I bought this thing about a year ago. It's a machinist's chest with the brown felt on the bottom of the drawers. I put all of my squares, calipers, v-blocks, etc. in it, and within a week or two, everything that wasn't stainless steel was rusting where it contacted the felt. So, I took everthing out, wiped off the rust (which wasn't all that deep), made sure the tools all had a nice coating of mineral oil on them, and put them back in again. In about a week, they were rusting again.
Now, granted, my shop is damp. It's in the garage, which is below grade and exposed to the crawl space under the house. But the thing is, my tools never rusted before, even though they were kept in the same environment. The only difference is that my old tool chest didn't have the felt drawer bottoms.
So, I went a little crazy and just doused the drawer liners with mineral oil. This helped a lot, but I noticed that some of the tools are starting to rust again, and still only on the bottoms where they rest on the felt.
Anyone know what's going on? Do Kennedy chests use special rust-producing felt? I think my next move will be to just rip the stuff out of there. Any advice appreciated.
-Tom