Hope Chest

More progress.  Mostly baby steps.  I'm still looking at it as if I'm eating the elephant...one bite at a time.  It was 103f today.  It's 8:30 at night, and its still 98f.

The entire stock of hardwood has been rough cut to size.  These pieces will require more work to create the mortises and tenons.  But the hard part is done.  On too some planing/jointing/mortising/tenoning/sanding. Ugh, maybe the hard part isn't done.  :)

I noticed one unfortunate problem with my $120 portable table saw.  The metal insert isn't flush with the table.  When cutting 45 degree angles, this causes my smaller pieces to be cut narrower then planned, as they dropped down a bit.  You can also see that the top is not wearing very well.  More reason to invest in a 6car garage so I can have a real solid all metal top cabinetry table saw.  So instead of $120.oo, I'll need about $300,000.oo for a new house and $3,000 for the table saw.  $303,000 or $120?  I'll make do I suppose.  Time to shim it (and it wouldn't hurt to make a zero clearance plate too) and maybe wax the table top or something.

I just love this hardwood.  I took some scrap and added some clear semi-gloss...oh my, it's got serious character with amazing gold bands of quilt that you just cant see on the unfinished wood.

I should also mention that this stuff is insanely heavy.  We may not be able to move this chest (empty) once it's completed.  Time to think about rigging it with those rubber roller blade wheels. Maybe an electric motor and a steering wheel too.

Thanks for reading.

Hope Chest: Man was it hot today.

I didn't get a chance to get out into the garage today until 3pm... my word was it hot.

The good news is I started working on the frame bits.  So I started with the vertical pieces.  I need 16 of them.

Perfect.  And precise.

 So, I am going to spline the corners together using some of the cedar board, cut into strips.  So I setup the router table.  I'm not 100% sure the is the right way to go.  I'm also clearly missing the router disc thing that prevents the wood from chipping.  I can tell you, even using a nice long push board (6" of it sits flush on the work piece and has a handle that sticks out),  It just feels terribly dangerous.  I was able to replicate passes though.  It was hot enough that I decided to stop for the day.  Dizzy/tired/hot/sweaty probably isn't a good thing when dealing with router tables.  Or beer pong.

 My setup, a bigger world view with my scrap piece...

Still in good spirits... the only major error I made was not taking into account the vertical pieces of the lid.  It sure would have been nice to consider that so that the grains match from top to bottom.  I'm here to learn and make mistakes.  Or vice versus.  I even knew better.  Had even thought about it in advance... but boy, was it hot.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it (it's so hot, the excuse is even sticking to me).

Hope Chests...

Ok, so the main panels have been planed, jointed, and cut to length.  Every board is within a 1/16" in length, 1/32 in width, and a 1/32 in thickness.

I have it stacked just to make sure it dries out real well.  The wood is Cedar Fence Pickets.  It looked horrible when I bought it.  But once planed, they really look fantastic.  Nice and light too. 

What's next is creating the frame of the hope chests out of Sedua hardwood.
Here's the hardwood.  I love the figure, color, and the hint of quilt...

Another shot, more accurate in colors and contrast...

Quick Update...

Just thought I'd update.  I got a chance to use the 13" planer and planed through about 25 boards (cedar fence post) front and back.

What I like a LOT is that the dust collector sings.  It doesn't make noise or anything, but it just works SO well.  I know it's time to empty the trash can when the clear bag on the dust collector itself starts seeing chips. (you can kind of hear them clunking around the empty bag).

I went through two full garbage cans full of chips...  

The whole thing worked like a champ... very happy.

Strangely, this started to happen.  I'm  thinking it was related to the 101f-103f temperatures I was dealing with.  I took the time to shut it down and clean out the tubes/inlets/etc and they were all 10)% clear.  I'll be keeping an eye on this phenomena as I continue working with this stuff called wood...

All told, after cutting up my planed, jointed, and ripped boards, I discovered I was 4 boards short. :(  Oh well, it shouldn't be too bad to get them in the same configuration as the others...