Kyserike Kraftsman

I officially started building the actual chest today. I’ve got about one month to complete it.

Drawer Dividers

This weekend I worked on creating the drawer dividers. There are eight dividers in the chest made of 1/2″ plywood with edge banding for the front edge. The plan called for a 3/4″ edging, but I decided on using a 2″ edging instead so that I could use the same edge parts for the drawer dividers and the back and front piece edging.

The plan also called for using finishing nails and glue to attach the edging. I decided to use a tongue and groove joint instead (I don’t own a biscuit jointer yet) so that I didn’t need to use nails to attach the edging.

Using the table saw I created a 5/32″ x 1/4″ tongue on each walnut piece and a corresponding groove on the plywood. To keep the plywood square on the table saw as I was making the cuts I also needed to make a tall auxiliary fence to support the piece.

Edge Joining for the wings

I started to create the sides (wings) for the chest this weekend also.

The sides are approximately 32″ x 12″ which is wider than any of the boards that I have available, so I needed to take two boards and edge glue them together to form a board of the required width.

Both sides and the top and bottom of the chest all require to piece together two or more lengths to reach the required width. For each of these the two panels that will be used were cut from the same 2″ thick rough cut walnut plank so that I could try and match the grain pattern easier.

The Prototype

This week was spent building the prototype out of MDF. This chest will make a nice addition to the workshop.

I still have to complete the door fronts for the drawers. The plan calls for just gluing and nailing the drawer fronts to the drawers, but I’d like to find a way to make them adjustable.

Here’s a picture of the finished prototype.

Rough Cut Black Walnut

Before I could use the walnut, I needed to pick out what I was going to be using for the project and plane that down to 3/4 and 2/4 thickness. I don’t own a thickness planer, but a friend at work (Carl) offered to help me out. I spent the afternoon today at Carl’s home workshop where he helped me tremendously getting this wood ready to use. He also showed me quite a few tips including how to use Danish oil to bring out the color and grain pattern from this walnut. Thanks Carl !

Here’s a shot of the rough cut lumber prior to heading over to Carl’s shop.

The plan for the chest arrived today (along with some Forstner drill bits and a pipe clamp). The plan was on a large sheet of paper, printed on both sides. I was expecting a little bit more … but I think there’s enough information here to get the job done.

The original plan called for using a 4x8 sheet of Mahogany plywood, and about 10 board feet of Mahogany stock. I’m going to try and not use much plywood if I can. Also, the joinery used in the plan is basically butt joints secured with glue and finishing nails … I’ll be making some changes to the plan to use some nicer joinery techniques and not have any visible nails.

I’ve also decided to build the complete chest first out of MDF for two reasons. First, it will give me some practice in cutting and assembling the chest using the MDF before starting to cut the walnut. Second, it will make a nice cabinet for the workshop !

Nancy and I headed up to my brother’s place in CT today to pick up some of the walnut. We had a nice visit with Andy and Penny and then headed back home to watch the Giants win the Superbowl!

Finding a place to store the walnut wasn’t easy. I had to clear an area of the workshop to make room to stack it.