# Cherry Blanket Chest



## jcwalleye (Dec 26, 2009)

*The plan and milling material.*

I'm building a blanket chest for a relative and thought I'd post some pictures. The design is frame and panel, mortise and tenon. The frame and top is mostly from 1" cherry and the legs are a little larger. Here is a picture of the SketchUp plan:










Google SketchUp works very well for me. I went through a dozen of the 14 free online tutorials at the ChiefWoodworkers' web site. And can now draw up detailed plans. I'd highly recommend the tutorials.

The opportunity arose to acquire an old but still serviceable computer for the shop. Having the plans right there saves me from running back and forth into the house. I can check measurements and change design elements quickly. It's my measure twice check.










One of the ChiefWoodworkers' tutorials covers how to create views. Here are the views of the blanket chest, exactly as they were drawn in the plan.
Legs: 








Rails: 








Stiles:








Panels:








Top:









I started out by milling the material to rough length and width. First to the jointer to get a straight edge, then to the table saw for the rough width. Then back to the jointer to get a straight face and perpendicular edge. Then back to the table saw to get a parallel edge to the jointed edge and to the planer to get a parallel face to the jointed face. All are still slightly larger than the desired final dimensions.

Cut to rough dimensions:










Most of the 1" stock was still 1 3/8", so started to resaw with a thin kerf saw blade.










Two feather-boards, before and after the blade kept the material tight to the fence.










After a pass through the band saw, the stock is much closer to the finished dimension.










And I have a bunch of project stock that I cleaned up and put away.










I set the stock aside for a week to allow for any last movement, including the pieces for the top.










After a week, a few passes at the jointer, table saw, and planer and everything is to finished width and depth.










After some time at the mitre saw, it's all the proper length too.










Panels & joinery tomorrow.

Geez, LJ's has sure gotten hard to post to. I'd post 3 or 4 images and the next one would hang. It's so cumbersome I don't know that I want to continue this blog.


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## naked_wookie (Dec 18, 2011)

jcwalleye said:


> *The plan and milling material.*
> 
> I'm building a blanket chest for a relative and thought I'd post some pictures. The design is frame and panel, mortise and tenon. The frame and top is mostly from 1" cherry and the legs are a little larger. Here is a picture of the SketchUp plan:
> 
> ...


Awesome project start. I will have to check out those sketchup tutorials sometime here.
Love how nice and clean your shop is.
Looking forward to seeing the end project


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## CaptainSkully (Aug 28, 2008)

jcwalleye said:


> *The plan and milling material.*
> 
> I'm building a blanket chest for a relative and thought I'd post some pictures. The design is frame and panel, mortise and tenon. The frame and top is mostly from 1" cherry and the legs are a little larger. Here is a picture of the SketchUp plan:
> 
> ...


Excellent blog! Please keep posting, regardless of the frustration level. Your blog will be an invaluable part of this repository, long after the frustration dissipates.


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## jcwalleye (Dec 26, 2009)

*Joinery, panels, & starting the top*

I'm starting today with the glued up panels for the blanket chest. I acquired some curley maple veneer that'll I'll glue to 3/8" Baltic birch plywood. First up was straightening the veneer with a plasticizer. After squirting it on both sides and letting it air dry, I put the veneer between poly finished and waxed 3/4" pieces of mdf. Unprinted newspaper was used to absorb moisture. Change the paper a couple times and after a day, the veneer becomes flexible and easy to work with.

Here is a picture of the clamping press.










There are 2 pieces of ¾ mdf above and below. I struggled a bit initially with the veneering, I think I was using too much glue or the glue had been damaged in shipment by freezing. Anyway, I changed to Tightbond III and glued only one side of the panel at a time and things went a lot smoother.

Here is a picture of one of the panels before finishing. The backside of the panel is an inexpensive maple veneer.










And the panels on the drying rack after 2 coats of General Seal a Cell. I've got to be honest, this is the first time I've used General products and and I'm likeing them.










I've decided against the breadboard top, mostly because I wasn't sure how to keep the cross grain movement from breaking everything apart. Instead, I'll glue up a panel and support it on the inside with some stout strips of cherry. Hopefully that will keep the lid flat. Here's the start of the lid glue-up. I seem to have better luck if I glue one piece at a time instead of all at once.










Next it's time to turn the attention to cutting the mortises. Here is the setup I use.










The mortiser is Delta's add on accessory for their drill presses. This tool has deservedly been panned by many on this site, but not being inclined to buy a dedicated mortiser, it works adequately for me. One of its most maddening design characteristics is that it wasn't engineered to fit the only drill press Delta designed with woodworkers in mind. Go figure. That's the reason for the piece of steel tube between the mortise fence and the drill press table.

I get better results if I follow the same process, so when making mortises, drill the left hole, then the right hole.










