My chisels have been living in a roll-up fabric pouch, which I have to unroll and place somewhere whenever I need a chisel. Not a very elegant solution, to be honest. Time for a chisel rack!
I own a set of Ashley Iles butt chisels, some bench chisels MKII, some “firmer chisels”, and I own a few other chisels that I want to store in a proper, easy-to-reach way. They have been confined to roll-up pouches in a drawer for too long, so I need to do something about that. In this article I will focus on a tray for my butt chisels only – there will be another article about the other chisels, as I plan to use different methods for each tray. I try to practice and / or test techniques on shop projects, as any errors won’t matter there. At a later stage, I plan to make a rack for the trays so that I can mount them on the wall for easy access.
I thought about several ways to do this, but landed on a design where the chisels are stored in trays. I can then put the trays in a drawer, in a cabinet or I could mount the tray on the wall in a rack. At some point I’m guessing they will find a permanent temporary home, but I would like to have some options.
The design is fairly easy – I got a few ideas when I made my saw till, especially how to easily make a holder with circular cutouts.
I placed three chisels on the bench, arranged them so that I could easily pick the middle one up, and took measurements. A 15mm (slightly less than 5/8”) gap between each chisel ensures this. The handles on the butt chisels are 25mm (1”) in diameter. I will use a 30mm forstner bit to cut the circular recesses, so the actual spacing between the chisels will be a bit bigger.
Using Sketchup, I made a crude 3D model so that I could get some measurements down.
The tray will be built like a small drawer, with racks for the chisels. One with circular cutouts for the handles, the other will have matching notches for the blades (not shown on the 3D model).
The bottom will be rabbeted into the sides, and the sides should be high enough so that the chisels are below the rim in case one wants to stack trays on top of each other.
Here are some overall measurements for the butt chisel tray. The tray is designed for seven chisels, but can easily be modified to fit any number of chisels. The depth (215mm) must be changed to fit the particular chisels. I decided to make the trays of different depth to save space – no need to store air in a tray that is too big…
The plan is to add a strip of felt to the front and back, so that the chisels are protected – especially the pointy end of business.
I rummaged through the lumber pile and found a piece of teak, a piece of cherry and a piece of white oak. The idea is to use cherry as the sides, the oak as a bottom and the teak will be used for the racks that hold the chisels.
On the next page we’ll prep the stock and make the chisel holders.