You know those sheet metal tool chests with lots of drawers mounted on casters, that usually come with a bottom and top cabinet? I've had one from Sears (Craftsman) for years and it's overflowing with tools, so I thought it was time for another one. These things are $500-1300 for ones with ball bearing slides and good casters, which is a lot to play with when I think about a DIY version.
Looking at my chest, the tools are pretty evenly split in volume between woodworking tools and machinist type tools, so I thought the new one would be for the woodworking tools. If that was the case, I started looking for some designs with a tree or wood theme, and here is what I came up with.
I separated the top and bottom cabinets with the middle shelf open to set things on temporarily, a feature I like for fiddling with the tools to get them ready to use. A couple of Dover book carving designs looked good, so I worked them over, one pattern for the bottom three drawers, and another for the top two. I always liked the woodsy oak leaf look of Al Stohlman's leather embossing designs, so I kept that in mind when looking through the 1500 ornaments in the Dover book.
The tool chest design is a modified (different dimensions,etc) from one shown in issue 79 of Shop Notes, but it is pretty simple.
Also taking inspiration from Stohlman's designs that sometimes used colored stain on the leather, after CNC carving each drawer front, I colored the designs with a wash (diluted) of acrylic paint (sap green, burnt umber, burnt sienna) and then applied gel stain. The nice solid brass knobs I had left over from an old kitchen project - not throwing things away sometimes pays off!
The drawers have full extension ball bearing slides, the cabinet has lockable heavy casters, and I lined each drawer with those rubbery drawer liners.
The other photos are of the chest as a whole, and a closeup of the drawer fronts. There is more info on it at
www.liming.org/toolchest if you are curious.
I enjoyed this project!
