Blanket chest with Celtic Cross inlay top

[Fred Falgiano]

I’m making a blanket chest for a client. This chest has had a couple of challenges that have kept it pretty slow-going.

The wood is from the client’s property. It’s oak and black walnut. The boards were milled in place a few years ago and had a LOT of checks and splits. Since she wanted this particular wood for sentimental reasons, this required a good deal of epoxy work. Of course, that takes time.

The photos are of the lid that I just got assembled today. The 4-sided carcass is also complete. I’ll be adding the bottom, the feet, and some handles hopefully this week.

Thanks for looking!
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[Jamie Buxton]

That’s a nice cross. Care to talk a bit about how you made it?

[Fred Falgiano]

Thanks, Jamie.

I do a lot of hand-carved work and have made a half dozen or so crosses like this. This is the first one that I’ve made specifically as an inlay for a larger project. All of the others have been stand-alone wall hangers.

One of the challenges with making this as an inlay was the grain orientation. This is the first cross I’ve carved where the orientation was horizontal and not vertical. As I mentioned, this wood is sentimental to the client, so I had to work with what she gave me. This required a glue-up of three boards to get the height required for the cross. All of the others have been from a single piece of substantially thicker wood.

As far as the actual carving goes, I lay out the design on the wood using pencil, use the bandsaw for overall shaping and just start cutting.

I primarily use a 12-piece Swiss Made set (I got the intermediate set and still wonder if I should have gone with the full-sized set). I have a few other gouges and I use the bench chisels in some instances. I also have a couple of inexpensive sets of diamond plated files that come in handy for getting into the tight corners.

Of course, there some sandpaper involved at the end too.

[michael langman]

Very Nice Handwork Fred.

[Fred Falgiano]

Thanks, Michael!


I've got a couple more photos of the progress so far this week. I'm working on a few other projects at the same time, so this isn't getting my full attention. It's just as well, as there has been some epoxy curing and glue drying down time.


I kind of think that I may have failed to review what I have already done on this project. It's been in the works for some time, as I mentioned earlier.


Since this blanket chest is using lumber from my client's property, I obviously began by milling everything. Joint, 90 degree joint, plane, table saw. Standard S4S except for the fact that there were a LOT of checks and splits in the wood. This required me to do a fair amount of epoxy work followed by 24 hour curing, card scraping, sanding and spending a lot of time in the respirator.


I glued up the panels for the four sides, sized them and got to work on the dovetails. These are all hand cut. I'm decent at dovetails, but by no means a master. I do like the look of larger dovetails (and they require less work). After doing the dovetail work and getting the 4-sided carcass assembled, I planed the top and bottom edges flat and parallel. They were pretty close, but I find it's best to check.


Now, I shifted my attention to the top of the chest. I went with a breadboard on this since it's a pretty large top. It's about 21 inches by 48 inches. I was worried that it would be a big twisted mess if I didn't do breadboard ends. This is only the second time I've done breadboard ends, but I'm happy with how they came out. I used a router and an edge guide to cut the mortise and did the tenon using the dado blade on the table saw. It's one long tenon on each side with three "V" shaped notches cut along the width to give some extra breathing room. The top thickness is 3/4-inch and the mortise is 1/4 inch wide by 1 1/4 deep. The tenon is about 1 inch long. I left about 3/8 inch of wiggle room on each side of the tenon (so, the mortise is 3/4 inch longer than the tenon overall). It's pegged and glued in the middle and pegged with slots in two spots on the sides of the breadboard.


The cross was next. I laid it out on the walnut (another panel I glued up to keep grain orientation consistent), cut it out on the bandsaw and got to carving. I've done several of these crosses and they usually take me about 3 days, but that's not working straight through. I have to take breaks and work on other projects or I'll go crazy. It's good "listening to podcasts" work.

The bottom of the chest is 9 boards glued perpendicular to the front of the chest. There's a small gap between each board to allow for expansion.

I glued some blocks up of walnut for the handles and feet. I shaped the handles using the table saw and dado again and then did the finger grooves on the router. I cut the mortise on the side of the chest using the handheld router.

I did the feet completely on the table saw. For now, the feet are just glued in place. I think I'm going to go back and put two dowels all the way through each one just for good measure. I can just flush cut them off on each end.

If you've read this far, thank you for your interest.
-Fred

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