David, thanks for your interest – hopefully this build thread will help you decide if you want to build a similar project. One unique thing about the Greene Greene "extended finger joint" design is that cleaning up glue squeeze out is a real headache as compared to dovetails when you can simply plane the whole side of the carcass clean. Cleaning up the squeeze out required quite a bit of time with chisels/sandpaper etc. guess I won't know if I succeeded until I put on the finish.
Using Matching/contrasting woods in a project is always a headache for me as "design" questions like this are absolutely not my strength. That's why I prefer copying existing designs were somebody else already made the decision.
The original design was Walnut with ebony pegs which IMHO, looks great. That was my first version of this chest and probably one of the first things I made that the boss allowed in the house. I made this in QSWO before and I thought the reddish tint of cocobolo/but bingo/Purple Heart look a little better than the black ebony. Again the boss decided cocobolo was way to go. I've had the same experience – cocobolo darkens pretty significantly over time and sort of loses the reddish hue. I'm thinking about maybe putting on a protective coat of shellac over just the plugs before finishing the rest of the chest, in an effort to try and retains much of the reddish color as I can.
Thanks for looking, Mike