17th c. French Canadian Travelling Chest
GolfSteve in Calgary
>I built this chest as part of one of Rob Cosman's Advanced Hand-Tool Courses. It's a reproduction of a 17th Century French Canadian Travelling Chest. I thought I would post a few pictures of the finished product, then share how it was built:
An article on building this chest was published in Fine Woodworking Issue 56 (Jan/Feb 1986), pages 67-69 by Peter Schuerch. I managed to obtain a copy of this article by visiting the basement archives of Calgary's Central Library.
Peter Schuerch described the box as follows: "I based my design on illustrations in Jean Pallardy's book, The Early Furniture of French Canada. The chest is compact enough to tuck under a person's arm, yet sufficiently sturdy to be bounced around in a canoe or small boat. Although the chest appears to be coopered like a barrel, it's actually a square box that is carved to look round."
Building this box completely with hand-tools was a pile of work. I estimate we spent 65 hours during the course, at which point I had the box assembled, but had not mounted the hinges, cleaned up the dovetails, or done any finishing. This took me another 10 hours, for a total of 75 hours on this project.
The first step was to cross-cut and rip some 12" wide by 3" thick Eastern White Pine, then dimension these into blanks for the box sides. The blanks were 8-1/2" wide by 24" long by 2-1/2" thick.
Next, the radius for the sides was laid out on the blanks using a divider to scribe one line at 5-3/4" radius and a second line at 5-1/4" radius - giving sides with a finished thickness of 1/2". The wood was selected from the centre portion of the tree so that the growth rings roughly aligned with the curvature. This avoids short grain near the top and bottom of the blank.
Now the real work began. The inside curvature of the blanks was roughed out using an adze. I was sure glad that Rob provided the authentic 1750's OSHA approved shin guards.
Following the adze, the sides were planed to the scribed lines first using a scrub plane, then finishing up with a round bottom plane. The radius of the plane bottom was around 5-3/16 - slightly under the desired radius of the sides. This plane was made by Rob and provided to us for the class. A small 1/8" wide flat spot was left at the top and bottom of the blank to avoid a fragile knife edge on the wood.
Next, the blanks were flipped over and the outside of the blank was planed down to the scribed line using a variety of planes. This was a bit touchy because not very much weight could be applied to the blank without risking cracking the darn thing in half. Shaping the blanks took a good 12 hours of hard labour, so repeating this task was not on my wish list.
The end pieces were now cut from some nominally 4/4 stock, but which actually measured almost 1.5" thick (more labour...). The pieces were dimensioned to 11-1/2" long by 10-1/4" high by 7/8" thick. The next step was one of the most critical steps. The radius of the sides was scribed onto the end-pieces, but first the centre of the arcs needed to be accurately located on both sides of the board. This was done using dividers. Failure to accurately locate the centre on both sides of the board results in a gap in the dovetails later (if your dovetail baselines are not the same on the inside and outside of the board, when you chisel away the dovetail waste, the chiseled area will not be square to the face of the board).
The blank above is tall enough so that the top 2" can be cut off the top of the board to form the sides of the lid later. Cutting this piece off allows the grain on ends of the chest to match the grain on the ends of the lid.
Here's a shot of me at this point of the project during the course. This was Tuesday around lunch time and I was beginning to think that I might actually be able to complete this project in the five days we had available...
Now the ends are roughed to shape using a saw and spokeshave, then shaved to the scribed line using a plane. In fact, the ends could have been left proud of the scribed line, then cleaned up once the chest had been dovetailed together.
The dovetails for the ends were now laid out by drawing a centreline down the board and, using an angle gauge, drawing lines out at 10 degrees off of horizontal. A 1/4" wide groove was cut into the bottom of the board to accomodate the chest bottom later.
The pieces of wood were now starting to look like a chest. In this photo I was triple checking my transfer of the end dovetails onto the sides. I did NOT want to end up with a Z shaped box (my usual mistake when making drawers...) The tails were transferred onto the sides by standing the sides up on the ends and carefully scribing the lines. This was a bit of a balancing act, and the presence of a helper was great assistance.
The waste was chiselled from the sides with assistance of chopping blocks. Much to my surprise, cutting the dovetails was actually one of the easiest parts of this project. This picture was taken at 8:40 pm on Tuesday night.
