Star Tool Chest Revisited

before

before

When I bought this on eBay it was a little rough. The varnish was brittle and mostly gone, the side panels were separating, the handle mostly tape, drawers coming apart, the felt was stained, - in general it was coming apart, but it was all there.

The first thing I did was re-glue and clamp the box itself and the tuck-away front panel, drive in a few screws here and there, and rebuild the drawers. After dealing with the basic structure, I attacked the appearance. I scraped off all the varnish, sanded it smooth, and stained it where it was needed, then rubbed in two or three coats of tung oil. I sanded off the worst of the crud and rust and buffed the hardware a little. Then I re-felted everything. I tried to keep as much original as I could without everything falling apart and feeling all dirty and sticky, because the wear was the result of someone's lifetime of day-to-day honest use. I tried in vain to repair the handle, but finally gave up and bought a nice leather replacement.

It certainly won't hold everything to build a bicycle, but it does a pretty good job of containing the basic everyday maintenance tools and some of the smaller build-up tools. 

The fastener bins in the bottom drawer were five small plastic tackle boxes from Walmart which fit tight with just a little trimming to get them into the drawer. They seem to function okay. I still haven't sorted all the junk screws and widgets I've saved over the years

(The black inner-tube looking thing in the top tray is the Amish made black leather wraps for my new bike. Nice stuff.)

All in all it looks pretty good, probably better than the photos indicate. Anyway I'm happy.