Earlier this year we made some changes in the basement. We got a fancy new heat pump and new ductwork. This freed up more space for the shop but also meant that I had to redo the dust collection and much of the shelving and storage. Somewhere along the way I decided that I needed to build some storage boxes.

Never missing an opportunity to make a simple task more complicated, I figured that the storage boxes should be built like Japanese tool boxes. Toshio Odate’s classic Japanese Woodworking Tools: Their Tradition, Spirit and Use provides a basic outline of their construction along with an ornate description of their spirit and use. Unlike most other aspects of Japanese woodworking, the tool boxes have no fancy joinery and are held together with nails. Odate claims that this is to satisfy another standard of precision and beauty. I don’t quite get that, but I love the book anyway.

It’s also possible to over-think nails. It seems that modern wire nails lack the long-term holding power of traditional forged or cut nails. So here was a great opportunity to mess around with fancy die-forged nails which apparently are still made exactly as they have been since 1888 by the good folks of Clouterie Rivierre in Creil, France. How could I resist?

The first two boxes were made from poplar and finished with blue milk paint. They worked okay but seemed to lack character. The next three boxes were more in keeping with the spirit of the project. They were made from crappy lumber-store spruce and bits of old wine crates that have been lying around the shop. (And yes, we drank that stuff, long ago.)

Toshio Odate goes into great detail about the function and the aesthetics of the Japanese toolbox, concluding that

... the shokunin's art is difficult, if not impossible, to separate from his work space, his tools and his equipment. The craft is not apart from his life so much as it is a heightened detail of life.

I don’t know what master shokunin Odate thinks about wine, or about the spirit and re-use of old wine crates. It’s likely he would not approve. But in this house I think these storage boxes fit his description perfectly.

Poplar and milk paint, Spruce, Cut Nails.