The groove for the bottom was cut into the sides using a molding plane with a 1/4" cutter. The plane had been modified to give enough clearance for the curved bottom.
The really exciting part of the project was gluing up the ends onto the sides - one at a time. We diverged from my normal dovetailing practice by using a big rubber mallet to pound the two pieces together. The rubber mallet is soft enough that any protruding pins are absorbed by the rubber while still transferring force to the tails, driving the joint together. Once pounded together, clamps were used to tighten up the joint where required and square the assembly.
Once two sides were glued onto one end, the chest bottom was dimensioned from rough stock to 1/2" thick by the required length and width to match the ends. The panel was raised using the same radius bottom plane as before until the edges were 1/4" thick. The edges of the panel were waxed to prevent glue or finish from sticking to the panel during glue-up.
Once the other end of the box was glued onto the assembly, the blank for the top was cut and dimensioned from 8/4 (2" thick) rough stock. The following picture was taken Thursday at 11:00 am. I ended up messing up this top and had to make another, which was a shame because the growth rings almost exactly matched the desired radius for the lid.
Using the same process as before, the lid was roughed out. The particular board that the class was using for the lid had a hidden shake right in the centre of it, so we used some authentic 1750's cyanoacrylate glue to stabilize the cracks. Surprisingly, even though we were breaking every rule for keeping wood from warping when dimensioning it (removing unequal amounts from each side, etc.), the pieces did not warp very much at all.
Here's where I really messed up. Friday morning I was cutting the dovetail pins on the lid, and inadvertently marked them out for through dovetails instead of half-blind dovetails. The result was that the lid was 1/2" shorter than the rest of the box. There was no choice but to build a new lid. In my rush and frustration that morning I didn't take many pictures of the lid construction. The lid ends use half-blind dovetails to avoid weak tails near the corners of the lid. Here's a picture of the project basically as it was at the end of the course:
The above picture was taken in my shop. I was using some waste pieces I saved from dovetailing the sides to fix a few gaps in the dovetails. These gaps were caused by one of my centre points on one end being slightly higher than the centre point that I had marked on the other side of the end.
The next step was to pin the dovetails. I used a dowel plate to make a pile of 1/4" by 2" dowels, which were pounded into a 3/16" pilot hole drilled into the chest pins.
The Eastern White Pine was wonderful to work with - cutting like butter with sharp tools. The only problems with the wood were a tendency to crumble when chopping the waste (a lower angle 20 degree chisel helped this problem a lot), and that the wood was rather bland when freshly cut. I decided to artificially age the wood a bit using a solution of 1 tsp. of sodium hydroxide crystals dissolved in a quart of water. This solution oxidizes the surface of the wood just like exposure to air over time does. Here's a shot of the colour change induced by the solution:
And the chest with the solution applied. The solution turned the cherry pins from brown to deep burgundy. The solution leaves the wood with a brighter yellow tinge than I would have liked, but I was also going to apply some tung oil - into which the manufacturer has put a bit of purple tint - to counteract the yellowness.
While applying the tung oil, I turned my attention to finishing up the hardware. The hardware was custom made by a blacksmith in New Brunswick. The blacksmith had left some grinding marks along the edges of the hardware that would give away that this was not made in the 1750's. Luckily I have access to steel fabrication equipment at work, so it was a fairly easy job to correct. We heated up the edges of the hinges, then used a ball point hammer to pound away the grinding marks. I also had to correct the radius of my hinges to match that of my lid - which was slightly under-radius. A hunk of 12" pipe was almost the perfect match.
We aged the hinges just like you season a cast iron pan - heat the steel then apply oil. I used raw linseed oil. Heating the hinges with the torch didn't work very well for aging, so I took the hinges home and, while my wife was away, aged the hinges in the stove. I also bought some square cut nails from Lee-Valley and aged them.
The hardware was installed on the chest using clenched square cut nails. I don't really like the look of the clenched nails on the inside of the chest, and also don't like the fact that inevitably you end up denting the wood while trying to clench the nails.
I drilled pilot holes a little bit too large for the nails on one hinge, so that hinge moves a bit if the lid is opened a bit too far, but what can you expect from a chest that is 250 years old???
I bought an extra set of hinges so that I can build another chest out of hardwood, but I think it might be a while before I get up the energy to do so. This chest, when made with handtools, is a pile of labour. If made with hardwood it would be even more work.
