This week I am shooting a series of 10 videos for Popular Woodworking Magazine on getting started in hand tools – everything from chisels to rasps to smoothing planes. So I have to pack up a whole shop of tools and fit it into my hatchback.
Enter the traveling tool chest.
This slightly smaller-sized tool chest fits about 80 percent of the tools of the full-size model that I built for the book “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” Yet it does this in a chest that is about half the size. You can download the SketchUp plans for free here.
How does it perform this act of clown-car efficiency?
Well, like most things involving contorted clowns, it’s not pretty. All the tools are wedged into the chest but aren’t as easily accessed as they are in the full-size chest. Some planes are stacked on top of other planes. Some tools are wedged under other tools.
But the bottom line is that all the stuff you really need fits. When I get to my destination tomorrow I’m going to have to store a bunch of tools on the shelf below the workbench or even in the – shudder – tool well. But I’ll manage.
— Christopher Schwarz
