{"id":81,"date":"2026-03-12T00:54:50","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/?p=81"},"modified":"2026-03-12T00:56:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:56:55","slug":"restoration-1970s-toolchest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/2026\/03\/12\/restoration-1970s-toolchest\/","title":{"rendered":"Restoration 1970’s Toolchest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For almost a week now I’ve been working hard at refinishing an old MacTools chest. Its a big one, and an old one. I acquired the chest from a transmission shop, I didnt get much actual history with it but I learned a bunch when I started digging around and cleaning it up. Here are the ‘before’ pictures that I took while it was still in my entrance way before I even opened it up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is from sometime in the 70s, based on its total lack of safety features(no anti-tip features at all) and based on its starting colour. When I opened it up I found one drawer of forgotten wrenches, all from different manufacturers which is not entirely uncommon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I also found an old price list catalogue from Snap On Tools from 1986, which sadly did not survive intact. It was wedged behind the 7th drawer, parts of it were stuck in the locking mechanism it was a mess!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The actual lock was functional, however, unsurprisingly the chest did not arrive with its key, so decisions had to be made on how I would handle the lock situation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was important that the lock function in that it would hold the drawers closed while the box is in motion (as in transport), but there is no real requirement that the lock function from a security stand point. I do not plan to sell this, or to place it in some kind of museum. The box will live in my home, eventually being in my dining room\/workroom; so it doesn’t need to protect anything from sticky fingers. After ordering several different locks in various types I was unable to find one that would work correctly with the old mechanism in this particular box, so I decided that instead of replacing the lock with one that has key, I’d just completely break the original lock so that it will operate without its keys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first outwardly visible change I made was to clean off the remaining paint from the top of the box to reveal the bare metal underneath. As expected there was a fair bit of surface rust and more than a handful of dents and dings in the top surface, but once clear of paint it had a really nice ‘worked in’ feel to it. After seeing the top in its bare metal state I decided not to cover it with a coat of paint. Instead of painting it as it had originally been, I coated it with almost a half inch of Epoxy to give it a smooth glass like cover while allowing its natural imperfections to remain visible, yet protected from further aging\/damage. Since I’ll be using this on an almost daily basis for my other art projects I decided to embed a tailors tape in the epoxy to make my other projects easier. There are also some rare earth magnets in the corners to help prevent small pins or metal rings from sliding around or rolling off the top. In this picture the dam is still in place to prevent the epoxy dripping down the front while it dries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I settled on Safety Red as the shade I would use for the body as it most closely matches the modern day mac tools red, as well as my existing red toolchest. Here the top is complete and the body is waiting on it’s final spray and handle reinstall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And finally the top is dry, the front edge is sanded smooth with the metal front, and After another week or so I’ll start putting stuff on top. It’s typical to give 1\/4 inch of epoxy a few days to harden up before putting anything really weighty on top, but in this case I put 2 layers at 1\/4 inch each for half inch of glassy shine and I still have to drill out the holes that are present in the manufactured top plate, so I’m going to give it a bit longer than the recommended time to avoid the risk of cracking the top during drilling or while attaching the mounting screws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The end goal for this piece will be that it will become a daily use work top. I’d like to be able to use it for everything from soldering, grinding, polishing, cutting fabric, pinning and fabricating jumprings for chainmaille. Since those are all vastly different artforms they all require very different tools. I already have a modular system for my large bench tools like my vice, grinder, ring cuter and coil spinner etc. In order to be able to use this same work surface for all the different things I do, Iwill use the original holes in the top to install mounting bolts, which will correspond with my various ‘job boards’ that I already use. I have a ring board with a cutting jig and spinning rig attached, one board has my vice and grinder, and other boards. Once I add the corresponding holes for the mounting bolts I’ll be able to slip on any tool set I need for the task at hand that day and get right to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering how large and dirty the job was, I’m very happy to say I got this old toolbox back into shop service in just 6 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For almost a week now I’ve been working hard at refinishing an old MacTools chest. Its a big one, and an old one. I acquired the chest from a transmission shop, I didnt get much actual history with it but I learned a bunch when I started digging around and cleaning it up. Here are… Continue reading Restoration 1970’s Toolchest<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-restore","tag-restore","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enchainedelegance.ca\/News\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}