To you woodworking magazine hoarders out there

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.

Reply to
tdacon
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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

Reply to
Sonny

Maybe this one?

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Sonny

Reply to
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

Reply to
tdacon

Great idea, Sonny! I never thought of doing an image search.

Tom

Reply to
tdacon

...[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...)

Reply to
dpb

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!

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Call and annoy them with questions, tomorrow. ;)

nb

Reply to
notbob

I found an image of the cabinet!

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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

Reply to
tdacon

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.

Reply to
krw

Tom,

If that's the cabinet, look here using Google

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.

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

I'd love to build something that nice but I don't have enough room for it in the living room or family room

Reply to
Unquestionably Confused

Here's more info on the same cabinet, it's an Andy Rae design

Reply to
whit3rd

Send Andy an email and ask for the plans.... and the cost for it.

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Sonny

Reply to
Sonny

Or call him, if that's not imposing, that way?

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Seems there's an "andy rae woodworking and writing studios" facebook page, also.

Sonny

Reply to
Sonny

I saw some of those myself. Gave me cold chills.

Tom

Reply to
tdacon

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

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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:

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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 Toplin?s 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

Reply to
tdacon

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

Reply to
Electric Comet

Yesss! Found and purchased the plans, available online from Viking Mountain Tool Works:

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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

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.

Reply to
tdacon

So they lied at Viking Mountain or did you snatch up the last copy of the plans?

Checked their link and the plans are "unavailable."

Glad you were able to fine the plans. Hopefully they will work out for you.

Reply to
Unquestionably Confused

Electric Comet wrote in news:ndblmt$dkc$1 @dont-email.me:

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

Reply to
John McCoy

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

Reply to
tdacon

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