And then in between, leaving narrow strips to clean up last.










Here's all the stock with the mortis's cut.










Then off to the table saw to cut the grooves for the panels. I used a 3/8" dado stack, supported with feather boards.










And push through the cut with a push stick. To center the groove, flip the piece end to end and recut.










After a little cleaning of the mortises I'm ready to cut tenons, tomorrow.










Oh yeah, better empty the bag of saw dust and wood chips I've accumulated.










The website worked great today. No picture upload hangups.


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## jcwalleye (Dec 26, 2009)

*Frame Joinery*

In the last entry, were pictures of the mortises and groves. Pictures of tenons and fitting it all together are in this part:

Here is a close-up of one of the rail's tenon. They were cut at the table saw. First were the shoulders with a rip blade, then the narrow cheeks with a dado blade. Last were the large cheeks cut with a grizzly tenoning jig. The pencil is pointing at an uneven shoulder caused somewhere in that setup.










Last year I sprung for a shoulder plane and find many uses for it. Here you can see it cutting away a sliver of the shoulder to even it out.










And the cleaned up shoulder.










The shoulder plane has all kinds of uses in joinery.










First looks at the case frame assembled.










And with the stiles.










Sanded the frame a little bit and checked the fit of the panels. I'm hoping the maples lighter color and curly figure will look good with the cherry.










Fit the chest's bottom.










When setting up for some band-sawing discovered a blow-out at the dust collector.










Some templates for the legs and bottom rails.










And the parts roughed out. I'll finish them when I get a long enough pattern bit for the router table.










Next entry will cover the lid, installing the hinges, and everybody's favorite job, sanding. Actually I don't mind sanding. You really get to see what the wood is like when sanding.

Thanks for looking.


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

jcwalleye said:


> *Frame Joinery*
> 
> In the last entry, were pictures of the mortises and groves. Pictures of tenons and fitting it all together are in this part:
> 
> ...


Hey Joe 
This is a very good blog with super photos of the step by step process . Thanks for all the extra effort you took to share this.


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## jcwalleye (Dec 26, 2009)

*Lots of odds & ends before final fitting*

I got a little more time in the workshop and a few more pictures of the blanket chest progress. First is a picture of the band-saw setup for rough cutting the arches in the bottom rails.










After rough cutting the arcs, I took those pieces and the templates to the router table. A 2" flush cut router bit did a nice job of cleaning up the band saw marks.










Setup for a little sanding. The craftsman box on the wall that the two sanders are plugged into, turn on my shop vac, whenever one of the sanders is turned on. It turns off the shop vac about 3 seconds after the sander is turned off. Very handy for controling sanding dust.










Here is the equipment for installing the stay-tight hinges. The hinges are designed for 3/4" stock so had to mortise them into the 1" stock used in this frame. I am using 3 of the 60 inch pound hinges and that's a little shy for the almost 200 inch pounds called for by Rockler's hinge selector guide.










Got a little careless driving a hinge screws and snapped it off. This tool, which a local hardware store had in stock allowed me to drill out a plug that contained the broken screw. For the life of me though, I can't understand why the teeth on the screw extractor work counter-clockwise. A drill press is the perfect match for this screw extractor, except it won't run in reverse. I ended up taking the drive belt off, and turning the chuck backward by hand to set the cut for the first 1/4". Then to the hand drill which does have a reverse. Go figure.










And then cut the plug off flush, sand, and redrill.










Now for a little work on the top. I started by taking the lid to a friend with a time-saver sander. 10 minutes later it was flat, smooth, and sanded to 180 grit. The only technique I've mastered for turning a glued up panel into a flat panel is to borrow a friends equipment. That's something I need to work on. Anyway, here I'm cutting the panel to final width.










The lid will be held flat with 4 strong-backs (or whatever the term is). First, set up the drill press with stop blocks and a pilot bit and drill one of the supports. Then used this pattern to drill pilot holes in the bottom of the top. First drill one pilot, used an extra drill bit to secure one end of the piece in place. Then after squaring everything up drilled the remaining pilot holes.










Back to the drill press to drill 1/2" counterbores and 7/32" through holes.










With a 1/8" modified truss head screw there should be enough room to prevent cross grain expansion problems.

Next will be the framework for the aromatic cedar lining. I got some of that into the shop yesterday and it immediately filled the air with that wonderful cedar smell.

Thanks for looking.


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## MontanaBob (Jan 19, 2011)

jcwalleye said:


> *Lots of odds & ends before final fitting*
> 
> I got a little more time in the workshop and a few more pictures of the blanket chest progress. First is a picture of the band-saw setup for rough cutting the arches in the bottom rails.
> 
> ...


