I accidentally tossed out a woodworking magazine I'd long been saving, that
contained an article about a hanging tool cabinet that I have been intending
to build to mount over my workbench. I'm appealing to you guys to see if I
can describe it well enough for you to remember it and perhaps locate the
issue in your archives.
The cabinet was made from a dark wood, perhaps mahogany, with double doors
about two inches deep, with the usual sort of storage within the opened
doors for racks of chisels, marking tools, and so forth. Inside in the
bottom half of the main cabinet were the following two features: (1) a row
of narrow cubbyholes all the way across the cabinet for storage of small and
medium-sized hand planes with their heels toward you, separated by 1/4"
vertical separators made of what I think was curly maple, and (2) an
internal cabinet of small drawers, maybe a foot high. These two, the hand
plane storage and the small drawers, take up approximately half of the
vertical space in the cabinet, leaving the upper area open and undivided.
The critical design point that you might remember is that in the back of the
upper area, three long planes, maybe Stanley #5, #6 and #7, or maybe #6, #7
and #8 were displayed, one above the other, lying on their sides with their
soles facing toward the back of the cabinet, with each of the three planes
lying on a narrow shelf shaped like the profile of the plane. On the right
side wall, if I remember correctly, hung a couple of router planes, such as
a Stanley #71.
I believe that the tool cabinet appeared on the cover of the magazine, and
that it was published perhaps, but not certainly, between say 2011 and 2014,
certainly no later than early 2014. I've been looking on the web, and so far
I've checked the online archives for a number of woodworking magazines. I've
checked the covers for an image of the cabinet and read through the magazine
indexes without finding it. Here are the archives I've searched so far:
. Fine Woodworking
. Woodworker's Journal
. Popular Woodworking
. American Woodworker (what's available on the web since it merged with
Popular Woodworking, anyway)
I'm hoping that this description will ring a bell, and that perhaps one of
you might be able to find the issue or even just suggest the names of other
woodworking magazines I might look for. I'm not asking for the issue itself,
but if I can find the name of the magazine and the issue date or number I
can find a way to buy a back issue of it from the publisher.
Thanks for any help you can give me on this quest,
Tom
P.S., I accidentally posted this first to rec.crafts.woodturning, not
necessarily a bad thing, but that caused me to lose my chance to post it
just once to both newsgroups, instead of having it appear in both places as
separate posts.
On 3/27/2016 8:03 PM, tdacon wrote:
> I found an image of the cabinet!
>
> http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=hand-tool+cabinet&view=detailv2&&id=F6AC5602CEA64BA58DB036206A791984E493317A&selectedIndex=172&ccid=NmQPdBbP&simid=607987857595302021&thid=OIP.M36640f7416cf6d607ba7d10da39c9e28o0&ajaxhist=0
>
>
> Sonny gave me a great suggestion to use Bing's image search, and after
> scrolling through a lot of pictures I happened upon an excellent image
> of the cabinet. I then used tineye.com to do a reverse image lookup,
> hoping that I would find a useful URL in any hits that tineye found.
> Unfortunately, no luck so far on that, but I'm going to keep on keepin' on.
>
> Thanks,
> Tom
>
>
Tom,
If that's the cabinet, look here using Google
<https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22andy+rae%22+tool+cabinet+plans>
If the link doesn't work, just search "Andy Rae" (with quotes) and tool
cabinet plans (no quotes for those).
At one point in time, plans may have been available here. Can't tell
for sure since it's out of stock and image won't come up.
<http://www.woodworkerslibrary.com/miscellaneous-subjects/andy-rae-tool-cabinet/>
It looks as if there used to be quite a few sources for the plans,
including Amazon.com but all show it to be discontinued. Suggest either
tracking down Andy Rae (Pennsylvania) or maybe through Taunton Press/FWW
or find the link to Amazon as I did and post a question. Amazon will
copy your query to folks who bought the plans (usually) and they may be
able to help you, if you get my drift <g>
I'd love to build something that nice but I don't have enough room for
it in the living room or family room<g>
On 3/28/2016 12:26 PM, tdacon wrote:
> Yesss! Found and purchased the plans, available online from Viking
> Mountain Tool Works:
>
> http://www.vmtw.com/american-furniture-design-tool-cabinet
>
> Thanks to Dan Kozar, who while he didn't post in this thread, emailed me
> privately with the link. Kudos to him, and thanks to everyone who'd
> helped along the way.
