Dang, it has been hot!  I about half expect to see an elephant or Masai tribesman stroll past the shop window at any moment.  At some point it will be over and I’ll be complaining about the cold.  Of that you can be sure.  I have a plan though…more on that later.  For now I cope and work in the shop for short stretches as best I can.

This is how the week played out.  Progress at 15 minute intervals.  My goal this week was to complete the base and interior layout for the chisel tray.  All the base required was a bottom and I made this from 6mm birch ply.  It was cut slightly large, then glued and pegged into place.  The addition of pegs was probably overkill, but the last thing I want is the bottom falling off.  Then I flushed the edges of the bottom to the sides.

Now that I had a completed tray it was time to turn my attention to the interior layout.  My initial paper layout was mostly to ensure that I would have more than enough room for my current set of chisels, plus a little room to grow.  Now it was time to refine the interior layout to cram as much into it as possible.

I started with my longest chisels, the two mortise chisels.  Well, the paring chisels are the longest, but those I will store differently in a section all of their own.  The length of the mortise chisels sets the position of the transverse divider.

Then the bench chisels.

Then the specialty chisels.  Dang, the fishtail chisel is longer than I thought.  So I tapered the transverse divider.  The large spacer between the bench chisels and the fishtail chisel is friction fit only.  This will leave me a little room to grow if need be.

Now I have a couple of cubbies for my stamping tools, pencil and sumisashi…

…and a place for my squares.

The remaining space holds my paring chisels and my hammer.

I worked the interior up with a combination of spacers and blocks so that everything is self wedging with the exception of the skinny end of the transverse divider.  It is held in place with two glue blocks.  The only bit of joinery on the interior bits is where I joined the long thin divider at the base of the bench chisels to the perpendicular divider that separates the mortise chisels from the bench chisels.  I had a bit of a blowout, but it is plenty stout for purpose.

Like I said, all of the interior bits self-wedge into place, but a bit of glue couldn’t hurt.  So I fired up the little glue pot, mixed up a tablespoon of hide glue and waited for it to heat up.   I’m really liking the hot hide glue.  The fast tack makes assemblies like this one a breeze.

All I need now is to add the end pieces and fabricate a sliding lid.

One last photo, just because I thought it looked cool.

Part 1 Greg Merritt Part 3