Looking forward to seeing the finished chest…


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## TLA (Jan 10, 2011)

jcwalleye said:


> *Lots of odds & ends before final fitting*
> 
> I got a little more time in the workshop and a few more pictures of the blanket chest progress. First is a picture of the band-saw setup for rough cutting the arches in the bottom rails.
> 
> ...


Great blog. The step by step pics really help me see the whole process.  Thanks for sharing and looking forward to the final product.


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## jcwalleye (Dec 26, 2009)

*Almost done*

With the lid built, joinery done, hinges mortised and everything sanded it's off to the finishing room. The maple panels were finished earlier while making the frame, so all thats left was finishing the frame parts. There are over 40 frame pieces and I wanted to get as much pre-finishing done as I could. Here is a snapshot of my finishing area and some of the materials I'll be using.









I'll start with 2 coats of General Finish Seal a Cell, followed by many coats of ArmorSeal. In between lightly sand with 320 grit sandpaper. The last coats, will be sanded with 0000 steel wool between them. I've had my best luck, wiping on many coats of thinned poly. Here are the parts drying.









And starting the assembly. Since I don't plan to finish the panels any further I waxed them to help remove any stray glue.









During finishing some finish accidently got on the tenons so sanded that off.









I'll make subassemblies for the sides and front and back. Here are a couple pictures of the side frames.

















And then the disaster. When gluing up the veneered panels, the glue didn't seem to flow right on the first three panels that were for the back of the case. The scrap veneer on the back of the panels buckled, but seemed to be adequate on the front. I changed the glue and the clamping technique for the remaining 7 panels and things improved.









When doing the final test fitting, the front veneer on one the first panels started to chip, and was too easy to lift off. The glue had lost its adhesion and seemed brittle. I either did something wrong in the process or the glue had frozen during shipment. It was near zero degrees when it arrived.

Not wanting to take a chance with delamination after the chest was assembled; I decided to replace the panels. And not having enough spare veneer materials, made three new panels from solid cherry. They look pretty good.









Next came lining the interior with aromatic cedar. Got some reasonably priced ¼" cedar at the local BORG that's used for lining closets. The stock is not the greatest quality, but since I needed a little more than one package, I had a lot of material to sort through.









I nailed the cedar into the back of the top and bottom rails, using 18 gauge 5/8"brads.









They held surprisingly well and none of the pieces cracked like they had while test nailing.









Lining the chest with cedar turned out to be easier and more enjoyable than I was thinking it would be and the smell in the shop is really nice. I'm glad to have a bunch of scraps left lying around.

Trimmed the bottom of the cedar lining with quarter round overs, and the top with some L shaped pieces I had machined and finished earlier. Made it clean and secure.

















All that's left is to wait for the finishing on a last trim piece, filling the nail holes, an overall final finish, and attach the lid. That should all happen quickly when I get to it.

Thanks for looking.


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## Kentuk55 (Sep 21, 2010)

jcwalleye said:


> *Almost done*
> 
> With the lid built, joinery done, hinges mortised and everything sanded it's off to the finishing room. The maple panels were finished earlier while making the frame, so all thats left was finishing the frame parts. There are over 40 frame pieces and I wanted to get as much pre-finishing done as I could. Here is a snapshot of my finishing area and some of the materials I'll be using.
> 
> ...


a beautiful chest. very nice


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## MontanaBob (Jan 19, 2011)

jcwalleye said:


> *Almost done*
> 
> With the lid built, joinery done, hinges mortised and everything sanded it's off to the finishing room. The maple panels were finished earlier while making the frame, so all thats left was finishing the frame parts. There are over 40 frame pieces and I wanted to get as much pre-finishing done as I could. Here is a snapshot of my finishing area and some of the materials I'll be using.
> 
> ...


Very nice JC…Really like that finish….


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## john1102 (Feb 4, 2011)

jcwalleye said:


> *Almost done*
> 
> With the lid built, joinery done, hinges mortised and everything sanded it's off to the finishing room. The maple panels were finished earlier while making the frame, so all thats left was finishing the frame parts. There are over 40 frame pieces and I wanted to get as much pre-finishing done as I could. Here is a snapshot of my finishing area and some of the materials I'll be using.
> 
> ...


Great project and very nice craftsmanship. Look forward to the final pictures. Thanks.

John P.


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## dalethewhale (May 29, 2013)

jcwalleye said:


> *Almost done*
> 
> With the lid built, joinery done, hinges mortised and everything sanded it's off to the finishing room. The maple panels were finished earlier while making the frame, so all thats left was finishing the frame parts. There are over 40 frame pieces and I wanted to get as much pre-finishing done as I could. Here is a snapshot of my finishing area and some of the materials I'll be using.
> 
> ...


Thank you very much for all the effort you went to in documenting this, and all of your builds.

I have learnt plenty along the way.

Cheers

Whale


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