Australian Wood Review - June 2018

64 Australian Wood Review

PROJECT

A

place for everything and everything in its place

is an old adage that couldn’t be truer than in the

workshop. It is a joy to work in a well organised shop.

Workflow is improved, and you don’t waste time looking

for stuff. In my workshop I have a beautiful vintage

Gerstner chest that is home to all my marking and

measuring tools. However, I didn’t have a smaller solution

for travelling that housed my essential tools. These tools

are different shapes and sizes with some tools being quite

small. With that in mind, I set out to design and build a

box that will keep my tools organised.

Start with design

First things first, pile up all the stuff you want to store,

and then play with the layout (photo 1). In my case, I had

some size restrictions for the box because I wanted it to be

able to fit in my larger tool tote. I laid out my maximum

size for the outside of the box, then figured out the

thickness of my sides.

The sides can easily be made too thick, but this is largely

an aesthetic point. I settled on 12mm thick sides for this

box which is overall 255 x 200 x 125mm tall. I also decided

to include a removable, shallow tray to store the things I

use most. Things like pencils, markers and rules will live

here. The tray side thickness will be half that of the outer

box sides at 6mm.

Prep your material

All too often I see woodworkers buy the perfect width

of board and just use whatever that board gives them.

I prefer to start with wider boards so I have some choice

Travelling Tool Box

Vic Tesolin makes a take-away tool box for his essential woodworking kit.