New storage box for chisels
Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)
A decade ago (!), while road testing the new Veritas chisels (then only O1 was available), I built a box partly to house them and partly to demonstrate them in use ...
This coming weekend I shall be part of a dovetailing workshop, and decided that it was time to build a new box for these chisels. These are the chisels I use in demonstrations, such as wood shows.
For one thing, the number has grown from 5 to 7 chisels (I had made a 1/8" from a spare pre-production 1/4" - this was before this size was available from Veritas - as well as a 3/8" fishtail chisel. At some stage Veritas will be producing their own version. I do not have any details).
A second factor was that I thought the existing box was a little OTT, and wanted something more subtle, and less in-your-face. The fact is that the joinery in the new box is far more demanding than the first box, but only those experienced might recognise this.
It has been a month or more since I have had any regular time in the workshop. My practice has been crazy busy, but now I have a few weeks leave. In particular, I had some time free yesterday and today. This has been therapeutic and fun. I hope others get something from the details here ....
The light wood is Jacaranda (in both boxes), which is the last harvested from a tree on our property several years ago. It is softish, not so nice to saw and dovetail, but planes beautifully. The darker wood is Makore. Another wonderful wood to work with.
The construction of the box is mainly mitred through dovetails - all lower corners and the end upper corners. This makes it easier to plough through grooves for the base and top. The mitred corners are also, in my view, far more aesthetic, lending a balanced presentation from the top.
The sides are held in a sticking board when ploughing grooves with the Small Plow.
The rebates were planed with a skew block plane and then fine tuned with a rebate plane. This is the main use I find for rebate planes ...
This is the underside ...
And from the upper side ...
The finger depression was carved with chisels ...
Inside the box, the chisels are held very firmly with a combination of rare earth magnets and individualised spaces for each chisel ..
The O1 Veritas chisels differ from the PM-V11 chisels in that their ferrules are square at the front, while the PM-V11 are curved (I do have a set of both, with the PM used in the workshop) ...
This square section enables the design to butt them fore- and aft. They cannot move about. Plus the magnets hold them firmly as well.
Regards from Perth
Derek
