Six-Board Chest - FINISHED! Long, *PICS*
Scott in Douglassville, PA
>Hello, all -
Ok, for those of you not wanting to read another of my long-winded soliloquies, here's a shortcut to the finale: Instant Gratification Shortcut. Those of you wanting the blood and gore of it, read on.
Late last January, I decided to make a blanket chest. This was supposed to be a quick, straight-forward birthday present for the wife's birthday in late February. I was on track with it, too. Had panels glued up and milled, flattened with handplanes, and ready for the rabbet and dado joinery:
Everything was going to plan. Had a bunch of input from people here, and an efficiency challenge issued by Adam Cherubini. Well, unfortunately, I didn't meet his rate. While plowing stopped rabbets (ironically, three months ago today), I was making a poorly-conceived cut, landed my hand on the blade, and took a, um, respite from working on this project. Wife got a mediocre dinner for her birthday. Drag.
A few weeks went by, and I got back into the garage, working slowly, and with a much greater degree of focus. Plowed the final dadoes and rabbets, and decided that the chest might make a good Mother's Day gift:
Dry assemblies went well, interiors got prefinished and assembled, and the carcase went together with about 50 cut nails:
I acquired some new tooling (well, new to me - I needed a low angle block to trim the ~3/32" of end grain overhanging the edges on the front, and a spokeshave to shape the front applied feet; though I did pick up a Veritas Medium Shoulder Plane, which was used extensively on the mortise and tenon web frames and to clean rabbets and dadoes), continued working, and was making decent progress. After much waffling, I decided to upgrade the hinges I'd originally bought for some nice hand-forged strap hinges from Horton Brasses. Got everything together, and the carcase was finished:
I decided to use sliding dovetails to assemble the drawers. It worked, but I think that method is better suited to mechanical slides than traditional runners - it was finicky to set up, required insetting the sides more'n I'd wanted (which has necessitated the addition of drawer guides, one of two open action items I have left to complete), and is lacking that subtle intangible dovetail feel. It's a good quick-and-dirty method, and will probably be great for the shop drawers I'll (someday) make, but it wasn't the best for this.
Well, about a week ago, I realized that Mother's Day was the 9th, not the 16th. Got real busy after the kids went to bed every night, but come Friday, there was still much to do. Put in two late nights, built some drawers (and rebuilt them after realizing I'd cut the backs short by about 1/2" each), shiplapped some back boards, put on about five coats of milk paint, oiled things, rubbed them out, and screwed the top back down for good. Come about 12:45 Saturday night, I had a completed six-board blanket chest to look at:
The chest is sort of a Friday-cabinet affair, using every species of wood with moderately similar properties I had readily available. The carcase is 'stained' soft maple and magnolia; the drawers are soft maple and red birch; the molding's what was sold to me as cherry, though it seems a little too open-pored to be cherry (or even birch); the back boards are poplar. The outside, obviously, is barn red, finished with Minwax Tung Oil finish. I had some reservations about using this color for a while; I'm glad I finally went with it - it works great in this room, and the wife loves it. The inside is painted with buttermilk-colored milk paint eliminate the effect of so many disparate grain patterns and colorings coming together in one spot. The inside's finished with wax. The knobs are from Smith Woodworks and Design (at'd be niceknobs.com to you and me); I'd like to have turned them myself, but time and stainless steel pins were conspiring ag'in me. I left the bottom of the chest natural with a shellac finish so we can remember what the rest looked like:
This is my third attempt at this chest. Every woodworking mistake I've ever made, I've made working on this. Four years ago I started one in walnut which was so far from being viable that the walnut's been absorbed in other places. Two years ago, I tried again, this time with poplar. One of those twisted, warped panels got flattened and became the shiplapped back on this. This time, I've had tool problems, setup problems, timing problems, and one other mishap I don't like dwelling on. It seemed simple four years ago - six boards, nailed together, and a couple drawers. Should be easy for a beginner. Probably is, too. But for me, this has been the hardest project I've ever finished.
Now if I could only have worked some gas springs into the design...
Thanks for looking, and to all the helpful people here who suffered through my never-ending barrage of inane questions, you have my sincere gratitude.
Scott
