A toolbox isn’t very useful without a floor. Having never put a floor in a box before, I consulted my book, and came away with the following sage wisdom:

You should make all your bottom boards interlock in some way – butt joints are a Bozo No-No. You can use a simple ship-lap joint[…] Or you can do things the proper way and use a tongue-and-groove joint on your bottom boards.

— Christopher Schwarz, The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

I decided to try ship-lap boards because I don’t have a tongue-and-groove plane. I don’t have a rabbet plane either, but I saw people on the YouTubes who said you could make rabbets with just a chisel and a router plane. This technique appealed to me because I’m left-handed, and both tongue-and-groove planes and rabbet planes seemed to be made for right-handed people. Router planes are ambidextrous.

I found one on Ebay that looked especially pretty, so I bought it. As far as I can tell, this is a type 7, meaning that it’s somewhere between 107 and 109 years old. After a bit of trial and error, and a number of goofed up boards, I made some passable rabbets by this laborious method.

I decided that this was not a fun use of my time, so I bought a rabbet plane.

I had to get used to doing things right-handed, but I managed. I still had a hard time keeping everything square, but I produced some ship-lapped floor boards for my box. A rabbet plane is much faster than banging things out with a chisel.

I got everything fitted and spaced out the way I wanted, and then I got to use my fancy new cordless drill to pre-drill some nail holes.

Now that my tool box has a floor, it seems likely that I’m going to have to start over and make a bigger one. I’m accumulating tools faster than I can build a home for them.