I’ve been very slowly putting the final few stages of the tool chest design into settled, final positions and this has mostly been delayed because I keep getting different ideas of how I want it to look and function. So I’ve been working out the detail and sizing specs of a couple of hidden drawers which will be accessible whether the front gate is open or shut. And I’ve got some excellent mahogany trim stock in stepped sizes, so I can come up with many different trim molding shapes and style with light and darker contrasting colors. So once that’s all worked out, sanded smooth and finished off with a few coats of tung oil to bring out the full detail of the wood and give it a moderate coating of protection as the tung oil I’m using has a varnish component to its formulation, so the more coats you put on, the more colorful and shiny it will look. 3 coats will be the minimum I’ll start with and see how it looks at that point.
The chest is a good size and with just use of the lower and top shelves alone, (as shown in the "open" version of this picture), will hold a pretty decent amount of my measurement tools and gives me room enough to grab something and put it back with decent odds that I won’t knock a bunch of neighboring stuff over, if I’m a bit off my aim at picking up a tool from it.. I suppose too, that I could further add in a few smaller width drawers in a couple of spots in the lower compartment but if I do, they’ll likely be fairly short in height to maintain a good sized open concept approach to that space. We’ll see.
Also, for those of you following along my latest series of projects, you might have noticed that this team of open-closed pictures shows I’ve got a different mirror placed where the Gibbard mini mirror was planned to be put together and installed there. I’m pretty sure I’ll still go that route, but for now, I found this lovely old family keepsake which belonged to my late mother, who was responsible for producing my artistic drives in music and graphics in a number of different disciplines. So I get crazy ideas ideas and lots of them. Often just by doing something that we all did as children: playing with building blocks or the Mechano/Lego sets. It was a way to spark one’s imagination and learn all about how to make things.
So now my building blocks are made out of amazingly beautiful exotic hardwoods and I treat them slightly better then I did with the kid versions, which all got beaten up and broken from the punishment an exuberant kid will inflict upon them. But the current day ones perform the same magic trick; by forming them into different shapes and positions and then getting blessed with wonderful crazy ideas about what to build next.
Life is good, some days. 🙂
Cheers! 🙂
