There are lots of ways to store hand tools. Among these are drawers and cabinets under the workbench, open shelves and pegboard systems, a large lidded joiner’s chest, Gerstner-style chests, steel mechanic’s chests, and wall cabinets. Some woodworkers may even feel comfortable with their tools simply scattered about the shop and constantly shifting places.

Why store your tools in an enclosed unit? Tools work best when they are kept free of debris and rust. An ordered, safe place for tools improves your efficiency. In short, your tools are valuable and deserve their own place.

This series has described my approach; it works for me. It is neither perfect nor original, but it does have a solid rationale and will hopefully be useful for ideas as readers make or alter their own set ups.

Here is a summary of the underlying concepts in this tool cabinet.

1. Space economy:

• Small footprint; use of airspace (For me, this is the biggest advantage of this design.)
• Outer surfaces, top, and stand are put to use
• Efficient use of room inside the cabinet

2. Accessibility and convenience:

• Majority of tools can be reached directly without shifting other tools out of the way
• Little or no bending
• The cabinet is placed next to the workbench
• Wide-open presentation of the tools provides mental access to them
• No need to use separate saw guards and tool sheaths

3. Flexibility:

• Layout is easily changed as tools are added or retired
• Generally logical storage
• Storage conflicts are resolved based on the frequency of use and protection required by the tool 

4. Practical:

• Simple, undandified aesthetic
• Simple construction
• Inexpensive
• Durable

This tool cabinet with its many features substantially adds to my ease and clarity in the shop. Most important is to set up your tool cabinet and your shop to suit, to the extent possible, how you prefer to work. In this way your environment contributes to your ease and efficiency, and ultimately, to the quality and joy of your work.

The six drawers are very simply constructed. Half-inch poplar 5-ply is used for the front, sides, and back, and 1/4″ maple-faced plywood for the bottom. The sides and bottom are glued and screwed into rabbets in the front piece. The back is butt-jointed to the sides. The bottom extends out from the sides and is screwed to the sides and back from underneath.

The bottom runs, with a little paraffin, in 1/4″ x 1/4″ dadoes in the cabinet side and the center partition. The piano hinges get in the way of the dado but no problem, just hacksaw out tiny squares in the hinge to clear the way. The drawers have not failed in 25 years. 

Let’s take a look inside.

The upper right drawer contains small planes, layout tools, and coping and fret saw blades. Notice the compartments on each side for plane blades, pairs of which are stored with their beveled faces together. The bottom of the drawer is lined with Zerust material, a soft rubbery mesh which emits harmless corrosion-inhibiting vapor. This material is grippy like a router mat and so prevents tools from shifting, bumping, and rattling when the drawer is open and closed. It lines all the drawers.

Next below, the rasp drawer is the most engineered of the group. 1/8th-inch MDF slats are held in the slots of stick-on plastic divider holders. The spaces so constructed are wide at one end and narrow at the other to make maximum use of the room in the drawer. The divisions can easily be rearranged and, of course, have been many times. 

Next below is the most jumbled drawer containing machine accessories such as wrenches, tiny parts, router template bushings, and so forth. The top drawer contains sets of coping and fret saw blades (hand tools) in plastic tubes, but this drawer has power jig saw blades in the same type of tubes. This is an example of my preference to group tools by general class, when practical.  

The three drawers on the left side also each contain logically grouped tools. The top left drawer has metal files, small diamond hones, metal cutters, and so forth, while the drawer below it has adjustable Starrett squares and other layout tools, and below that are drilling accessories.

The storage - divided or free-form - is appropriate to the tools. Thus, spanner wrenches get jumbled together, tiny shims get stored in a plastic box, while edge tools, rasps, and precision layout tools get the protection they need.

Next: summary and conclusions.

Three adjustable 3/4″ pine shelves are held with 1/4″ plastic locking shelf supports. The top of the drawer bank and the bottom of the case effectively make a total of five shelves. Let’s take a look, starting at the top shelf.

The photos show the mere 3 inches of space above the top shelf on which are stored mostly chisels, along with some knives. To the right is a gaggle of screwdrivers. Each chisel and knife is protected in a pocket of a leather tool roll that has been cut lengthwise along its midline and positioned at the rear of the shelf. I know my tools well enough to recognize each one by its handle end.

The next level down - the top of the drawer bank - holds small planes, scrapers, and spokeshaves. Each plane’s parking space is delineated by a thin strip of wood held in place with just two small brads. Of course, as you would guess, these are easy to reposition. Card scrapers are held in a piece of 2×4 into which kerfs have been sawn along the grain.

