First off, I want to send a big THANK YOU to Rick Waters at The Sawdust Chronicles for two things… #1. Encouraging woodworkers to build something that benefits our communities, and #2. Hosting the 60 Day Build Challenge. I also want to thank Tommy McDonald at Major Leauge Wood Working , (MLWWoodworking.com) for his encouragement and technical guidance.

Now for the story…....

Late this summer I saw a reference to Rick’s TSDC 60 Day Build on Tommy’s website and I thought… woohoo, a chance to win a set of Rockler’s “Bench Cookies” and do something good for my community. I contacted Rick and got the details of the contest, then submitted my entry. I managed to get it built a couple of weeks early and on time for my work’s United Way Fund Raising Campaign. I gave them a few pictures and they ran with it. Monday they gave me ONE THOUSAND raffle tickets to sell at $5 each and 30 days to get them sold. My goal is to sell them all in two weeks.

Ok, so here is how it was built:

Constructino Materials:
Post/Rails/Muntins/Lid/Panels are hard maple (8/4 for the leg posts and 6/4 for everything else)
The bottom is a plywood sandwich (3/4 Maple faced, poplar cored and 1/4” aromatic cedar)

Finish Materials

Boiled Linseed oil with Japan Dryer added (3 coats)
Hock, Blonde De-Waxed Shellac (3 coats of 1# cut, 1 coat of 1/2” cut)
General Finishes Arm-R-Seal (2 coats)

The Process

All frame joints are Doweled Mortise and Tenon

After rough cutting, all the stock was machine jointed and planed and allowed to aclimate. Then I hand planed the stock to final thickness. Following that I used card scrapers to smooth out any mill marks.

I used my home made tenon jig to cut all the tenons and to rough cut the raised panels. The final 1/8” was cut off the bevel faces with an old Stanley #78 hand plane. That too was followed by smoothing with a card scraper.

After a few test assemblies with multiple panel arrangements, I settled on the final layout. With the case apart, I prepared the stock for finishing by wetting it all with Demineralized water followed by 320 wet/dry sanding. This was done 3 times to remove all the grain fuzz.

Next I applied 2 coats of BLO to the panels, rubbed them out and allowed them to dry. After the assembly was glued up I applied a total of 3 coats of BLO to all the interior and exterior surfaces. This was followed by the multiple coats of shellac and Arm-R-Seal. All in all, I have about 150 to 200 hours of work in it.

Thanks for your view and your comments.

FlWoodRat

I needed a push block to help me joint some slender wood. This little project took about an hour to make at a cost of $1. I had some cherry scrap and the 2” hardwood balls laying around the shop. I did have to buy two #10 2” brass screws. I’m slow, so it probably took me about a half an hour to lay out, cut and chop the Dovetails and another half hour to do predrill the balls, attach them and apply a coat of linseed oil. After the oil cured, I put a coat of Johnson’s Paste wax on it..

Have a safe and productive day in your shop.

Rat

I needed a spot to store hand tools, measuring equipment, spare blades, my stacked dado, etc close to my Table Saw. Having some scrap 1” cherry plywood that was given to me and some hard maple, I decided to build and UNDER Table storage cabinet for my TS. It has four drawers, each with full extension slides. So far Ive had no problems filling it.

I posted details of the build on the MLW.com web site. If you follow this link http://www.mlwwoodworking.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&p=6837#p6837 you can check it out.

Have a safe and productive day in your shop.

Rat

Well Fellow LJ’s, if you have followed my blogs you know its been several months that I’ve been working on this project. I finally finshed my rendition of LJ T-Chisel’s (Tom MacDonalds) Blanket Chest, Project #3. Wifey will be delivering it to our Grand Daughter next week when she goes to visit.

For those of you who are familiar with Tommy’s design, you can see mine looks a lot different. Daughter in Law wanted raised panels vs the carved fronts and she also asked for a dark reddish expresso finish instead of the waxed oak. I talked to Tommy about my changes (thinking he may not want me to change his design) and he encouraged me to go for it. Just following the project plans and the accompanying videos on Tommy’s site helped a lot. And, in case you didn’t know Tom MacDonald moved the project content and forum content from his old “TChisel.com” to his new WWW.MLWWoodworking.com (Major League Woodworking).

By the way, our Daughter, who is expecting her first child and our second grand daugher in October has placed her order for one too. Her’s will be built out of hard maple. I can’t wait to get started.

Ya’ll have a good day.

Rat

Progress is a wonderful thing. However, sometimes it’s one step forward and WAIT. I’ve gotten to the point in my “T-Chisel Blanket Chest” project where I need to raise the panels. For me, the easiest way to do that is with my table saw. Since I want to keep all ten of my fingers I decided to build a jig to hold the panels for cutting the bevels.

It’s made from some scrap 1” maple ply and a little teak that I had laying around the shop taking up room and collecting dust. The jig is designed to straddle my fence. The teak push pad on the right allows me to keep my hands as far from the blade that I can.

I put edgebanding on the ply. All screwed together without glue. I want to be able to take it apart if I have to. Because I made it square to the table, I can use is as a tenoning jig also. Of course, I will have to add a sacrificial vertical fence for those cuts.

FYI, there is “0” side play on the fence. Hopefully I will be able to get nice clean cuts when I test drive it.

Thanks for viewing and have a great day.

Our whole house remodel continues. Since we re-configured the laundry area, wifey asked me to build a small cabinet for her to house all the bottles of soap, softener, etc. She also wanted ‘hanging’ space. This unit was built out of maple/birch ply and some poplar. This was another fun weekend project.

FYI, the finished project is painted WHITE. I will post pictures of it when I get around to taking them. LOL.

Son and Daughter-in-law moved into a small condo and needed something smaller than their coffee table. So we my son and i grabbed some left over, aka, Scrap Plywood and built two boxes. The 18” x 18” x 1/2” granite tiles were left over from our home remodel project.

This was my first attempt at compound miters on the table saw. Hopefully my next attempt will produce a little tighter corners. The ply was sanded to 320, then stained with min-wax ebony (their choice), then given 3 coats of spray on satin lacquer.

DIL loves them as they provide hidden storage and a place to set snacks on while watching TV.

The best part was spending quality time with my son as we ‘figured’ things out.

I was asked to support our local United Way campaign by donating a ‘Florida Coastal Cottage” piece of furniture to be raffled off. Off in the shop awaited some AARP rated pine slabs. (Yes, old growth fir at 8/4 and 6/4, 16 inches wide and collecting too much dust)

A little jointing, some noisy planing, a few rips and cross cuts and I had a nice pile of wood dirt and some fine white pieces of clear stock with 4 straight and parallel edges. Bored, counter sunk, screwed and plugged, the frame was assembled, the top was on, the legs were attached and all it needed was some ‘tropical’ paint. A white latex primer and ‘honeydew’ top coat (3 coats) was almost all she needed to bask in the Florida sun. I took her to the beach, added a few accessories and snapped her picture…. Nothing like spoting a well shaped leg (or 4) at the beach. Eh guys? Hope you enjoy the end result.

Bruce