Pine blanket chest build pics

[Mike Allen1010]

Blanket chests are one of my favorite hand too projects because; the scale doesn't require too much lumber and they can be completed fairly quickly, almost everybody has a place for one, and we have two "nomadic" college-age boys who move all their earthly possessions on a regular basis.

This chest is based on one in "Blanket Chests", by Scott Gibson and Peter Turner, the Tauton Press. I had some better pictures from the book but can't seem to find them.The original is much more complicated with sloping carcass sides that are narrower at the bottom and wider at the top and a lapstrake construction lid that curves in two dimensions – waaaay over my head. I'm hoping I can pull off a Coopered lid has some reasonable semblance of a curve
322684

My last project was white oak and I wanted something a little more hand tool friendly for this project. My local lumber yard had some fairly nice, semi-tight grained pine and at a $1.29 BF it wouldn't be the end of the world if I screwed it up.

The panels for the carcass are glued up, but with rabbits on the show side as a decorative element and the panels are contained in an M&T frame construction. Here is one of the panels glued up with marking out to trim to the correct height. I cut a little fat and then trim to the layout line with a shoulder plane.
322685322686322687

Here's a little shop built cut off jig for trimming stiles for the four sets of panels to the same size (hopefully).
322688

Pine is soo soft, was made which makes it really easy to work with hand tools, but for chopping the mortises I clamped the rails in my tail vice to provide extra support so I didn't blow out the sides.
322689

These are absolutely my favorite layout tools – here laying out the length of the mortises. The same tools are used to layout the width of the Tennons.
322690

Paring a "guide rail" to get the shoulders of the Tennons straight and even.
322691

[Mike Allen1010]

Sawing out the Tennons. I like dark totes for crosscut saws and light color totes for rip back saws because I'm not very smart and it helps me avoid becoming confused when I have too many tools lying on the bench.
322692

Using the shop vac to suck out the debris from the mortises without having to remove the work piece from the vice speeds up the final fitting of the M&T joints.
322693

The bottom rail is offset slightly proud of the rest of the frame (which complicates the layout of the mortises). Trial fitting of the M&T's is a good time to check that the groove for the panels lines up. In my case kind of a happy accident.
322694

Here's the front and side panels of the chest assembled. The rails top and bottom of the front and back are joined to the side panels with dovetails, which I think as a interesting detail.
322695322697

Here is laying out the pins on the side rails and the finished assembled side panels. I was little nervous about whether I should glue up the corner rail joints so they dovetails fit or just assemble the entire side panels and hope that doesn't throw off the fit of the rail dovetails.
322696

In this picture you can see the l glue up is a little dicey because you need to seat the dovetails flush against the baseline and at the same time get the stiles of the side panels to fit for gluing up to the front panels. I guess this is what they make "gap filling" glue for!
322698


Once assembled, sleeving the carcass over the tail vise was convenient for trimming the corner DTs flush (always one of my favorite things –kind of a "reveal" – sometimes they fit, sometimes not so much).
322699

[Mike Allen1010]

Here's the glued up carcass. The pine is a joy to work with hand tools, the downside is my dirty fingerprints show up glaringly on the freshly planed surfaces . A priority is to get some finish on this code 3, while it is still reasonably clean.
322700322701322702



Next step will be to build the Coopered, curved lid to the chest. I drew actual size the curve I was shooting for and tried to take calculate the bevel angles on the staves needed to glue up to achieve the appropriate radius curve – but the geometry/math was again over my head (surely there some tool on the Internet for doing this). I'm thinking this is why I am building this project out of pine – a little trial and error here won't kill me.

Thanks for looking,Mike

[Mike Cherry]

The photos don't do it justice! I look forward to seeing the lid!

[John Kananis]

Good stuff! Coopered lid should look nice one this carcass.

[Brian Holcombe]

Gorgeous! I think that one will make its way into the house.

[Jim Koepke]

Nice build.

I am curious about the dimensions?

I think a coopered lid can be done without too much math.

If you know the radius of the curve and how many sides to the polygon you want to turn into a curved lid it should be easy to find a list of polygon angles.

From there it should be a piece of pi.


jtk

[Mike Null]

Beautiful work. You must have spent a good bit of time picking that great looking wood.

I like your bench--it looks like a workbench should look--well used.

[Mike Henderson]

I did a coopered lid here (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?234926-More-Coopering&highlight=). If you want to know how I did it, send me a note.

Mike

[Brett Robson]

Your project's looking great Mike! Isn't working with softwoods a nice break? I just love how long everything stays sharp!

[Mike Allen1010]

Nice build.

I am curious about the dimensions?

I think a coopered lid can be done without too much math.

If you know the radius of the curve and how many sides to the polygon you want to turn into a curved lid it should be easy to find a list of polygon angles.

From there it should be a piece of pi.


jtk

JK,

Dimensions are 39" x 21" x21". At least that's the plan- with the curve of the coopered lid, the actual height in my questionable hands could be... - almost anything.

