Vintage Refinished Fir Plywood Carpenter's Tool Tote, c. 1920–1945

The Piece

A carpenter's tote of the oldest and plainest kind: two gabled end boards, long sides, a turned dowel running the full length between the peaks for a handle, and an open top so everything inside can be seen and grabbed at once. Twenty-five inches end to end and nine across.

The sides are rotary-cut Douglas fir plywood, and they are the reason to look twice. Rotary cutting unwinds the log against a blade rather than slicing across it, which produces the enormous swirling cathedral figure running the length of each panel. Under finish it reads like flame-figured exotic hardwood rather than what it actually is, which is shop sheet stock. The end boards are a different surface entirely, heavy vertical grain with burl-like eyes and open checking, with the raised weathered texture left legible under the finish rather than sanded flat.

Inside, a spine board runs the length below the handle, and cross partitions divide the space into square compartments down both sides, with an open bay at each end for longer tools. The nail heads through the sides stand out bright silver against the dark wood.

The Refinish

This one was refinished in our own workshop at Viridian Eclection. Walter Hinchman sanded it, took steel wool to it and brought the finish up, and the result is the deep orange-red gloss it now carries. The bright nail heads are part of that: they are the original nailing, polished up by the steel wool rather than replaced, so the box is fastened exactly as its maker left it and simply looks it again.

The judgement call was what to leave alone. The checking in the end boards, the raised grain, the broken notch out of one partition edge and the small loss at a top rail are all still there. Sanding those out would have produced a smoother box and a duller one, and the figure in the plywood is doing more than enough work without help.

History & Provenance

A tote like this was never bought. It was built on a bench by the man who was going to carry it, out of whatever offcuts were within reach, sized to the tools he actually used and the distance he actually walked. That is why the compartments are the sizes they are and why no two of these are alike. It is the humblest object in a working shop and usually the one that outlives everything else in it.

The material sets the earliest this can be, and it is a hard limit. Douglas fir plywood is a twentieth-century American product: commercial production began in Oregon in the first decade of the century, and fir sheet was in ordinary shop and cabinet use through the nineteen-twenties. A box built from it cannot predate that, and no argument moves it earlier. Everything above that floor is shop work rather than manufacture: nailed butt joints throughout, no screws and no hardware of any kind, a scavenged turned dowel doing duty as a handle, and no maker's mark or model number anywhere. There is no particleboard, no MDF, no production fittings and no plywood grade stamp on it, and those absences carry a ceiling only. On that evidence it is offered as c. 1920 to 1945.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

The figure is the argument. Ordinary fir plywood, finished properly, produces a wild flame grain that most people assume has to be an expensive tropical timber, and there is twenty-five inches of it running down each side of this box. It photographs extremely well and it holds a room.

It works as a runner down the centre of a dining table holding candles and greenery, on a kitchen counter for oils and utensils, on a bathroom shelf, on a desk, or in an entry for keys, mail and gloves. The compartments make it useful in a way an empty bowl never is, and the handle means it moves to wherever it is needed. It also still does the job it was built for, which is worth something.