Notice the safe storage of the 24″ Starrett straightedge in a slot that has been table-sawn into the edge of the top shelf. In the second photo, the little keeper tab has been rotated out of the way and the straightedge is partially withdrawn. The photo, below, shows the same storage for an 18″ Starrett combination square blade. The small block sitting on the shelf, to the right of the yellow tape measure, is used to withdraw the straightedges. A rare-earth magnet is inset into the end of the block and covered with duct tape to prevent metal-to-metal scratching.*

Also notice the Cortec rust inhibitor cup, one of two in the cabinet, stuck onto the back panel under the top shelf.

The next shelf, my favorite, holds most of my major planes in the same type of parking spots described above. Unfortunately, the jointer and the two jacks have to be stored along the length of the shelf and therefore are exceptions to the desirable arrangement of unblocked access to each tool. It’s not much of an issue though, because I don’t use the jointer, parked in the back, nearly as frequently as the jacks, whose parking spaces are interchangeable.

The lower two shelves hold, in no special system, all sorts of items including drill bits, tapes, mallets, and tool documentation. Here it is practically impossible to have direct access to everything, but I do prioritize access based on how frequently I use the items. The 30-drawer, plastic small-parts chest holds small screws and lots of little tools and parts that would otherwise tend to get misplaced.

Next, a look at the drawers, simple and practical.

*[This straightedge storage tip may seem familiar; I submitted it to the December 2008 Popular Woodworking.]

The doors of the cabinet, as mentioned in the first installment of this series, are built from 1×3s and 1/4″ plywood to give a usable depth of 2″. This depth creates more room and more options for storage than in a flat door.

The photos, above and below, show the saw storage system. A 1/4″ plywood panel is secured to the door stiles with wood cleats and screws to create a pocket approximately one inch wide (front to back). This pocket is divided into specifically sized sections for the saws using narrow wood strips that are held in place only with screws that go through the panel (not through the front face of the door).

This system works to hold Japanese saws, using a hooks and eyes, as well as Western backsaws which are simply inserted point down into their slots. Even the big Disston D-7 has a home, using a fitted cleat for the handle which can be seen in photos in the previous two posts.

The outer faces of these panels have space for many other tools including squares in their own notches, blocks that hold gimlets and marking tools, and small rules held with magnets.

Everything finds its protected place and there is no need to use annoying saw guards and tool sheaths. Each tool can be removed and returned without moving any other tools. (The fret saw is the sole exception.) Furthermore, the arrangements can be changed, and they have been, many times, as you can tell by the holes.

The photo, below, shows the lower section of the right-side door. The 18″ Starrett bevel-edge straightedge is held in place by a rare-earth magnet. Near its upper left corner, a shallow hole drilled into the stile allows a finger to get under the tool’s corner to lift it out. Three paring chisels sit in their fitted block. A Warrington-style hammer has its own fitted parking spot. An azebiki and a flush cut saw have their pockets.

The main idea is to be creative and flexible in making spaces for the tools. Over the years, I’ve added, discarded, and especially upgraded various tools. While I do less of this now, it does continue, and so the tool cabinet is repeatedly modified. By the way, I have only tools that I use to make things; I’m not interested in collecting tools.

Next: a look at the shelf arrangements.

In small-shop woodworking, space management is important, unless you happen to have just too darn much shop space and don’t know what to do with all of it. Anybody? I guess not. OK, then, let’s look at space economy and overall organization in this tool cabinet.

A structure of this size effectively creates walls that can be put to use. On the left outside “wall” of the cabinet, hang four pairs of pinch rods, a pair of 30″ winding sticks, and a 4-foot stick for trammel points. The right side (hidden from view) provides storage for a crosscut handsaw, a 50″ straightedge, and a 24″ level. The left door front holds a couple of handy reference charts and the Lee Valley Wood Movement Reference Guide.

The insides of the doors hold mostly saws because they are big, flat, and would be awkward to store on shelves. Paring chisels are too long for the depth of the case so they get an area on the lower right door. Most of the remaining door space is used for measuring and marking tools that I use very often such as marking knives, everyday squares, rules and pencils, as well as sundry items whose berth evolved there.

The holders for these tools will be discussed later, but here I emphasize that the layout often changes. If a new or upgraded tool comes into the family, I have no qualms about drilling some new holes, making a new structure, or cutting out a place for it. I don’t mind one bit that the doors are pockmarked with some tool history.

