six board chest

Fun with Feet

Working on the feet and matching them to the side pattern.

Front with feet clamped in place.

Temp and humidity not too bad.

Got a little bit of time to work on the decorative feet for the front of the chest. I used my rabbet plane to cut rabbets on the back of the feet so that they’ll attach to the side pieces. The molding will cover the seams and nails.

Some times you just need a jointer ..

I got a little time to clean up the carcass so that I can move on the .. dun, dun, dun .. molding (yikes!). Haven’t done molding yet and the class I’m taking to learn how to do it is still far off. Anyway, here’s a few shots of the progress.

My jointer worked perfectly to true up the top of the chest.

Here’s a quick shot of the chest all together.

The darker spots are where I didn’t quite get all the shellac off. But no worries, a coat of shellac will be the first layer of finish.

Molding stock. Fortunately, this will fit through the planer .. so I only have to flatten one side.

Its a chest!

So thankfully I put together some test joints with my nails before I put them in my final pieces. It was splits-ville three times before I got the right size pilot hole.

Test joints. Three pilot holes split before I got the right size.

No spits on the back.

And no splits on the front! Yippee!

Here’s a sneak peek at the carcass. Oh and the maple strip is for a box to slide back and forth on.

Fun with the six board chest .. finally!

Yipppee! .. I started working on the joinery! (No more milling) Here’s a few shots of the progress.

Pretty end grain on the shooting board .. and shavings for those who like shavings.

Laying out the side feet curves.

Shaping after band sawing.

Final shape.

Sawn notches for the chest walls.

Chiseling out the chest bottom dado

Finishing up with the router.

Final dado.

Its finally starting to look like a chest.

You can right click on a photo and open in a new tab to get an enlarged picture.

Erasing the red line

When milling wide boards, I often put a line in the middle of the board so I have something to target. This helps me weight my plane properly so that I actually flatten the board.

To quote Robert Wearing in his book “The Essential Woodworker” – “At the start of the stroke there is strong pressure by the left hand on the knob, while the right hand on the handle pushes straight forward. In the middle of the stroke the down pressure is equal by both hands. At the end of the stroke the positions are reversed … “.

The way it was explained to me in my first hand planing class is that you’re digging out a bowl. So my red line is the middle of the bowl and I work to make it disappear.

Red line to indicate the center of the board.

After working across the board.