Damon Stoeltings Machinists Chest

I inherited this project from a good friend who was too busy to finish it. It is made following a set of plans available from Lee Valley. Though originally designed for a machinist to carry around various tooling bits and pieces, I think this will nicely house some of my nicer hand tools.

The carcase, interior components and drawers are all recycled jatoba flooring. The front panels on the removable cover, which match the rear frame-and-panel (not shown), are spalted myrtlewood from Oregon. The top opens up for storage of hand planes and what-not, and the interior drawers, which range in size from one to three inches deep, are great for any other tools I have. Actually, I imagine I will have to buy a few extra tools to fill them up!

The finish is simply three coats of tung oil, wet-sanded with 400 grit wet/dry paper followed with two coats of brown wax. The most expensive part of this project was the brass hardware, which cost me about $50. If anyone at the co-op is interested in using the plans, just fire me an email.