So they lied at Viking Mountain or did you snatch up the last copy of
the plans?<g>
Checked their link and the plans are "unavailable."
Glad you were able to fine the plans. Hopefully they will work out for you.
On Saturday, February 4, 2017 at 2:28:31 PM UTC-5, tdacon wrote:
> "tdacon" wrote in message news:[email protected]...
>
> >I accidentally tossed out a woodworking magazine I'd long been saving, that
> >contained an article about a hanging tool cabinet that I have been
> >intending
> >to build to mount over my workbench. I'm appealing to you guys to see if I
> >can describe it well enough for you to remember it and perhaps locate the
> >issue in your archives.
>
> Well, this is a pretty old thread, originally posted 3/2016, but I wanted to
> close the circle on it.
>
> I was looking for a set of plans for a beautiful tool cabinet, designed and
> built by one Andy Rae and first noticed by me on the cover of a book on
> toolboxes and cabinets whose name I don't recall. I enlisted the
> considerable resources of the good folks on the wreck to try to find the
> plans, with good responses from the group, but I was unsuccessful at getting
> a set of plans.
>
> Until now.
>
> Just a week or two ago, Lee Valley announced in a newsletter that they were
> putting all the plans from the American Furniture Design catalog on their
> web, including those for the tool cabinet. I immediately purchased, and
> recently received, a very nice and complete set of plans. You can see it
> here:
> http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?cat=1,46167,46158,45338&p=45323
>
> Best regards,
> Tom
You started looking for the plans almost a year ago and just found them now?
I hope you have been otherwise filling your time productively for the past
10 or so months. ;-)
All kidding aside, I'll bet that finding those plans made you feel like a
kid at Christmas. I'm happy for you.
Electric Comet <[email protected]> wrote in news:ndblmt$dkc$1
@dont-email.me:
> why not just take some measurements of your workbench and then use
> pencil and paper and make your own plan
This question comes around every couple of years (some might
remember it as a favorite rejoinder of the ever-annoying
JOAT).
Anyway, the answer is that experienced designers often have
tricks of design that are worth copying, and solutions to
problems (problems that wouldn't appear to the less experienced
until half way thru construction) that aren't obvious. Thus
there's a lot of value to studying the plans of a successful
design, even if you intend to alter the dimensions or other
aspects of the final product.
John
On Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 1:09:07 PM UTC-5, dpb wrote:
> On 03/26/2016 5:30 PM, tdacon wrote:
I don't read any others so you might want to=20
> re-try the search=20
5850 results on the FWW site... probably/maybe some are repeated:
http://www.finewoodworking.com/search/search.asp?cx=3D009096020989677304441=
%3Ayn5icbkse5w&cof=3DFORID%3A9&ie=3DUTF-8&q=3Dwall+tool+cabinet&sa.x=3D13&s=
a.y=3D15&sa=3DSearch&siteurl=3Dwww.finewoodworking.com%2Fitem%2F45871%2Fqui=
ck-to-build-tool-cabinet&ref=3Dwww.google.com%2F&ss=3D4253j4475363j17
Back cover tool chest, July 1988
http://www.finewoodworking.com/woodworking-plans/article/the-ho-studley-too=
l-chest.aspx
This may be a better list of FWW cabinets/chests, than the one above/top. =
7600 results:
http://www.finewoodworking.com/search/search.asp?cx=3D009096020989677304441=
%3Ayn5icbkse5w&cof=3DFORID%3A9&ie=3DUTF-8&q=3Dcover+story+photo+-+wall+tool=
+cabinet&sa.x=3D19&sa.y=3D12&sa=3DSearch&siteurl=3Dwww.finewoodworking.com%=
2Fitem%2F45871%2Fquick-to-build-tool-cabinet&ref=3Dwww.google.com%2F&ss=3D2=
9441j85900215j42
Sonny
On Sun, 27 Mar 2016 18:03:24 -0700, "tdacon"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>I found an image of the cabinet!
