Should be great, I imagine the wood would breathe a bit as opposed to plastic... not sure about stacking trays... you could put a small door in the bottom to pull VC out.

from my experience i recently made a worm bin out of a wooden cooler basically same color as your chest and with the metal hinges and all that but it has insulation since it's a cooler.

from experience it works great drill tons of holes at the top like you would with a regular bin and it should be fine. i would line the inside with pond lining though because often i find in wooden chests they are not coated on the inside so that means it will rot away. also if it is a certain type of wood i think walnut is one you cannot use for worm it is toxic. so lining it first would be the best idea

other then that my cooler bin is doing good 1 worm escaped on the 1st day i am 6 days in now no problems besides a little heat due from the weather itself and the insulation.

my bin has no holes for drainage i found no need for that. if your bin is not excessively wet or overfed like most peoples are it will not produce laechete from my own experience and i have had tons of worm bins with burrow worms alone.

as for the trays i would not stack trays in something like this because it's a deep chest. instead what you should do is build bedding fill it up maybe half way once that starts breaking down add more bedding ontop basically creating a natural flow through bin without any trays it will be hard to harvest no matter what i mean it is a deep bin yours alone is not that deep but wide where mine is about half the size of your but twice the depth so i would have the hard time harvesting but finished vermicompost should be easy to harvest once done only thing you need to do is move to a bucket and sort it out w.e. method you use.

so in the end yes it is worth using and cna be used it works just as good as any other, might want to line it, don't use stacking trays waste of time

I think that chest would make a great and beautiful worm bin.Although wood eventually will rot, it is generally much better for worms than plastic because it breathes.Do you know what kind of wood? looks kinda like pine with stain.Look for the bottom to go first.

A couple ideas depending on your situation.

1. make a sturdy wood stand, cut the bottom out of the chest, and make a flow through that would be the envy of any worm-farmer. I would use electrical conduit or pvc pipe, or whatever for the grate.What are the deminsions of the box? I think you need 18" or more of depth.
2. Find a good shady spot outside and and start using it as a bench with worms inside..The bottom may last longer if you raise it off the ground a little. One of my bins is built from re-recycled fence posts forming an 18" high 3'x5' box on the ground with NO bottom. My worms will not leave.It is surrounded by very happy shrubs and is a favorite place for me to sit and take a break on a hot day. You could use a lateral migration technique for harvest. Put the worms and bedding on 1 side of the bin and feed there only.You could use something as a divider if you want. When 1/2 the bin is completely full remove the divider and start feeding the opposite side only. After about a month or so most worms will have moved, then harvest the material from the first side
   3)For an inside model with no leaks, you could fiberglass the inside. It would last longer and work fine but would not breath.

Have fun and good luck! Pete

I have a large cedar worm bin which looks like yours (without all the fancy doo dads on it!). It has been in use for 14+ years (in the garage). It has holes drilled in the bottom and sides- not the top. I keep a layer of black plastic on the bedding to hold in moisture. Zero rot so far!

My bin I described is re-recycled redwood fence posts. Redwood and cedar are naturally rot resistant. 14 years with no rot is amazing!