Saturday – Finishing

Because I had to be elsewhere yesterday I didn’t get any work done here, so I’m making up the time today.

Most of that time was spent shooting lacquer; two full coats, then scuff sand and shoot a third coat on the exterior. During the dry-times for the first and second coats I went out and got my weed whacking done.

While the third coat dried, I cleaned out the spray gun.

When the lacquer was hard I reinstalled the hardware. And it’s done!

Doug

Thursday – Installing Hardware

Today’s tasks are to get Dan’s Pirate Chest sanded and install the hardware… temporarily.

Sanding the lid took most of the morning. I started by filling nail holes and any cracks that were left between the slats. In a perfect world where everything is straight and even there would be no cracks to deal with, but we don’t live in that world… yet.

Now, there’s a trick to using wood filler. First off, forget what it says on the label and look at the color. This chest is made of red oak, but in filling the cracks I used red oak, white oak and walnut fillers, sometimes straight, sometimes blended, and sometimes just folded together so they produced streaks of color in each other. Wood is not one uniform color, so to make fillers work properly you have to match the colors.

While the filler dried I installed the handles on the sides of the base box. Then I got busy working down the ridges where the slats in the lid came together and smoothing the whole thing out as much as possible. I did use a power sander to quickly fair off the majority of the ridges where the slats run over the steeper curves at the top, but where the lower parts go concave and the final work along the top was all done by hand.

That done, I laid out and installed the hinges, hasp and lid support chain.

And that, dear readers, completes the construction phase of this project. The rest of today will be spent removing the hardware again and finish sanding the chest in preparation for staining. Because Dan has already sent me his pre-stain progress payment there will be no delay in the work so I may even get that done today. The stain will have to set up for at least eight hours before we can finish, and I’ll be in Treasures tomorrow, so it will be Saturday before I can go any further.

See you then!

Doug


P.S. Blogger SAYS it now supports video clips, so I shot a brief clip of the chest on a turntable and tried to upload it here three times, it crashed every time even though it was only 3.1 MB (100 MB max allowed) and it was in Quicktime format which is one of the allowed formats. Oh, well, now I know not to try that again.

Dan, if you want to see it (and have software that will play a QuickTime (*.MOV) file installed on your computer) I can e-mail the clip to you.


DB

Wednesday – Making the Lid

Today we will make the lid of Dan’s pirate chest. To start with I take the full size drawing I made, and trace off a paper pattern for half of the curve along the top. Then I cut the paper pattern out and use that to lay-out the full size piece on a piece of thin plywood. Then I go out to the band saw and cut out the curvy part. I cut it oversize then use a spindle sander to bring the shape back down to the line – much more precise that way. Finally I check the template I just made by setting it on top of the bottom box we built yesterday to make sure the edges line up and the angles look right. It’s good.

Now, I use the template to lay out the two lid end pieces on a piece of lumber. I found a board with a knot in it. Can’t use the knot, but because the grain in the board tends to swirl up and around these knots, I thought it would be a good choice for these parts; see how the grain will follow the arch in the part? Wood is such fun stuff to work with.

OK, so it’s back out to the band saw, rough out the arch on both end pieces and come back inside. One of these days I’ll shanghais enough muscle to help me move that monster inside the new shop, it’s too heavy for just the two of us.

I use the chop saw to cut the straight angles that will match the shape of the lower box, then use the spindle sander to shape the arches.

There are two ways to make a curvy top like this; one is to use a piece of flexible plywood nailed down to the end pieces, the other is to use slats. OK, there is a third way, but it's so time consuming it's not worth considering on this project. The original design used slats, and I’m glad of it because I prefer this method too. But even though they are narrow pieces, if the edges are left square, they will still have gaps where they go around an outside bend. How do we get rid of those? We could try cutting beveled edges, but that would take an awful lot of trial and error to get all the different angles right, and that would mean some slats will end up quite a bit narrower than others because of having to trim more off to get the angles right. There is a better way. Taking a lesson from roll top desks, I routed a bullnose (or rounded edge) on one side of each slat and a cove (or concave edge) on the other, that way the two fit into each other and allow the slats to “bend” around the curves without opening up any spaces. The slats will even “lock” together during glue-up to make a stronger cover.

But we don’t want to just nail the slats to the top – that would look sloppy. So I set up my Rabbet Master bit to cut a rabbet the depth of the slat thickness and three-quarters across the width of the crowns and route a pocket for the slats to sit in.