I know you're trying to help me but you used words like "radius, polygon and Pi", and for that I thank you (Seriously, who doesn't appreciate a good Pi/Pie reference? - well done my friend, well done:)).

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure those are concepts like splitting the atom - waay over my head! 50/50 chance I can scribble some kind of line and hope I can make the wood fit. We'll see.

Cheers, Mike

[Patrick Bernardo]

+1 on the bench. With scars like that, you don't need a story. Everything looks great. Looking forward to the end of the chest.

[Mike Allen1010]

I did a coopered lid here (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?234926-More-Coopering&highlight=). If you want to know how I did it, send me a note.

Mike


Mike, your chest is awesome! - thanks for the link. The changing shape of your curved lid is visually really interesting. I would be happy to get a simple constant radius curve.

Like you, I drew the curve real size and measured/ estimated the bevel angle. Made a fence for jointer plane with the appropriate angle and 've got the staves. Was able to glue up pairs of staves with clamps. I don't know how to glue up he entire curved lid without making a form to maintain the shape of the curve during glue up. Trying to avoid that if I can. Not sure how-to clamp?

[Chris Hachet]

Everything looks fantastic, thank you for the inspiration.

[Mike Allen1010]

I’m going to create the curved lid by planing the pieces on a slight angle and gluing them together to form the curve – "coopering"; the same idea used by barrel makers - God bless their souls.

To estimate the bevel angle I need to plane the lid staves, I laid out the curve within the lid, life-size using a beam compass.
322926322927

The next two pictures show using a right triangle, laid along the radius of the curve – this represents the 2” wide flat pieces I’m hopefully going to glue up to form the curve, and the 2.8° bevel angle as measured by my cheesy Home Depot protractor.
322928322929


I know you’re thinking; “really Mike, 2.8°, isn’t that level of granularity a little overkill ?”, probably, but I’ve never done this before and my rule of thumb is layout as close to accurate as possible and provide room for screw ups. Yes I know, I would be the guy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.


Here are the staves for the lid and a LV magnetic fence I use with my Stanley #8 jointer. I’ve added an auxiliary wooden fence at the 2.8° angle.
322930322931


As you can see, the angle is really small and the only way I really don’t know if these will work is putting them together and checking against the template I made of the lid curve.
322932322933

[Mike Allen1010]

Glue up was the hardest part – I glued segments of 2 staves together and when those dried, glue those up to form half the lid – as you can see I use masking tape as a clamp (I really hope those joints fit well, because the clamping pressure is not really going to do much to pull things together).
322934


Once I had to half of the lid glued up, I sawed out/shaped the curve on the frame for the lid and use that as a form to glue up the lid in its entirety.
322935

Here is the Rube Goldberg glue up process I used – I’m sure there’s a better way to do this, but I don’t know what it is.

322936

Finally after all the work to glue up the top, planing the outer surface was a pleasure (Pine is so fun to work with hand tools).
322937
To get to final dimensions for the top, work holding was probably the biggest challenge.
322939322940


Cleaning up the inner, concave surface of the lid I used a # 18 round plane and scrapers. I don’t want to make light of this step for those who’ve never used a round molding plane and/or curved scrapers – it took me a long time and some significant effort (for molding planes) to learn how to make these tools work, but once figured out, they provide results I’m not sure how I would achieve otherwise without some kind of super onerous sanding process.
322941322942

[Mike Allen1010]

Lastly here is the handle for the top of the chest. As you can see, I prefer using any kind of household item as a template to layout curves (if nobody squeals, the LOML will never know her dishes were ever in the shopJ). Oh yeah, carving a recess in the underside of the handle and ¼” re-sawn cedar added to a plywood bottom for the chest.
322944322945322946322947

This is a Christmas gift for our nephew, a 23-year-old paramedic who bench presses cars for fun. The carcass of the chest is only 4/4 Pine and I wanted the added rigidity of a plywood bottom to hopefully keep the whole thing together.

Thanks for looking, Mike

[Mike Cherry]

Looking good Mike A.

[Bill McDermott]

The angled jointer fence is a clever solution. The easy, but one-way adjustability of it seems like a great way to sneak up on precisely the curve you want. Your question about the glue-up of the coopered top makes me want to insert splines. I wonder if you were to spline those joints, if you could use the same auxiliary fence on your grooving/plough plane?

Are you thinking about a hidden compartment, which maybe useful for nomadic young men? Maybe a false bottom in the chest, or in a till?

Great photo-journalizing. Thanks for the interesting post.

[Brian Holcombe]

Looks awesome Mike, thank you for detailing the coopering.

[James Pallas]

Mike Really great work. Your layout methods are just fine, they work. Interesting to see dovetails used in that fashion. Your documentation of the process is well done. Lots of useful information. Thanks for sharing.
Jim

[Jim Koepke]

Good to see you figured out how to lay out the lid using a drawing first.

Looking good.

jtk