More detail will come in later posts, but here is the basic layout of the case:

• The top shelf holds chisels and screwdrivers.
• The second shelf has small planes, scrapers, gauges, and spokeshaves.
• The six drawers: 1) metal working tools, 2) Starrett and other precision tools, 3) drilling accessories, 4) small planes, plane irons, gauges, 5) rasps, 6) machine accessories, wrenches.
• The next shelf down has the large planes. One minor disadvantage of this cabinet is having to remove two jack planes to reach the jointer in the back.
• The lower two shelves hold a 30-drawer small parts chest and a variety of other items including more drill bits, tapes, moisture meters, tool manuals, and a set of carving tools that I should use more often.

The key points are space economy, flexibility, accessibility, a generally logical layout, and a non-pretty, very practical approach.

Next: a closer look at the doors and the saw berths.

When I built this tool cabinet 25 years ago, I did not expect it to last this long. You know how it is: “I’ll just build something plain and practical now and make something nicer sometime later.” It was a time of stress and joy with a new family in a new house, and, of course, a new shop. My previous systems of tool storage using chests, shelves, cabinets, and even a closet, needed an upgrade and I wanted to make it quickly.

Well, “sometime later” has come and gone, and this old dog is still doing its job well. It is not perfect (what is?) but I feel no need to build a new one. In this series of posts (not necessarily contiguous), I will discuss the construction and features of the cabinet and why it works for me. Though a few readers may want to make one just like it, more likely this discussion will be a source for ideas to incorporate into your own designs for tool storage. I used ideas, many from sources I’ve long forgotten, plus some of my own, for this cabinet, for which I make no pretense of originality.

The overall design - a cabinet with two large, deep doors, standing on a low frame - allows a wide-open presentation of my hand tools. When I open those doors, it’s time to work. The great majority of tools can be reached directly, with little or no bending, and without shifting other tools out of the way. Being right-handed, I placed the cabinet immediately to the right of the workbench, giving me quick physical and mental access to the tools. In a small footprint of about 4 feet by 14 inches, a remarkable quantity of tools is stored.

There are many good ways to store hand tools. Everyone is entitled to his preference, but personally, I do not care for dandified tool wall cabinets or dovetailed chests that sit on the floor.

Here we go. The overall dimensions are 48″ high by 37″ wide by 14″ deep. The inside of the cabinet case has a depth of 11 1/4″. It contains three adjustable shelves and an 11″ high drawer bank with six drawers. Four drawers have inside depths of 2 ½”, and two have 3 ½”. The doors have an inside usable depth of 2″. The stand elevates the cabinet 16 ½” off the ground. The back panel extends 2 1/4″ above the surface of the top which has 7/8″ high guard rails on each side. If I was to do it over, I’d probably make the case an inch or two deeper, but this one is doing just fine.

The case is decent quality 3/4″ poplar 7-ply, butt-jointed, glued, and screwed. The rabbeted 1/4″ plywood back and the three-piece drawer bank frame make the case plenty resistant to racking, though it would be better to rabbet the case corners.

The doors are 1×3 poplar assembled with simple glued and screwed butt joints. Each door is nonetheless very sturdy because the 1/4″ plywood panel is glued in grooves all around, and there are several frame structures on the interior. The doors are joined to the case with piano hinges.

The stand is constructed of notched and screwed 2×4s and contains a shelf for storing jigs and templates. The cabinet is actually standing on the bottom edges of its sides which extend ½” below the bottom. The stiles of the stand extend 1/4″ above the rails to help position the cabinet.

Next: we’ll look at space management, starting with the outside surfaces of the cabinet, and then the overall organization inside.

For sawing dovetails, as well as various other tasks, this vise raises the work piece to a more comfortable height than does the typical bench front vise. It was first described by Joseph Moxon, the seventeenth century author of The Art of Joinery. Credit for its revival and refinement goes to Chris Schwarz, editor of Popular Woodworking, who published a modern adaptation of Moxon’s text along with extensive new analysis. Chris published plans for a vise in the December 2010 PW. Stephen Shepherd’s insights and the variations produced by web authors such as Derek Cohen have added to our shared knowledge. What a wonderful example of the vibrancy of current woodworking!

That said, I’ll toss in my two cents: I built my version of the vise and would like to share it with readers.