Next I cut the little rails that will be the front and back of the lid, test fit them on top of the lower box then glue and clamp them together. While the glue is setting up, I make those slats we dreamed up.

Once everything is ready, I trim the slats to precise length and test fit them into the lid. But first, I lay them out and look at the colors and grain patterns in each of the slats, and rearrange them to produce a pleasing look. Then I tape my starter strip in place and begin transferring the set of strips onto the lid. And it works out just perfectly.

Now, I have one reservation here. The pictures of the original chest show that the builder glued edge banding tape over the end grain of the end pieces and up over the lid – presumably this was to hide the joinery of this curvy top. Perhaps they didn’t take the care to get a precise fit; cut them a bit shorter and they’ll go in quicker and with less fussing, then just cover it up with edging tape. But *I* don’t care for the edge banding, and the joinery here is nothing to be ashamed of. So I’m going to check with Dan to see if he wouldn’t care to dispense with the banding – at least on the top. If I’d had my druthers, I’d have opted for mitered corners too – then there would be no end gain to hide. Might have been tricky to cut though.

But it will be Dan’s dresser that this ends up sitting on so whatever he chooses to go with I will do. Here are some shots of the semi-completed chest, remember though that the slats are just sitting there, they have not been glued down yet. I’ll work on that this evening after supper.

Doug

Tuesday – Making the Lower Box

This morning I planed out a plank of the red oak I had brought in to acclimate. I have three projects lined up that will all use red oak, so I brought in enough to do Dan’s Treasure Chest, Gilda’s breakfast tray table and get a good start on Marie’s dining room suit. I’ve dealt with Marie before and know her to be a patient sort, so I’ll get these two little projects out before launching into the table and chairs. That project may take a couple of months all by itself.

Because all of the lower box parts will have a 12° bevel on their upper and lower edges, I set up the table saw to rip at this angle and trim the plank to width with it’s bevels… making sure the bevels run the right direction on both edges!

Because the side pieces angle in at the bottom as well, the ends of the front and back pieces have to be cut to a matching angle. I could use my miter gauge on the table saw – and normally would do so, but that would mean messing up the angle on the blade. So I’ll use the chop saw instead. A decent chop saw has an angle gauge that allows you to dial in the exact angle and lock it down for precise, repeated cuts.

When all the parts are cut I test fit them using masking tape to hold them together while I check the angles and be sure the box comes out square.

Next we need a bottom, but this piece needs to be glued up from narrower pieces so it won’t warp. Since we do not yet have a jointer (until recently we did not have room for this piece of equipment, at least not a good one) and because I’ve always gotten good results from using my table saw and a glue-line blade as a jointer, I will again use the table saw. Oh, but wait… the table saw is set up for 12° cuts. What to do, what to do? Well, why not use 12° glue joints? That way we do not have to disturb that setting as we will need it again. As long as they are all precisely the same angle it doesn’t matter much what that angle is. A very shallow angle would make the boards try to slip up over one another, and even here I use clamps to prevent this, but at this angle it’s not much of a problem. Even if it were to end up a little out of alignment, I’m gluing this part of from rough sawn lumber which will be planed to finished thickness when the glue tacks up sufficiently, so any misalignment will be pared away by the planer anyway.

While the glue sets up lets give credit where credit is due. The design for this chest came from http://www.bayoustyle.com. I gather that Dan saw it there a while back, liked it, but hesitated on buying it. When he went back to get one, it was no longer being offered. He did get a set of photos and the source for the rusty pirate hardware, so we can replicate it for him.

One difference is that the original was made of cypress, which is fairly soft and prone to dents and dings. Dan agreed that building it of oak would make it more durable. Otherwise we will follow the original design as closely as I can.

OK, that glue ought to be tacked up now. Yes, I know, I’m kind of a slow typist.

I surface planed the blank to smooth it and bring it down to the required thickness, then used the table saw to cut the bevels on the edges. By running it through upside down against the rip fence I cut the front and back bevels, and by using the miter gauge with the blank right side up I cut the end bevels. This was a slow process as I wanted to sneak up on a perfect fit, so the final few passes were taking just 1/64 of an inch off at a time.

One last test fit to see that everything is copasetic then it’s off to the glue-up table to make it permanent. Clamping all these angled sides is something of a pain; the clamps keep wanting to slide off the angled sides. But persistence prevailed. This will need to sit overnight before I bother it again.

So, it’s time to clean up the shop and head home. My sweetie and I have a date tonight and it would be good if I cleaned up a bit first!

Doug