Dutch Tool Chest in Spain - Part IV - Complete

Except for the inside. I'll set up the guts after we get back from our Christmas travels.

Ta-daaaaaa!

I am very pleased with the results, and would like to thank Christopher Schwarz for making such a nice video on the construction of this chest. More on the video shortly.

I used only Roman nails, even to attach the battens for the large panels like the lid.

The handles look great on this bright yellow chest. By the way, it is bright yellow instead of red with a yellow undercoat because the pepper spice I intended to use for the colorant wound up looking like orange baby poop instead of a nice, brick red. The Frau really liked the yellow, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked it too.

I had to use about six coats (maybe more, I don't remember) in order for this light color to cover. There still is some parts that you can see under the paint, but mostly I'm happy. That, and I refuse to use more than four liters of skim milk.

I painted over the nail heads, too. To clean them up, I found that a Q-tip soaked in water did a good job of removing the paint on them. I think I have to buy the Frau some more Q-tips now.

The chest lift really pops against a bright background.

I got the lifts from Jonas, as they were manufactured a short distance from his house in Denmark. They came with a thick coat of zinc, so we stripped that and torched it with a thin coat of boiled linseed oil, which left them such a nice black color.

When I first installed the hinges (that I got from Olav), they installed a bit different than I expected, and the lid didn't fit. All it took was to move the hinges back on the lid a little bit, but that left an extra set of screw holes. No big deal, as they were covered by the hinges themselves, but I decided to plug them anyway.

While I'm at it, the lid fit just a little tight on one side, resulting from one of the hinges being off just a gnat's nadger. I decided to plug those holes, too, and install the hinge just a little farther to the right.

Plugging holes with bamboo skewers. Greg would be proud.

They get sawed off flush with my Dick saw.

Hinges installed and visible from the back.

Here is a photo of the inside. The inside gets no finish, as this works well for keeping tools.

As you can see, I still need to sort out the guts, and make it friendly to hold tools.

The bottom will work nicely, I think. I'll have to see what I keep down here. I may make a few small boxes to hold things safely.

More likely I'll over stuff it with tools and slam the front on before they fall out.

There is just one little niggle, now. The battens touch the chest locks. I'll work this out and get them to close one way or the other.

Battens are resting on the chest locks.

Here's a closer view. I don't think this is much of a problem, just some triming of one or the other.

The Frau thought that this chest looks like a German mail box now that it is yellow.

I suppose she's right.

Over all, this was a fun project that suited itself well to my tool set. I had purchased Christopher Schwarz's video (streaming from Lie-Nielsen), and I enjoyed watching it before the build.

Schwarz's videos are great because he gets real basic with how to perform each part of the build. He has several videos describing how he does dovetails, but he describes it on this one, too. I highly recommend this video, and even if you know how you want to build it, some questions you might have will likely be answered.

I think that once you understand why he does it the way he does on the video, you can choose for yourself if that is how you would do it. For example, I used a much more modest tool set to build mine, and I also used clenched nails to fix the battens on the large panels, something he does in a different way.

Not that my way is better, but my way fit my idea of how it should be done, and more importantly, my tool set.

I am really looking forward to having a proper place to keep my tools. I really miss my tool chest from my Munich workshop, and I think this will be a good solution.