I used an 8/4 cherry board that had been hanging around the shop far too long and $22 of hardware available locally. The vise jaws are 1 3/4″ thick, 6″ high, and 19 1/4″ wide, with a clamping capacity of 14 1/8″ between the bolts. The ½” diameter 8″ carriage bolts are set in functionally shaped handles. Each is secured with a cross pin (finishing nail) passing through a hole drilled in the shaft of the bolt. The handle shape facilitates a one finger spin of the lightly waxed bolt as well as a solid grip to sock the jaws tight. Clamping thickness capacity is at least 2 ½”.

In the front jaw, for smooth operation and to protect the wood, each bolt is supported in a ½” ID, 3/4″ OD, 1 1/8″ long oiled bronze bushing which sits in a stepped hole. To prevent erosion of the bushing, the first 1 1/2″ of the bolt threads is filled with epoxy and the sharp edges of the threads were eased with a file. A 1/4″ thick, ½” ID, 1 5/8″ OD nylon washer, sanded flat, placed between the handle and the front jaw, protects the wood.

To receive the bolt in the rear jaw, a 2″ long coupling nut was hacksawed to about 1 3/16″ and set from the back side into a stepped hole chiseled to a matching hexagon. This gives more support than a regular hex nut. A wood screw that meets it from the side prevents any chance of the nut twisting in its housing.

The rear cleat, about 1 3/4″ square in section, extends to each side 2 1/4″ beyond the jaws and allows for convenient clamping to the bench. Thanks to Derek Cohen for this idea. I chamfered the edges and finished the wood with one coat of oil-varnish.

One more detail. Quartersawn wood would have been ideal but I used flatsawn wood because that is all I had available in this thickness. It will inevitably cup and reverse through the seasons. I wanted to avoid a vise that in some seasons would grip the wood only at the central part of the jaw faces and thus make the work piece prone to slipping. I arranged the growth rings as shown in the first photo below and not like the photo beneath it.

Here’s why. I built the vise during the approximate midrange of the yearly humidity cycle in my shop. I left the inner surface of each jaw very slightly concave across its width. As the driest months come along, the inner surface of the front jaw will become more concave while the mating surface of the rear jaw will become flat, then slightly convex. Thus, the grip will be maintained at the limits of the width of the jaws. As the humid months come along, the rear jaw’s inner surface will become more concave (than now) while that of the front jaw will become flat, then slightly convex, again maintaining a good grip of the work piece. Too punctilious you say? Well, the pieces were going to be given some arrangement and I preferred giving it some thought rather than just guessing, and this is one simple solution.

The vise now has had test runs in the shop and I like it a lot. It feels more ergonomic for use with a Western dovetail saw than with a Japanese saw due to differences in the handle angles, but it is good for both.

A bench hook is a handy workbench accessory, mostly for crosscutting small parts. This version works well with both Western push saws and Japanese pull saws.

I try to keep workshop jigs and fixtures as simple as possible (”but no simpler,” per Einstein) and this one is no exception. It is constructed from plywood and maple, using simple glue and biscuit joints. The base is 12″ wide by 9″ deep with a 13/16″ high by 1″ wide maple fence at the middle and a 2″ wide cleat for hooking the bench. It could just as well be screwed together. The fence is shortened on the right side for a right-handed woodworker.

For use with push-stroke saws, the jig is simply placed on the bench top with the cleat catching the front edge of the bench. The work is held in place by hand with forward pressure against the front side of the fence. Aided by the sawing pressure, this also holds the bench hook itself in place.

For use with pull-stroke saws, the work is placed against the back side of the fence. Since the sawing pressure is toward the user, it will pull the work against the fence but will also tend to displace the bench hook. This is not a problem for light work because I can lean forward the heel of my left hand against the fence to stabilize the bench hook while gripping the work piece against the far side of the fence with the rest of my hand. For more substantial pieces it is better to secure the bench hook in the front vise of the workbench.

I do not generally use the end of the fence as a guide for the saw, and do not use a fence with 90̊ or 45̊ kerfs, though some may prefer these options. I work to a line marked on the wood and just eyeball noncritical cuts.

This bench hook is unscarred because it is new, replacing one of the same design that got too beat up. As with so many tools in woodworking, it takes a long time and many situations to get a real sense of the effectiveness and versatility of shop jigs. This design has served well over many years so I continued it for the new one, only making it slightly larger.

The bench hook comes in handy for more than sawing. All sorts of work on very small pieces, such as paring and chopping seems to get done on the front side, against the fence. I do not shoot on it; I use a shooting board for that.

