Twin Blanket Chests

[Todd Burch]

OVER A YEAR ago.... a lady brought me some wood from her cherry tree she had milled from her homestead near Kerrville, Texas. She grew up climbing the tree, yada, yada, yada, and when it died, she wanted a keepsake. So, it's sentimental wood (with an emphasis on the "MENTAL"). :rolleyes:

I had the wood a couple months before I got around to doing anything with it. I realized it had active borers under the edge bark. It was fairly air dried and ready to work, but I had her come get it and take it to a dry kiln to get the bugs cooked. It worked. ;)

A month+ later, she brought it back. I marked it out for maximum yield, and I mean MAXIMUM yield. Since many of the boards were crooked, it didn't leave a whole lot of nice straight wide pieces. I marked it up with a wax marker to get the 3' and 2' pieces I needed for a couple blanket chests.

Then, I waited to start on them until I got the new Felder equip in. That was another 5 months.

There were significant (S I G N I F I C A N T) sections of rot, dryrot, and of course many many small and larger borer holes. Not to mention the defects with the wood itself, like shakes, internal splits, end splits, fissures, honeycombs, checks, etc... :eek:

I knew it would take a lot of epoxy, and it did. She didn't want tinted epoxy, just clear. My fast-dry mix was old and had turned purple, so I ued the slow dry mix. MAN did it take a long time to prepare the wood to turn into boards. :(

Several years ago, I did a repair to an antique French day bed, in which the craftsman had used wedge-shaped boards for the panels. I thought about it, and it made perfect sense to use whatever you had, and not spend a lot of energy making parallel-edge boards. If a tree was crooked, so be it!

I told her I would so the same to these chests - use the wedge shaped boards for best yield. She said OK. I told here that I would have to suppliment with some new cherry, but in time the color would even out. I used aromatic cedar for the bottom - tongue and grooved to help support each other.

I should be through with them tomorrow or Friday. Not a bad deal for her @ $550 each. (should be $1200 each + more for the headache of bad wood!)

All in all, there are really pretty chests. The figure in the wood is awesome, and many of the pieces have a lot of ray-fleck to them.

Roughly they are 36" wide, 24" deep and 18" tall. I will fashion some curved cherry handles (bin pull style) out of the cutoffs and apply them to the end panels. Having the 20" wide jointer/planer sure was nice preparing the panels. ;)

Todd

[Mark Stutz]

Todd,
As always, your work is outstanding. I never cease to be amazed at the diversity of your work and expertise! I'm sure these will be truly special to her, and I commend you for going the extra mile. I wasn't quite sure what you meant by wedged boards until I saw the pictures, but that is a very ingenious way of maximizing wood and really gives a unique effect which I really like.

[Brad Schmid]

Very nice Todd. Using tapered stock for the panels is a cool idea. I need to keep that one in the ol' memory bank for sure. What an effort to satisfy a customer! Sounds like you definitely earned your money on these :)

Brad

[Wes Bischel]

Geez - I'd be hard pressed to make those chests with good wood let alone having to pick through all of the bad stuff!

I think you're client should be thrilled. Something really nice to keep the memories alive. I think your headache will disappear when she sees them.

Nice job, Wes

[Mark Singer]

Great character. It takes experience to do the box joints this nice!

[David Rose]

Nice job! I only wish that folks could know how much work goes into something like this. Though most of us love doing it, it is a lot of work.

David

[Jim Ketron]

They look great Todd!!
How do you plan to finish them?
Jim

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Boy it sounds like these were not an easy build but you pulled it off in grand style as usual. Alan in Md.

[Todd Burch]

Thanks Jim, and everyone else. The finish will be Pratt & Lambert #38 varnish, satin, brushed on. The oil in it will really pop the figure.

I didn't explain the pictures very well. The last picture is a cutoff showing the clear epoxy than ran off and puddled into my "masking tape" resevoir.


The close-up of the lid shows the 3/4" panel let into and overlapping the 3/4" frame. I chamfered the top edge. Think of it as an "offset groove and groove", as opposed to tongue and groove.

Inside the boxes you can see cleats. These are for the sliding tills (1 each box) that I will make tomorrow.

Also, some of the wood was scant (thinner than 3/4"), so I put the rough sides on the inside. Again, more "character"!

Notice the difference in color between the air-dried, old cherry and the new kiln dried cherry wrapping the lid.

Todd

[Jim Ketron]

please give us a follow-up I would like to see it when you get the finish on them!
Thanks
Jim

[Jason Tuinstra]

Todd, great job as always - especially considering the circumstances. Did you use CHB's shaker raised panel bit on the this project? I thought I recognized the pattern on the lid. Regardless, you did a stellar job as always. Keep up the good work!

[Gary Sutherland]

Love the wedged panels!!

gary

[Nathan Hoffman]

Great work from some difficult material! It seems like it would be difficult to get a good glue joint when making the wedged panels, it that true?

