Watchmaker's Cabinet

Based on watchmaker and spool cabinets, this project is a great way to hone your hand tool skills.

- Logan Wittmer

PROJECT #2213

Skill Level: Advanced

Time: 7 Days

Cost: $300

One of my favorite ways to spend my lunch hour is to pop into any one of the dozen antique and thrift stores within a few minutes' drive. While I'm mainly on the lookout for vintage tools to restore and flip, I've found myself recently just browsing the furniture. The always-changing pieces have different styles reflecting what was “in” at the time, different functions depending on when it was built, and countless construction methods. I find an odd joy examining and contemplating these pieces of furniture that span centuries.

A recent find was a small, four-drawer cabinet labeled a "watchmaker's cabinet”. Upon opening the drawers, it indeed had a gob of small compartments within the drawers that I could envision holding various watch parts and gears. A few booths away, there was an old spool cabinet that shared a similar framework. As I was looking at and comparing these two pieces, I started to think about how nice of size they both were and how they could be used for various places around the house or even the shop. So, here you see my rendition of this watchmaker's cabinet.

The series of 6 drawers are fairly shallow, keeping with the originals that I could find. Plenty deep for spools of thread, watch parts, or carving tools (which is its fate in my shop). It appears that traditionally, these styles of cabinets have been made from about everything. I've seen beech, oak, walnut, cherry....you name it. When I started digging through my lum stack at home, I realized I had separated out enough quartersawn walnut throughout the last year or so. There was certainly enough for this entire cabinet. The straight grain works well on the clean lines (in my opinion).