This tool chest is made almost entirely from my stash of Treecycled lumber. The drawer fronts are resawn from 8/4 walnut stock to make two 3/4″ fronts that match end to end. The topmost pair was then cut to match the whale tail profile in the top rail of the chest.

The side panels are each made up of two matching resawn pieces of spalted maple and two matching pieces of walnut, edge glued to make 1/2″ thick panels.

The top is two ash boards with a piece of quarter sawn douglas fir glued in the middle to give the extra width I needed.

The frame is fully mortised and tenoned white ash with special attention paid to the attitude of the grain in order to match the whale tail profile. All panels including the 1/2″ plywood back pieces are set in 1/4″ deep, 1/2″ wide grooves.

This piece is fairly massive, weighing in at around 350 lbs. with drawers but no tools. It is 46″ tall, 76″ long, and 27″ deep. Due to the size, it has a lot of presence when one walks up to it.

The finish consists of tung oil, dewaxed shellac, and wipe on polyurethane, mixed with a bit of tung oil to slow drying, in that order.

I have yet to load it up with tools as the chest is not yet in it’s final location.

Not shown are the drawers which are yellow poplar Dominoed together with 1/2″ birch ply bottoms. The drawers ride on 21″ Blum full extension soft close slides.

This piece started out as a self imposed exercise in creating something using no drawings whatsoever. The only drawing that I made for this piece was at the very end, to help me determine locations for the drawer handles.

Between the extra thick drawer bottoms and the overall massive weight of this piece it feels very very solid.

Higher quality pictures are available on my website linked below.

Launch Gallery