Hope Chest

This is a chest I built for my daughter a couple of years ago for Christmas. It’s made of alder but I wanted it to match the cherry chest of drawers I had built for her previously. Since I already had the alder, and I was too cheap to buy a bunch of cherry….... Me being cheap on buying wood seems to be a recurring theme with my woodworking hobby.

Anyway, I finished this with shellac and some transtint dye to add some reddish brown color. I just kept adding coats until it got close enough in color and tone. It matches pretty well as long as it’s not right next to the chest of drawers!

Construction was done with box joints after gluing up the panels and sizing them. I used a keller jig for the box joints which worked pretty well. I was able to take the jig to the panel as opposed to trying to run the big panels on end across the tablesaw or router table.

Thanks for looking!

-- Steve, Southern Oregon. So many tools, so little time....