First Aid in the Woodshop

A few weeks ago the inevitable happened. I cut into one of my fingers.

With a chisel. Deeply.

And the usual first aid method - a tissue and some tape - did not help.

But nothing else was handy.

After being in the emergency room to get my finger sewed, I had some workshop free time were I could think about future projects.

 Inspired by a group build project of Tom Fidgen's website - an unplugged life - I developed the idea of building a small first aid cabinet. Nothing fancy but a few general conditions:

• Built with hand tools only.
• Easy to handle wood.
• Simple but rigid construction.
• Trying out some joint methods which I haven't used before.

As I was handicapped I started with a design and drawing phase.

Here is the outcome.

The First Aid Cabinet

 

 

Front elevation

As you can see the top and the bottom is sitting into two rabbets of the sides. They will be fixed by some dowels. I'll come back to this topic as I'll reach this part of the build.

At the bottom of the cabinet there will be a small drawer.

The top of the drawer section will be a shelf which is sitting in some dados.

The drawer pull will be a hole within the drawer front piece.

Side elevation

In the side elevation you can see the position of the dowels 

in the top and bottom.

The cabinet will have a french cleat for hanging it on the wall.

I'm still thinking about the drawer - dovetails for the front?

Door front

 And at least the door.

It will be a frame and panel construction.

I'll build the frame with bridle joints at the corner and reinforce the joint by dowels in the center of every corner.

The panel will be out of plywood.

After thinking a while about the door - if inset or lying on top of the cabinet - the decision is to make it lying on.

Hey, it is a cabinet for the workshop.

So far so good.

The cabinet will be painted in my workshop color, which is pigeon blue (RAL 5014).

And it will get a nice first aid sign drawn on the door front.

In my workshop I've got some panels of glued wood (hope that is the right name in UK and US. In Germany it is "Leimholz"). They are pretty cheap and out of spruce. So it will be pretty easy to work with.

Conclusion

I was wondering if I'm doing sharpening right. Now I know for sure that my chisels are sharp.

As I'm not a woodworking professional I guess this is a nice project to learn and practice.

If you want, I would be glad to share my experiences during this build with you.

And let me know your thoughts - leave a comment.

Stay tuned. Next time I'll report about dimensioning the boards.

Stefan