Travel Tool Chest & Workbench Build Process

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I'm getting ever closer to (the likely unmitigated disaster that is) the glue-up. However, there's still a bit more work needed on these walnut bits:

The first job was to use my home-made grooving plane to run a 3 mm wide, 3 mm deep groove down the middle of the back face of each piece. As the groove won't be exactly in the middle, for consistency I marked the face upon which the fence ran as the top side.

I then started cutting the tenons that will go into these grooves. I used an offcut (of the same thickness) to practice on and gradually tuned the two router planes until they were at the perfect setting, one for a cut from the top side and one for a cut from the bottom. With that done it was just a case of mark, saw, chisel, router plane.

Fairly quickly I was left with a pile of pieces, all the same length and with baby tenons on the end.

At the other end of each piece, I used my new hand-cranked pillar drill to drill three 4 mm holes:

I then used a 3 mm and a 10 mm chisel to turn those holes into slots:

Finally, I cut a bit away so that the head of the screw that will go in these slots doesn't stick out. This step was probably pointless, but I did it anyway!

I think the last job on the walnut bits is to cut the front pieces to the right length. I've decided I'm going to make life difficult for myself by having a little notch at the end of the bits that go across the front. Something like this:

Cross-section:

The small bit you can see in the bottom-right corner of the cross-section will be a strip of walnut that will cover the front of the middle support and bring everything flush (hopefully).

The reason I'm doing that is partly that I think it'll look better (you won't see the ends of the housing joints in the middle supports) and partly that the distance between the faces of the uprights (sides and middle support) is well defined with my story stick whereas the distance between the bottoms of the housings is less well defined. It seems to work in my head; we'll see what happens when I actually glue it all together!

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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