to abandoned this install and just found 2 pieces of wood that was big enough to screw 2 screws in the stud (so tall enough) so it would not move and have enough width so that the holder would fit on each of the piece of wood.
All that to say that it was a simple install, just procrastinated long enough and ultimately took about 5 minutes to install and 8 screws and now they are accessible and and I am very happy.

February 23, 2017

Tool Cabinet – Shelf install and fitting

As the main carcase now fitted, it was time to include work for the shelf that is located in the lower 3rd of the carcase of the tool cabinet. It serves to stiffen the whole body with the through tenons joinery.
it also serves as the base for the plane til that will hold the various planes that will be in the case at an angle

Joinery

As mentionned, the joinery between the shelf and the 2 sides are through tenons, protruding about 1/16 outside of the case.

Square through tenons that will hold a shelf for the tool cabinet

The above picture shows the through tenons still needing a little bit of love to excavate the hole one on of the sides. I drilled most of the waste with a hand drill and then chiseled the rest of the waste up to the layout lines.

Layout

part of the dimensions were derived from the plan and from the stock itself. I mentioned in the last post that the shelf had an edge that was bruised somewhat and might have been concerned that it could affect the placement of the tenons on the shelf
Well, taking dimensions form the assembled tool cabinet case and with the layout form the plan, this was not a problem at all and will be able to have a full tenon without changing the original placement of the tenons on the shelf

The above pictures shows the layout for the 3 tenons. Because the shelf is thicker then the tenons, I preferred to do the mortises before and fit the tenons accordingly once the mortises were cut and chiseled out form the side walls.
Just need to clean up a bit the shelf from the remaining glue line and fit the thickness of the tenons with what was cut on the sides then break out the hand saw for the other cuts. Will remove the waste between the tenons with a small saw and sneak up to the line with the chisels from both sides of the board.
Once this is fitted with both sides, the carcase will need a dry fit and could then be glued up.

October 20, 2014

Joinery plane storage

As I started to build my collection of hand tools, storage became a somewhat priority. The more traditional hand planes were not to big of a deal, but the storage of the joinery planes became somewhat of an issue because of there shape.
About 3 years ago, I built a cabinet from one of the Tools and shop edition of Fine Woodworking. The built was pretty much as is for the carcase, but for the tool storage details, I did not commit too much originally as my tool collection grew.
I had my first 2 saws stored in it, but then that grew so I built a dedicated Saw Till to store the saws. But as I grew my plane collection, some of them were pretty odd shaped and did not fit into the normal places that the original carcase provided, not that there was something wrong with it, just me not committing to something yet.
I looked at many articles from various source and taught of many options to try to store my 2 router planes, my low plane and rabbeting plane. They stood for a long time on the top of the cubbyhole shelve, but taking space and was really not practical.
I then looked into the ramped option to use the big empty space in the middle of the case. I looked rapidly at the dimensions I could use and this what I kept as the main principal for the 4 planes mentioned earlier. I was able to use about half the width dimensions of the case, leaving the other half to implement other storage ideas. This is the result of the ramp

From a height perspective, it takes about half of it so I was able to put a tool rack to store my marking gage and some plane screwdrivers, giving me enough space to take out the planes and the screwdrivers from where they are. Also notice a nice empty space in the middle. Still not decided what to put there, but I will surely find something.
As for the right side of the case, I still need to organise my chisels, which were stored in an inset door that I removed. I also need to address blade storage (normal plane blades and router plane blades). I also need to properly address square storage, but for now, my joinery plane storage can be but at rest, for now 🙂