The DoALL Co. Tool Chest

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The DoALL Co., Des Plaines, IL Tool Chests

A subsidiary of Continental Machines, Inc. 

DoALL was best known for their metal cutting bandsaws. They had a highly skilled service department to help install and service their equipment at the customer’s site. DoALL provided these service people with a kit of high precision measuring equipment they manufactured in a tool chest. Each drawer and the till had a formed green insert to place each piece of inspection equipment into. They also sold these kits to their customers. 

I do not yet know what company actually manufactured their tool chests, but I seriously doubt it was DoALL. I have not found any original spec’s for them. An owner reported that his chest was Walnut, 17 1/2"w x 12 1/2"h x 9 1/2"d, 3-drawer, and had no veneer. The chest’s 4 vertical corners were full finger joints, top to bottom. They had a metal DoALL nameplate attached to the underside of the lid which included a serial number and a date of issue. I have 5 different pictures of these and 3 of the readable dates are in 1944. 

Just to tease your imagination, the chests had a couple unique features, such as the front panel has a flat relief with a vertical center board with an all round finger pull and the lid has 3 older, self-restraint hinges. These features also appear on most of the O42 Knockoff Machinist Tool Chests, which were ‘probably’ manufactured by Gerstner.