>
>http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=hand-tool+cabinet&view=detailv2&&id=F6AC5602CEA64BA58DB036206A791984E493317A&selectedIndex=172&ccid=NmQPdBbP&simid=607987857595302021&thid=OIP.M36640f7416cf6d607ba7d10da39c9e28o0&ajaxhist=0
>
>Sonny gave me a great suggestion to use Bing's image search, and after
>scrolling through a lot of pictures I happened upon an excellent image of
>the cabinet. I then used tineye.com to do a reverse image lookup, hoping
>that I would find a useful URL in any hits that tineye found. Unfortunately,
>no luck so far on that, but I'm going to keep on keepin' on.
>
>Thanks,
>Tom
Is it just me, or do several of these cabinets have chisels stored
above the head. It seems that this isn't the best idea.
On Monday, March 28, 2016 at 6:56:15 AM UTC-5, Sonny wrote:
> Send Andy an email and ask for the plans.... and the cost for it.
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-rae-06359619
>
> Sonny
Or call him, if that's not imposing, that way?
http://www.ybiz.com/andy-rae-woodworking-writing-studios-lake-toxaway-28747-nc/
Seems there's an "andy rae woodworking and writing studios" facebook page, also.
Sonny
On 2016-03-27, dpb <[email protected]> wrote:
> re-try the search at the Taunton site.....
Good luck. You can buy a 40-yrs-back "magazine archive" DVD with all
the projects. At least I THINK they show all the projects. Fer $100,
it damn sure better!
http://www.tauntonstore.com/woodworking/magazine-archives.html
Call and annoy them with questions, tomorrow. ;)
nb
"Sonny" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>Maybe this one?
>http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/45871/quick-to-build-tool-cabinet
>Sonny
Thanks, Sonny. I've tried a bunch of web searches myself, but haven't turned
up the exact cabinet article yet. I'll keep trying.
That article in your other post is fairly close to the one I'm after, and
has many of the same design elements. Between this one and others that have
been suggested, plus my own memories of the original article, I'm sure I'll
be able to end up with what I'm after. But still, I'd like to lay my eyes on
the original if I can...
Best regards,
Tom
"Sonny" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>How about doing a search for "custom wood tool cabinet" and/or "custom wood
>tool wall cabinet" and click on images, to see if you find >a pic of the
>particular cabinet, there. The pic/link may lead you to the source you're
>looking for.
>Sonny
Great idea, Sonny! I never thought of doing an image search.
Tom
On 03/26/2016 5:30 PM, tdacon wrote:
...[saga of desired article elided for brevity]...
I can't point at the specific volume or even that it was necessarily the
storage cabinet you're thinking of, but I do recall one of very similar
description in FWW and I don't read any others so you might want to
re-try the search at the Taunton site--albeit they've got it locked up
enough any more it ain't the easiest thing to do w/o an "online"
subscription (which seems a real insult to the print-edition
subscribers, but maybe that's just me...)
--
I found an image of the cabinet!
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=hand-tool+cabinet&view=detailv2&&id=F6AC5602CEA64BA58DB036206A791984E493317A&selectedIndex=172&ccid=NmQPdBbP&simid=607987857595302021&thid=OIP.M36640f7416cf6d607ba7d10da39c9e28o0&ajaxhist=0
Sonny gave me a great suggestion to use Bing's image search, and after
scrolling through a lot of pictures I happened upon an excellent image of
the cabinet. I then used tineye.com to do a reverse image lookup, hoping
that I would find a useful URL in any hits that tineye found. Unfortunately,
no luck so far on that, but I'm going to keep on keepin' on.
Thanks,
Tom
"krw" wrote in message news:[email protected]...
>Is it just me, or do several of these cabinets have chisels stored
>above the head. It seems that this isn't the best idea.
I saw some of those myself. Gave me cold chills.
Tom
The plot continues to thicken, helped along substantially by some the
research you guys have been doing...