[Jim Becker]

Beautiful job, Todd, and a great story around them!

Speaking of big machines...when are you going to do a photo exposé on your new "big iron"???

[Kurt Aebi]

Todd,

They look great and in True Shaker tradition, you used what was there and worked around the little imperfections for the same reason as they did in the past - they had to. The wedge shaped panels really add authenticity to the pieces - my opinion.

Great Job - you are a real artisan, for sure!

[Greg Tatum]

Very nice Todd....I think the back stories all y'all provide is what lends so much interest to the work that is posted....like the wedge-shaped panels on these chests and what the craftsman must go thru to produce what will undoubtably become an heirloom....thanks for keeping this hobbiest inspired.....now the questions....how did you joint the tapered edges? did you gang the mating edges and pass them together? Do you use a home made box-joint jig and if so can we see it?

Greg

[Jack Young]

Todd-

Beautiful work and, more importantly, "creative" work. This kind of post does much more for those of us entering serious woodworking, as it opens up the imagination and sense of possibilities. Thanks for sharing. Let us see the end product.

Jack

[Chris Padilla]

Looks nice, Todd, and I think you may have something with the wedged panels...nice effect. I got me some 'poxying to do on some beautifully spalted bookmatched pieces of maple. A few checks and some pieces need stabilized and I need to dig out the sawdust made by some borers and fill that in. However, I'm going to play with coloring by pigments and sawdust.

I already know that maple dust make a chocolate color but that pine dust make a color more close to maple! Strange, eh? :)

[Todd Burch]

Jason, the only router bits used were:

1) a 45 degree chamfer bit to for the exposed top corner of the center lid panel,
2) a 1/8" mortising bit for the hinge mortises
3) a 3/8" roundover on the top edge of the front 3 sides of the main box itself.

Other special cuts:
I used a 1/4" dado blade to cut the grooves on the lid panel and the lid frame. I used 2 Sears moulding heads (one a tongue, one a groove) to T&G the cedar for the bottom. The chamfers on the plinth and lid-wrap moulding were cut on the tablesaw.

Nathan, the wedged panels were pretty easy. If you can get a good glue joint on a square board then getting an equally good glue joint on a wedged board is really no different. The only issue I had was boards wanting to squeeze out while being clamped. If the glue was still roo runny and slick when I clamped panels up, I had to use an extra clamp or two perpendicular to the typical clamp direction, with one end on the fat edge of a wedged board and the other end on a different fat edge.
Jim - expose - I haven't even changed the knives yet! (but I'm getting ready to - I'm starting to get some "jump")

Greg - a treat to me in all this working with wedged boards, was picking the best end of a wedged board to send through the jointer first. It is definately easier with a wedged board!! The grain was a lot more obvious visually with this wood. As I see it, the jointer doesn't know that the two edges are not parallel, and I'm not going to tell it!!

For the box joints, I usually do not gang cuts. Too much "wood management" trying to both keep them and aligned and slide them all past a 110 mph carbide blade. No thanks!! Plus, with the sizes of these panels all being 16" wide and either 22"+ long or 34"+, they were too big to stack dado cut.

My box joint jig has a lot of miles on it. Its homemade (shop made?) out of 1/4" ply, MDF and solid wood. When I made it, I used cherry for the indexing pin. Bad choice as cherry is too soft and it's getting thin where wood has been rubbing against it for 1,000s of cuts. (I'm sure). Just on these two cases, there are 16 cuts per each end of a panel, 2 ends per panel, 4 panels per case, 2 cases, so that is 256 cuts just on this project.

I could post a shot of my current one, or, if you don't mind waiting, I'll do a photo expose/article while making some new ones. I'm down to two right now - a 1/2" jig and a 3/32" jig (for REALLY tight fingers on small boxes). The 1/2" jig is about worn out, and I need a 1/4" jig and a 3/4" jig. I'll probably make them right after both my dado blade sets get sharpened. (Plus, since I aligned my tablesaw top to the blade a couple months ago, it is just a SLIGHT bit off now too.)

Todd

[Jim Becker]

Jim - expose - I haven't even changed the knives yet! (but I'm getting ready to - I'm starting to get some "jump")
Yea, but we haven't heard anything since you took delivery with a "few little issues"...I'm just being a "picture police" surogate and suggesting that the boys and girls would love to learn more about your new machinery!:)

[Jerry Olexa]

Todd, truly OUTSTANDING work! Difficult circumstances, lots of patience and your usual craftmanship and you made it happen! Great job AND great story!

[Michael Stafford]

Once again I learned something that I will be able to put to almost instant use. I have a bunch of walnut that can be used similarly to great effect. Thanks for sharing. Really look forward to seeing the finished pictures. You know that lady will love her chests from her wood from her tree and she'll always keep a warm spot in her heart for you.