Dutch Tool Chests

by Megan Fitzpatrick, with a foreword by Roy Underhill

"Dutch Tool Chests" gives you the in-depth instruction you need to build your own slant-lid tool chest – from choosing materials, to the joinery, the hardware, the interior parts that hold your tools and the paint.

At the same time, the book offers you detailed instructions on how to grow as a hand-tool woodworker. Author Megan Fitzpatrick offers a complete, clear and insanely detailed description of how to cut through-dovetails. Plus a detailed guide to cutting dados by hand. Plus rabbets, simple fielded panels, cut nails, screws, hinges and fitting chest lids. Building your own Dutch tool chest with the help of this book will make you a better hand-tool woodworker.

"Dutch Tool Chests" contains complete plans and cutting lists for two different sizes of this portable chest – plus additional plans for a rolling base that adds even more storage.

But the book is not just about building the exterior chest walls. "Dutch Tool Chests" shows you how to outfit the interior of your chest to hold chisels, marking knives and other pointy tools on the back wall. Plus saw tills and cubbies for jointer, jack and smooth planes. 

If that's not enough, "Dutch Tool Chests" offers a gallery of chests from 43 other makers that show modifications and additions for you to consider. You'll find ingenious ideas for using the chest's tool bay (or bays). Clever rolling bases. Oversized (or undersized) chests. Mind-blowing uses of the back of the fall front and or/underside of the lid. And other unique solutions that set them apart. 

About the Physical Book

“Dutch Tool Chests” is 8-1/2” x 11” and is printed in Tennessee on #70 matte-coated paper on a Japanese-built sheet-fed printing press. The pages are folded into signatures, sewn, glued and reinforced with fiber-based tape to create a permanent binding. Our books regularly survive floods and attacks by dogs and toddlers.

The 192-page interior is then attached to heavy (98-pt.) cotton-covered boards using a thick paper hinge. The cover and spine are adorned with a foil die stamp. The image is physically stamped into the cloth and the board, giving the cover a texture you won’t get from modern digital books.

The book is designed to be used – hard – and survive more than a century of use.

Table of Contents

Foreword 1

1. Let’s Go ‘Dutch’ 5
2. Materials 11
3. Parts Prep 23
4. Dovetails 29
5. Dados 49
6. Shelves 57
7. Top Angles 61
8. Assembly 65
9. Lock & Batten Notches 71
10. Bottom Lip 75
11. Front 79
12. Fall Front 83
13. Backboards 91
14. Lid 97
15. Hardware 111
16. Paint 121
17. Interior 127 
18. Mobile Base 133
19. Gallery 139

Acknowledgments 185