Chester County Chest
Bill Tindal, E.TN
>I saw this chest at Winterthur and was smitten at first sight. As best I can this will be a reproduction of that chest except mine will have bun feet instead of the ugly feet on the original. I will line and berry the arched drawers but not the others as in the original (it looked a bit too busy). The drawers to be L&B are from some rift cut walnut I recently had sawed. I thought the plain rift would be best behind the L&B. The moldings are all scraped as I could not find commercial cutters to do them. I used metal banding stock for the scrapers. The English style drawers have just been fitted at the time of this picture and await finish (burnt umber pigment stain and varnish. The hidden interior supports for the drawers was particularly challenging in the top section. The top is some especially fine curly walnut (2 boards wide) from the archival lumber stash.
With "a lttle help from my friends" here at WC the drawers were a satisfying success. They have 1/32 clearance as this is what I found most successful on antiques. Right now they are sitting awaiting the shop RH to get up to 55%. They were originally fitted when the shop was too dry and I want to be sure they are ok before applying a thin coat of shellac to the interiors.
I have some nice but $$ reproduction dangles for hardware from White Chapel.
