Blanket Chest

[Mike Henderson]

A while back, someone gave me a bunch of aromatic cedar. While I always like to get free wood, it was taking up space in my shop and getting in my way. Judy, my wife, suggested that I use it to make her a blanket chest, and that's what I decided to do with it.

The basic structure is the aromatic cedar, with figured mahogany veneer covering it on the outside. The base is solid mahogany. The hinges are some I found at Rockler. They hold the lid at any angle and don't let the lid drop - you have to push the lid down to close it. It's 36" wide, 17 1/2" front-to-back and 15" top-to-bottom inside.

Here's a view from the front:
BlanketChest01.jpg

A front quarter view to show the side:
BlanketChest02.jpg

And a view inside to show the aromatic cedar:
BlanketChest03.jpg

Aromatic cedar smells nice when you're working it but it's not the most stable wood. Splits easily and you have to keep checking that it's still straight after you cut it.

Mike

[Andrew Hughes]

Wow mike,That wood has some Knots I wonder if that's why it was so squirrelly.I bet it smells great inside.Nice and simple I like it.

[Mel Fulks]

Nice,I like the traditional design,some of the commercial ones are pretty far out. The grain of that mahogany is beautiful and almost as bold as the folk art exagerations! Think the base would look better a little darker but maybe we're just seeing some camera error.

[Mike Henderson]

One difficult thing was to choose joinery for joining the box together. I thought of miter joints, maybe with Dominoes to help hold it together, but how do you get a long miter like that to be perfect to within 1/42" (the thickness of veneer)? If you did miter joints with solid wood, and the miters were not perfect (one side stuck out a small amount) you'd just sand it down so the joint was right on the corner.

But you can't do that if the wood is veneered - you'd sand right through the veneer.

So I decided to use half blind dovetails. The end of the aromatic cedar shows but it's very close to the same color as the mahogany so it's not really obvious.

And there was no reasonable way to apply the veneer after I had joined the box together.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

Nice,I like the traditional design,some of the commercial ones are pretty far out. The grain of that mahogany is beautiful and almost as bold as the folk art exaggerations! Think the base would look better a little darker but maybe we're just seeing some camera error.

No, that's just the way mahogany is. It will darken with age and become essentially the same color as the veneer. What you're seeing is just out of the shop.

Mike

[Jay Jolliffe]

Looks great Mike....

[John TenEyck]

Mike, I've made long beveled joints with veneered plywood several times w/o problems. As long as your stock is consistent in thickness and flat you shouldn't have any problems. I have a right tilt saw so I make the miters on the left side of the blade with edge to be leveled riding against a sacrificial fence suspended above the saw table with the blade buried in the fence. The offcut falls underneath the fence. The added benefit of doing it that way is that the edge to be cut is riding against the fence, not the opposite edge which might not be exactly parallel.

John

[Mel Fulks]

1/42" , that got my attention ! I think they should list it as being "so thin, that it only has one side".

[Mike Henderson]

1/42" , that got my attention ! I think they should list it as being "so thin, that it only has one side".

Yep, that's the standard thickness of regular commercial veneer. It can be a challenge to work with sometimes.

Mike

[Shawn Pixley]

Very nice. You're a better man than I. I would have built a chest and then lined it with the cedar.

[Jim Becker]

That's a very nice chest and certainly will be useful.

[glenn bradley]

A wonderful piece Mike (as always). I always enjoy your work and can think of no better way to eliminate material "clutter" than by turning it into something beautiful.

[Prashun Patel]

That's beautiful. I love the whole look. Can you show a close up of the half blinds? A lot of blanket chest designs utilize battens under the lid. Are you concerned about that lid staying flat?

[Mike Henderson]

That's beautiful. I love the whole look. Can you show a close up of the half blinds? A lot of blanket chest designs utilize battens under the lid. Are you concerned about that lid staying flat?

Sure - always glad to show pictures!

Here's a view of the end from a bit back to show the whole side:
BlanketChest04.jpg

And here's a close up of a few of the dovetails. I blasted this with the flash but I think you can still see them pretty well. The end grain is cedar, of course, but it's fairly close to the color of the mahogany. And mahogany darkens with age so I hope it will match even better over time.
BlanketChest05.jpg

I didn't go for real fancy dovetails - the pins are fairly large - but they should be strong and I think anyone could tell they're hand cut. It's not real obvious but the two end tails and the center tail are larger than the other tails. I just wanted to put in some variation - but I guess I should have made them more obvious. I don't really notice the size differences when just glancing at them.

One thing about aromatic cedar is that it appears to be fairly stable once it's good and dry and cut. If the top bows, I'll get a couple of pieces of wood and attach them as battens.

What I did experience with the cedar is that when I cut it - say on the table saw - I'd have to check to see that it was still straight, and maybe run the piece through the jointer again before gluing it up as a panel. But so far - knock on wood - it hasn't seemed to warp once it settled down.

Aromatic cedar also splits readily but I didn't have too much problem with that.

Mike

[A couple of pins appear to have a white blotch on them. That's the color of the cedar - aromatic cedar has those white streaks in it.]

[Mike Henderson]

No one asked about how the bottom is attached but I'll talk about it. I made a panel of cedar a bit smaller than the outside dimensions of the chest (about 3/4" smaller). Then I cut a rabbet about half way (3/8") through the panel, all around. The width of the rabbet left the uncut part just a bit smaller than the inside dimensions of the box.

Then I cut a groove (about 3/8" deep) on the inside bottom of the box so that the bottom would ride in the groove and would be just a small amount above the bottom of the sides. So the bottom floats in the sides. The rabbet side of the bottom went down, of course. This is similar to how a raised panel is installed.

Just wanted to add that in case anyone wondered about how the bottom was done.

The base was done separately and is screwed into the sides from the bottom using 1 1/4" screws.

Mike