Diahretic Expostulation: The Box

So, about a month ago when my better half went to Buffalo, I was tasked to build a Box for the little one. Needless to say my box building got out of hand. I built a blanket chest.

Unfortunately, unlike when we made the cradle, I have no time to elaborate. This time there were many fewer trials since I had done a lot of the work before. Some of it was new to me, and the joint work was a big simpler.

I started with some plans from the New Yankee Workshop which I copied at the library, then I modified generously.

The chest is mostly

walnut and cherry. My goal was to use walnut and ash, but I couldn't get ash that was finished like I could walnut and cherry. Since this time there was no budget to buy thousands of dollars of tools, I figured I had to live with cherry. My only regret is that cherry is reddish, and I wanted more of a black and white look that walnut and ash would give me. Instead we get a black and red look. Still, very nice.

To the left are some walnut rails which I ripped and added tenons. The frame is all tongue and grove with tenon and mortise joints. My joints were a bit sloppy, and I worry a bit that they weren't tight enough. Time will tell.

The cherry was used for panels which float on the inside of each side. The NYW called for the panels to sit in on the sides, and I ended up making them flush. Though I truly like the look of the flush panels, making them flush made it much harder to conceal errors... of which I had quite a few.

The top is so

lid walnut joined down the center. I rejected the bread-board original design and went for a much simpler and plainer look.

The bottom was two pieces of red ceder, to keep out the moths and make it smell nice. The ceder isn't finished and can be removed when transporting the chest.

Its mostly finished at this point, with only one more coat of Danish Oil required to finish it. There are currently two coats on it. We finished the cradle with Polyurethane but didn't like the look in the end. The oil is very easy to work with and so far has produced a fairly nice look. Next project will use shalac.