10 Board Foot Project-
Hanging Tool Cabinet
by: James Maichel
Now that Fall is in full swing and winter is looming, I knew that I needed somewhere to store some of hand tools, especially the hand planes.
Initially I went back and forth with the design of the tool cabinet. At first I wanted to use glass frame and panels for the doors featuring half lap joinery. There were a couple of problems with this option. Although it would look pretty cool and show off some of my tools, glass was not that practical for my shop. I can be a little clumsy at times and it would only be a matter of time before the glass panels broke. Another big concern was that I was missing out a lot of storage space inside the door. I made the decision to go with a cabinet that was capable of storage inside the cabinet and the door.
The primary wood used for this project is Tiger Maple courtesy of Bell Forest Products. I used one of their 10 BF project packs, which was perfect for the cabinet. I also went to the home store and picked up a sheet of ½” birch plywood for the panels on both the door and the back of the cabinet.
I went back and forth on the joinery for the cabinet as well. I originally set out to use
pinned and locked rabbets but was concerned about the stress on those joints when hung on the wall with a french cleat. In hindsight the rabbet joints would have been fine but I would have used ¾” plywood for the panels. The strength of the joints would have then been strengthened by gluing the ¾” plywood panels to frames of the cabinet and doors. I decided to go with dovetails for the cabinet joinery, which was a bit of an adventure! I had really only cut a handful of dovetails before, and never for case joinery, but this project was for the shop and now was as good of time as any.