Preliminaries - what goes in the box?

[timoore]

Have you fellows chosen some wood? Done any drawing? Done any preliminary milling? Is this moving too fast?

Here, mostly thought experiments and a bit of drawing using Blender. I still need to finalize a choice of wood (leaning towards "pin des Landes", otherwise known as Maritime Pine, or Scot's Pine). Also, I need to figure out what to do with my long planes vis à vis the interior partitions.

I like where you are going with the multiple interior trays.

Tim

[djwong]

Chris,

Thanks for your preliminary dimensions. This being my first toolbox, Its good to know my thinking is not out in the weeds. I also reached the conclusion I wanted nested top trays - the lower for longer stuff and the upper for bench chisels. I am thinking to make my top tray two separate sliding trays. That way I can store some bulky items like hammers and mallets, without increasing the lower height too much. For wood selection, I have on hand a nice 11" wide slab of 8/4 VG douglas fir.

[yanai]

Have you fellows chosen some wood? Done any drawing? Done any preliminary milling? Is this moving too fast?

I won't be able to begin milling until the end of the week. Wood right now is at a premium, but I think I have enough kiri (桐) to do the interior trays and bottom. I have plenty of spruce and fir as well. I have some mahogany from the furniture company that went under, but with wood prices what they are in Japan, I may want to save it. I'll be finished clearing the place out by the end of the week and will have a better idea of what wood I'll have by then.

No drawings at this point, but I don't plan to change much. I don't want to over complicate the first project. I also plan on keeping it's contents simple. So say for the first attempt I plan on making a box for storing chisels, a mallet, some measuring tools, pencils and maybe some other marking tools. I don't see this as being the only box I make, so I thought I'd make a few for specific sets of tools and keep them in the shop. I also thought I'd make another if need be for housing an "on site" set of hand tools.

Personally I think I'd be making things too difficult to try and make one box to do everything.

[Chris Hall]

Personally I think I'd be making things too difficult to try and make one box to do everything.

You are taking a wise approach I think.

It would be great if those of you, like Tim and Michael, who live outside of N. America, could take pictures of what your local hardwood supply place looks like. I've been in Japanese lumber yards before and they are set up differently than western ones. I have no idea what a French or English lumber yard looks like and I think more than a few folks here would be curious to see.

[Chris Hall]

Chris,

Thanks for your preliminary dimensions. This being my first toolbox, Its good to know my thinking is not out in the weeds. I also reached the conclusion I wanted nested top trays - the lower for longer stuff and the upper for bench chisels. I am thinking to make my top tray two separate sliding trays. That way I can store some bulky items like hammers and mallets, without increasing the lower height too much. For wood selection, I have on hand a nice 11" wide slab of 8/4 VG Douglas Fir.

Sounds like you have some nice material to work with -have you hand planed VG fir before?

I am also starting to like the idea of the nested top trays more and more, and the sliding trays idea is worth further investigation.

[Koot]

Thank you for the nomenclature post Chris. I hadn't noticed that the battens were dovetailed until you named the parts.

Marv

[charlie]

Chris,
I'm thinking of using some local walnut I have on hand. Not wide boards, ~ 9" rough, so box would be a little shallower. OK for my meager Japanese tool collection. As someone has mentioned, the kanji on my tools is mostly "Lie-Nielsen". Looking to mill these asapracticable.

[Chris Hall]

Remember you can always edge join two boards together to obtain wider pieces...

And Walnut is a pleasure to work so that would be a fine choice for this project.

[yanai]

I'd be happy to take some pictures of the lumber yards here. Japan is very different in that most places seem not to set prices based on a board foot equivalent. It seems to be a country with a very slab oriented aesthetic, so anything ⁸/₄ and above is regarded more as a slab and thus attributed a random price based on what I believe is the sellers view of what the board is worth.

I often see really common board going for crazy prices here. It's not uncommon to see very mediocre walnut boards going for over ¥15,000 (about $2,000)... and it's not just imported wood priced like this, nice domestic woods are much more expensive.

I saw that Chris asked about hand planing douglas fir... this is actually why I'm probably not going to use my fir for this. I am far from experienced with hand planing, but I've found that fir tends to separate and peel between the hard and soft grain. In Japan, where the finished surface is almost never sanded, fir is avoided and spruce is used. Has anyone else had a similar experience with fir?

cheers,

[Chris Hall]

Has anyone else had a similar experience with fir?

It can be a bitch to work sometimes. I had a co-worker at Eastwind in California who was so pissed off with tear-out planing some Fir one day that he threw his plane across shop. Not something they tend to mention in company promotional literature...