Sliding Trays – Part 8

2012.03.19

Yesterday I started dovetailing and assembling the sides for the top tool tray.  But I kept making one mistake after another, and ultimately the pieces became unusable.

So today I started over, resawing another board, crosscutting, laying out, and dovetailing.  The results were better this time, and so I glued the dovetails and clamped them.

2012.04.01

Today I resawed, planed, and rabbeted two pieces to make the floor of the top tool tray.

2012.04.08

I continued with the top tool tray today.  The floor pieces were oversize, so I held the sides in place with holdfasts and traced around them.  Then I crosscut the floor pieces with my new toy, a Millers Falls 74C miter box.

Marking top tool chest tray floor pieces to size
Crosscutting board for top tool chest tray floor

I ripped the long edge, nailed the floor boards into the sides, and cleaned up everything with planes.  I then had to do some tweaking with planes on both the tray and the tool chest side walls to get the tray to slide.

Well, at last all three trays are in place.  I will be adding some dividers, so they’re not yet entirely complete.

Tool chest with three trays in place