One of the images that tineye found produced a link to www.woodcraft.com. I
emailed customer service and their response told me that it was a plan by
Andy Rae (which by then I knew anyway from your posts), which was sold by a
few different companies including FWW and also American Furniture Design, a
subsidiary of Lee Valley. All the sources the rep found have all
discontinued it. No surprise there. They can't have sold many sets of plans
for a project so daunting.
This is a link she sent me to FWW's Reader's Gallery article about the
cabinet:
http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/102662/freestanding-tool-cabinet.
I have the FWW digital archive and had searched it extensively, but I think
that the search feature must only work on the table of contents rather than
the full text of the issues, which would explain why I didn't find it there.
Or maybe it appears only online and not in an issue of the magazine.
She also told me that it was also featured on the cover of one of Jim Toplinâs
books, The Toolbox Book. I happen to have that book but haven't had it off
the shelf in years. There's a detail picture on the cover, and a two-page
spread on pp. 96-97. Jim lives here in town (Port Townsend) and is one of
the founders of the Port Townsend School of Woodworking and Preservation.
I'm somewhat acquainted with him, so I'll email him at the school and see if
he can help me get to Andy, or perhaps to a set of the plans.
Of course even if I can get a set of the plans, I have no intentions of
trying to do such a fine-arts job of the cabinet as Andy did. It would be a
real stretch for my skills and wouldn't exactly be appropriate for my little
garage shop anyway. Instead of a free-standing cabinet all I plan to build
just a double-door hanging cabinet to put over my bench, but I'd at least
like to steal a few of the nice details he put into his. After all it isn't
any harder to to use a nice piece of tiger maple for the drawer fronts and
dividers than it would be to make them out of plywood, right? Especially
since EdenSaw here in Port Townsend is such a great source of fine
woodworking (and boat building) woods.
UnquestionablyConfused's recommended search on Google turned up the link to
The Woodworker's Library, offering the plans but out of stock as he said.
I've emailed them to see if there's any chance of the plans being offered
again.
Thanks for everything, folks. This has been a fun little search and I'll let
you know if I ever get the plans. And you can bet I'll post pictures of
whatever I end up building, whenever that happens.
Tom
On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 15:30:44 -0700
"tdacon" <[email protected]> wrote:
> saving, that contained an article about a hanging tool cabinet that I
> have been intending to build to mount over my workbench. I'm
from your description it seems like you have a good idea of what it
is and what you want
why not just take some measurements of your workbench and then use
pencil and paper and make your own plan
you might find while you design the cabinet that there are things
you would like that fit your tools better than the original
Yesss! Found and purchased the plans, available online from Viking Mountain
Tool Works:
http://www.vmtw.com/american-furniture-design-tool-cabinet
Thanks to Dan Kozar, who while he didn't post in this thread, emailed me
privately with the link. Kudos to him, and thanks to everyone who'd helped
along the way.
Tom
"tdacon" wrote in message news:[email protected]...
I accidentally tossed out a woodworking magazine I'd long been saving, that
contained an article about a hanging tool cabinet that I have been intending
to build to mount over my workbench. I'm appealing to you guys to see if I
can describe it well enough for you to remember it and perhaps locate the
issue in your archives.
The cabinet was made from a dark wood, perhaps mahogany, with double doors
about two inches deep, with the usual sort of storage within the opened
doors for racks of chisels, marking tools, and so forth. Inside in the
bottom half of the main cabinet were the following two features: (1) a row
of narrow cubbyholes all the way across the cabinet for storage of small and
medium-sized hand planes with their heels toward you, separated by 1/4"
vertical separators made of what I think was curly maple, and (2) an
internal cabinet of small drawers, maybe a foot high. These two, the hand
plane storage and the small drawers, take up approximately half of the
vertical space in the cabinet, leaving the upper area open and undivided.
The critical design point that you might remember is that in the back of the
upper area, three long planes, maybe Stanley #5, #6 and #7, or maybe #6, #7
and #8 were displayed, one above the other, lying on their sides with their
soles facing toward the back of the cabinet, with each of the three planes
lying on a narrow shelf shaped like the profile of the plane. On the right
side wall, if I remember correctly, hung a couple of router planes, such as
a Stanley #71.