Once again, simple and proven effective.

In previous posts, I described my router table and fence. They use a simple approach without router lifts, drop-in fitted plates, table slots, miter gauges, or proprietary tables and fences.

Yet upon noticing a handy-looking router table fence micro adjuster in a catalog, I was tempted. It looked straightforward enough. I studied the item in the store and figured, 24 tpi on the lead screw, well, let’s see, that’s 1/24″ per turn, 1/64″ = 3/8 turn, .004″ = about 1/10 turn. No gradation markings. . . forget it. It would not be easy to move the fence a discrete tiny numerical increment, and why else would I want a micro adjuster?

So how do I accurately adjust my router table fence? The answer is: as directly as possible, preferring consistency over absolute measurements, and using one-sided tolerance woodworking techniques which are easily compensated. For example, if I want grooves for a drawer bottom to be 3/8″ from the edge, I set the fence to a reasonably close 3/8″ and plan the work to cut all the parts with that setting. As an example of one-sided tolerance, to cut a rabbet, use the part that will fit in the rabbet to adjust the fence, adding just a hair of depth. The slight excess of lip is easily trimmed after assembly, whereas too little depth would require lots of corrective planing.

There are rare circumstances, however, when it is helpful to move the fence a tiny, specific numerical distance. If I make a cut with the router table and, for some reason, I do not want to alter the mating part to fit, I use .001″ resolution calipers to measure the difference between the cut part and the mating part and thus the amount I need to move the fence to accurately finish the cut.

I use one screw to attach an inexpensive dial indicator to a stick which gets clamped on the table with the tip of the indicator against the fence. The fence is then moved according to the direct readout on the indicator. It would be possible permanently rig a dial indicator to the fence and table but that would be too fussy for rare use.

Alternatively, without a dial indicator, to retract the fence, clamp a block to the table near the end of the fence to register the initial fence position, loosen that end of the fence, interpose a feeler gauge, snug the fence up to it, and retighten the fence. To advance the fence, set the feeler gauge against the fence, snug up and clamp the block against it, loosen the fence, remove the feeler gauge, bring the fence against the block, and retighten the fence. The increment at the bit is half the measured amount at the end of the fence. These procedures are far easier and more intuitive to do than to read or write them!

For bit height, I also like to work directly, but if a measured movement is needed, the very fine adjuster with marked gradations on the Bosch 1617 router works well.

In summary, I adjust the router table fence with direct, low-tech methods the vast majority of the time, and very occasionally employ simple methods using basic multipurpose tools (that I already own) to produce specific measured adjustments.

And I saved myself from another mind-cluttering, special-purpose gadget.

In designing cabinets and boxes, it is often necessary to limit the travel of a door or lid. Hardware options include folding stays, sliding stays, chains, and various types of supports. While some are purely practical and some more elegant, I did not feel any of the manufactured choices I was considering for this pair of small doors was in keeping with the overall nature of the piece. The problem was the metal itself - hard, noisy, overbuilt, and, well, metallic.

I wanted this component to be quiet and organic, so I did some experimenting and came up with a wood and leather concoction that functions well and complements the overall piece. It is also simple.

Braided bolo leather cord, 1/8″ diameter, in a tan color that matches the wood, is epoxied into a 1/8″ diameter hole going fully through the length of a 1″ x 7/16″ x 7/16″ maple block. To further secure the cord, a brass 0.050″ wire brad (local Ace Hardware) is gently tapped through a slightly undersized hole crossing the width of the near portion of the block and passing through the cord. The pin is clipped and filed flush at each end. A small countersunk screw attaches the block to the door or cabinet interior.

Experimentation will show where to place the blocks, considering these factors:

• the desired limit of the door opening
• a balance between putting the blocks too far away from the hinge side where the cord will be too obtrusive, and too close to the hinge side where too much leverage placed on the cord risks breaking it
• the blocks must not bump into each other when the door is closed
• there must be room for the cord to easily tuck away without curling too much when the door is closed (also, avoid twisting the cord)
• what looks right

The diameter of the cord, up to ½”, and the sizes of the blocks and fasteners would be adjusted according to the overall size of the piece. I sized the components as seemed right for these doors which are about 16″ x 10″. In testing, I was able to break the 1/8″ cord with a strong pull but it certainly is adequate for its task in this project.

I think the bit of desperation involved in the genesis of these stays ultimately helped produce a unique touch to the piece.