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After looking at tool chest plans for the past few months I finally started on building one of my own. This chest is mostly based on the one featured in a few episodes of The Woodwright's Shop and in one of Roy Underhill's books - they are mostly the same chest with slight differences in construction. The size will be basically the same as the one in the book - 31 1/2 inches long, 19 inches wide and should be about 15 inches deep with the skirt attached.
I'm taking a hybrid approach with this project - using hand tools for the joinery and power tools for surfacing. I started out by flattening the board for the main case by hand since it was too wide for my jointer - after taking the crown off with a jack plane I ran it through the planer to get it down to the final 3/4" thickness. After this I cut the pieces to final length on the table saw - I'm not quite confident in my hand sawing skills yet to get a square enough cut by hand.
After this it was time to lay out the dovetails. This is my first time trying to lay out and cut dovetails by hand - it was a lot of work but not quite as bad as I thought it would be. I went by the example in the book which ended on tails instead of half pins as usual - I was going to switch it to use half pins but I had already cut the joints for half of the box so I decided to just go with it. I went with the tails first approach so I could gang cut the tails which worked pretty well. To mark the pins I used the saw in the kerf method. This worked pretty good - but I had trouble getting the saw mark the entire way across the pin board. Because of this I had to complete the line with a ruler and a pencil - I ended up a bit off on a few of them so I had to do a bit more paring to get it to fit right - and the pins were too tight on my first test fit and started a split on the one tail board - luckily I caught it before I ruined the side. It was also a bit challenging to cut right next to the line instead of right on it - some of the pins ended up a little loose since I guess the saw ended up tracking in the groove. That being said I was very happy with the new Veritas dovetail saw I picked up for this project - it was very easy to get started and even though it is the fine cut version made short work of cutting the dovetails.
I cut the waste on the pin board with a coping saw and chopped out the waste in the pin board with a chisel. I definitely need more practice with both methods - it took a lot of paring by hand after the majority of the waste was chopped / sawed out. After much fiddling I got the main case together and I'm pretty happy with the first for my first hand-cut dovetails.
Later this week I'm hoping to add the skirt and bottom and maybe finish the lid if I have enough time. I ran out of poplar so I had to pick up a few more pieces and let them acclimate before I can move any further. At least this gives me a few more days to contemplate the joinery for the lid. In the book they use a half lap and on the show he uses a mitered bridle joint. At this point I'm leaning towards the half lap since it seems to be a bit easier to execute although the bridle joint looks nicer.
On a side note - I took a class at the Woodwright's school this weekend and got to meet Roy Underhill. I told him I was working on the chest and he took some time during the class to give me a few pointers - he said he would do a few things differently than he showed on the TV show and the book so it was nice to get to pick his brain for a bit. Also - the tool chest he patterned his after was sitting next to my bench and the box he built on the show was upstairs and he had test pieces scattered around the classroom - so it was nice to be able to see the construction details in person.
Here are some pics of the build so far.
-John
I'm taking a hybrid approach with this project - using hand tools for the joinery and power tools for surfacing. I started out by flattening the board for the main case by hand since it was too wide for my jointer - after taking the crown off with a jack plane I ran it through the planer to get it down to the final 3/4" thickness. After this I cut the pieces to final length on the table saw - I'm not quite confident in my hand sawing skills yet to get a square enough cut by hand.
After this it was time to lay out the dovetails. This is my first time trying to lay out and cut dovetails by hand - it was a lot of work but not quite as bad as I thought it would be. I went by the example in the book which ended on tails instead of half pins as usual - I was going to switch it to use half pins but I had already cut the joints for half of the box so I decided to just go with it. I went with the tails first approach so I could gang cut the tails which worked pretty well. To mark the pins I used the saw in the kerf method. This worked pretty good - but I had trouble getting the saw mark the entire way across the pin board. Because of this I had to complete the line with a ruler and a pencil - I ended up a bit off on a few of them so I had to do a bit more paring to get it to fit right - and the pins were too tight on my first test fit and started a split on the one tail board - luckily I caught it before I ruined the side. It was also a bit challenging to cut right next to the line instead of right on it - some of the pins ended up a little loose since I guess the saw ended up tracking in the groove. That being said I was very happy with the new Veritas dovetail saw I picked up for this project - it was very easy to get started and even though it is the fine cut version made short work of cutting the dovetails.
I cut the waste on the pin board with a coping saw and chopped out the waste in the pin board with a chisel. I definitely need more practice with both methods - it took a lot of paring by hand after the majority of the waste was chopped / sawed out. After much fiddling I got the main case together and I'm pretty happy with the first for my first hand-cut dovetails.
Later this week I'm hoping to add the skirt and bottom and maybe finish the lid if I have enough time. I ran out of poplar so I had to pick up a few more pieces and let them acclimate before I can move any further. At least this gives me a few more days to contemplate the joinery for the lid. In the book they use a half lap and on the show he uses a mitered bridle joint. At this point I'm leaning towards the half lap since it seems to be a bit easier to execute although the bridle joint looks nicer.
On a side note - I took a class at the Woodwright's school this weekend and got to meet Roy Underhill. I told him I was working on the chest and he took some time during the class to give me a few pointers - he said he would do a few things differently than he showed on the TV show and the book so it was nice to get to pick his brain for a bit. Also - the tool chest he patterned his after was sitting next to my bench and the box he built on the show was upstairs and he had test pieces scattered around the classroom - so it was nice to be able to see the construction details in person.
Here are some pics of the build so far.
-John
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