I believe that the tool cabinet appeared on the cover of the magazine, and
that it was published perhaps, but not certainly, between say 2011 and 2014,
certainly no later than early 2014. I've been looking on the web, and so far
I've checked the online archives for a number of woodworking magazines. I've
checked the covers for an image of the cabinet and read through the magazine
indexes without finding it. Here are the archives I've searched so far:
. Fine Woodworking
. Woodworker's Journal
. Popular Woodworking
. American Woodworker (what's available on the web since it merged with
Popular Woodworking, anyway)
I'm hoping that this description will ring a bell, and that perhaps one of
you might be able to find the issue or even just suggest the names of other
woodworking magazines I might look for. I'm not asking for the issue itself,
but if I can find the name of the magazine and the issue date or number I
can find a way to buy a back issue of it from the publisher.
Thanks for any help you can give me on this quest,
Tom
P.S., I accidentally posted this first to rec.crafts.woodturning, not
necessarily a bad thing, but that caused me to lose my chance to post it
just once to both newsgroups, instead of having it appear in both places as
separate posts.
"Unquestionably Confused" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
On 3/28/2016 12:26 PM, tdacon wrote:
>Checked their link and the plans are "unavailable."
>Glad you were able to fine the plans. Hopefully they will work out for
>you.
It's POSSIBLE that I got the last set of plans, although it sounds pretty
unlikely. I'm kind of sure that it didn't say out of stock when I placed the
order, but I can't be certain. When I refreshed the plans page after placing
the order, there it was - out of stock.
So I send them an email asking them what happened, and whether I actually
got it. We'll see what they say. I'm crossing my fingers.
Tom
"John McCoy" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>Anyway, the answer is that experienced designers often have
>tricks of design that are worth copying, and solutions to
>problems (problems that wouldn't appear to the less experienced
>until half way thru construction) that aren't obvious. Thus
>there's a lot of value to studying the plans of a successful
>design, even if you intend to alter the dimensions or other
>aspects of the final product.
>John
That's really why I want to get the plans. To study the construction
details, and also any tricks related to order of assembly, which can be kind
of tricky sometimes on a complicated design like this. Not to mention just
getting another opinion on such things as stock thickness for the various
parts. A graceful outcome, rather than a competent outcome, often hinges on
such subtleties.
Tom
"Sonny" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
On Monday, March 28, 2016 at 6:56:15 AM UTC-5, Sonny wrote:
> Send Andy an email and ask for the plans.... and the cost for it.
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-rae-06359619
>
> Sonny
>Or call him, if that's not imposing, that way?
>http://www.ybiz.com/andy-rae-woodworking-writing-studios-lake-toxaway-28747-nc/
>Seems there's an "andy rae woodworking and writing studios" facebook page,
>also.
>Sonny
Thanks, Sonny. As I said in another post, it seems that I might have just
bought the plans from Viking Mountain, but there's some question about
whether they were actually out of stock when I placed the order. I'm waiting
to see what happens with that, and then I don't see any reason why I
couldn't just go direct to Andy.
Tom
"tdacon" wrote in message news:[email protected]...
>I accidentally tossed out a woodworking magazine I'd long been saving, that
>contained an article about a hanging tool cabinet that I have been
>intending
>to build to mount over my workbench. I'm appealing to you guys to see if I
>can describe it well enough for you to remember it and perhaps locate the
>issue in your archives.
Well, this is a pretty old thread, originally posted 3/2016, but I wanted to
close the circle on it.
I was looking for a set of plans for a beautiful tool cabinet, designed and
built by one Andy Rae and first noticed by me on the cover of a book on
toolboxes and cabinets whose name I don't recall. I enlisted the
considerable resources of the good folks on the wreck to try to find the
plans, with good responses from the group, but I was unsuccessful at getting
a set of plans.
Until now.
Just a week or two ago, Lee Valley announced in a newsletter that they were
putting all the plans from the American Furniture Design catalog on their
web, including those for the tool cabinet. I immediately purchased, and
recently received, a very nice and complete set of plans. You can see it
here:
http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?cat=1,46167,46158,45338&p=45323
Best regards,
Tom