I’ve been needing a single place to store my files, rasps, and floats for a while now. They were stored in two older tills, one of which had been repurposed from a saw till, and another which used to be something else that I don’t remember. Plus I had a number of files laying loose on various flat surfaces around the shop.
I started by building three racks to hold the files of various lengths. The largest holds 12 files, the middle holds 15, and the shortest rack can hold 20 files, though only the shortest in length will fit.
The racks are made of ⅜ inch thick oak, either 1 or 2 inches wide. Each rack has a bottom piece with indentations drilled in it, and a cross piece with magnets embedded to hold the files in place. They all pivot on the dowels that mount them (though this isn’t an especially useful feature) so they can be tipped forward or backward to access the files without knocking the ones in the rows in front. The racks were treated with iron acetate to ebonize them, though the solution was a couple weeks old, which is, I suspect, why I got a dark brown rather than a black finish.
The carcasse is built of ¾ inch thick pine, and dovetailed together, with the shelf above the drawer resting in a pair of ¼ inch deep dadoes. The drawer is also dovetailed, with half-blind dovetails holding the drawer front in place. This is the first time I’ve built half-blind dovetails, so it was good practice. The drawer-front is also carved with a design I made up over a few days of carving.
The pine is all finished with a coat of kakishibu. It’ll get a few coats of tung oil once it has had a little time to darken, unless I decide it needs a second coat of kakishibu first.
The drawer holds spare file handles, file cards, and needle files. A couple weeks of construction, the added carving on the front of the till makes it feel a little special and I also got to practice barrel and bead moulding which came out nice.
Mike, the Iwasaki floats are “fine.” They’re not as special as some people might lead you to believe, but they’re reasonable floats at a reasonable price. I’ll probably make my own floats at some point because I use a float or a rasp when dovetailing to level out the waste that was mostly sawed out with a coping saw. And I can resharpen floats myself, unlike rasps…
Thanks, guys. And yeah, I’m retired and practicing my emblingoning. I think this turned out ok. The barrels & beads aren’t bad, but the other carving could be better. Oh well. It will be next time.
Thanks guys. I had to do something. As you can see, I have a lot of files and rasps and floats, plus there’s another dozen+ for sharpening saws… They were threatening to take over all the horizontal space in the shop, or I’d end up just throwing them all in a drawer, and having dull files, like my old man always did.
Until I started paying for my own tools, I was convinced files sucked. Because they get dull and do suck when you throw them all in a drawer so they rattle against each other.
And if I put things in a tool roll, it’s as good as throwing them away. I’ll never find them again when I need them. So… build a till.
Nicely done! I wish I had the room for that fine (and coarse) File Cabinet in my "shop". Except for my wood working ones, the rest are laying in a drawer in one of my mechanic's chests, much to my chagrin.
Thanks! The only thing I’d change is that I wouldn’t bother making the three racks swing. They could be fixed in place and not affect my ability to get files in and out.
Steven, even putting racks for them in a few drawers of one of the mechanics cheers would be better than letting them rattle against each other. But then I also give people grief for throwing their kitchen knives in a drawer. Made a knife rack that fit in the drawer as one of the first presents I ever gave my sweetie. “If you want me to cook for you here, you’ll need to take better care of your knives.”
Cool storage Dave, looks like you like the big long files, rasps, and floats a bit more than the little guys by the packed back row, compared to the front row.
The front and back rows have the same number of files, but I also made the frontmost about an inch shorter than I should have, so that pushed a bunch of files from the front row to the middle.
I also wear out smaller files faster. I’ve worn out at least two of the hand-stitched modelers Aurious I’ve bought over the years, because I use them while dovetailing. That’s one of the reasons I’m looking into making my own floats, which I should be able to resharpen, so they’ll last a lifetime.
