Viking tool box

[TGW]

It would be interresting to make maybe not an exact copy but a chest of the same type in the same tradition.

This means starting from a pine log and building it entirely without saw and plane. That's the way they did it back then. Splitting and hewing the boards to thickness. They used a special hewing technique to get a smooth slightly wavy splinter free surface with an ordinary axe.

[C. in Indy]

I got the chest pretty much done except for the finishing.  This was a fun one!  Many of the choices on dimensions and cuts were on the fly.   I don't think I really need it, but that's not the point....

   

   


Happy woodworking,

Chris

[Stwood_]

Looking good......

[mvflaim]

Seem to remember Underhill having done an episode on The Woodwright's Shop about a Viking Tool Chest..

Yep, Don Weber a Welsh Chair Bodger from Paint Lick, Ky was working on a reproduction of the Viking Tool Chest.

https://www.pbs.org/video/woodwrights-sh...ool-chest/

[Greg Jones]

Pop Woodworking did a DVD with Weber on the Viking Chest.

https://www.shopwoodworking.com/build-a-...eber-group

[ZachDillinger]

I just knocked this thing together yesterday from some left over home center pine 1x10. I need a place to store all of my boring equipment, braces, and a new group of gimlets I bought at the Skinner tool auction earlier this year, and this light little beauty will also be perfect for transporting tools to demonstrations (a marked upgrade over my usual cardboard box). Top will be of an old sassafras board I've had for nearly 15 years. Now I just need to figure out a place for the box to live day to day.  By the way, the discoloration at the back left corner is a knot in the side board, not an overhang from the back piece.

The box is wearing a first coat of a shop-made and Viking-appropriate varnish: turpentine, linseed oil, and Stockholm pine tar. It will get many more coats once the top is finished.

[C. in Indy]

Beautiful and quick job, Zach!   Be sure and post the sassafras picture.   You can't get much prettier and lighter-weight than sassafras.

Your finish sounds like what my Kramer's Antique Improver bottle smells like...  How is the smell?


Chris

[ZachDillinger]

Beautiful and quick job, Zach!   Be sure and post the sassafras picture.   You can't get much prettier and lighter-weight than sassafras.

Your finish sounds like what my Kramer's Antique Improver bottle smells like...  How is the smell?


Chris

Never used Kramer's so I can't offer a comparison. The pine tar finish is one I've been using on outside tools (axes, rakes, etc.) for years. To my nose, the smell is unbeatable, though some take an objection to the creosote-ish note of the tar. I wouldn't use it for inside stuff but for shop stuff its fine.