Travel Tool Chest & Workbench Build Process
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Posted 30th November 2023
The plane tote drawer insert thing has finished 3D printing now (with cut-outs for protruding blades).
It's printed in 4 main parts, partly because of the limited size of the bed of the 3D printer and partly to make sure that the top surface was nice and smooth. There are also some small (hidden) alignment pins and a thin alignment strip that stop top and bottom bits wandering apart (not that I can think why they would). The construction is probably more obvious from the CAD model:
It fits the new drawer nicely:
This shows how the long smoothing plane overhangs the drawer:
In parallel with the print jobs, I decided to revisit something that's been bugging me for several months. You may remember that, when I oiled the box back in June-ish, a crack appeared that I hadn't seen before:
The hope was that it would close up with time, but it hasn't and it's a little unsightly. I've never tried fitting a grain-matched Dutchman before (the one on the back of the chest was just a random bit of chestnut and the butterfly things on the shooting board were in a contrasting wood). I wasn't really sure how to go about it, but I thought I'd try my best and see what happens. This was what I did (I'd be interested to hear if there are good alternative approaches to getting the grain match right).
I started by laying a bit of tracing paper over the side of the chest and using a pencil to draw the grain onto the paper:
(disclaimer: that photo was taken after fitting the Dutchman as I realised I hadn't taken one at the time actually did the tracing!)
I then searched through the pile of offcuts until I found something that matched relatively well. I cut it out, planed the sides at a slight angle (thanks Mike G), traced around it with a knife and cut the shape out with chisels and router plane. Glue and some light hammering got it to this stage:
Then it was just a case of planing it down with a smoothing plane and reapplying Mike's Magic Mix:
For a first attempt at a discrete Dutchman, I was really pleased with that.
Page 123 of 144
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