>Blanket Chest
>Made a start on a blanket chest today, its going to be in the traditional style. This is in part because most of the requested furniture from my clients, is in this form, also in part because I haven’t made a piece like this for many years, and I really want to. It’s not for a client, but I am hoping to find a buyer for it(fingers crossed).
The mouldings are all applied with what I call a scratch stock, its two pieces of timber screwed together to hold the cutter. The moulding that you require is filed onto either a large re-saw blade(this is what I’m using), or you could use a cabinet scraper. I started by trying to scratch the whole moulding out in one go, but found this very hard to push.
So instead I did it in two stages, the bead first.
Followed by the ogee.
All the legs, and rails are done with this moulding applied from both edges.
This is as far as I got today, I would normally expect to have much more done, but I did enjoy working how I did when I first started as a lad.
I’m not happy with the width at the moment, it needs reducing by at least 4″.
I don’t have any 1″ in stock, so its a trip to my new favourite timber yard. You really need to have a torch, and be prepared to sort through the mess. The stack at the top left is Silver Birch and dated 2000, the rather large orange beam is Yew and priced at £300
The stack here is a lovely white ash, its only been in here for six months, but the guy said I could have it for £100. It would mean it needs to go into stick round mine for a further 1 1/2 yrs.
I did manage to find some very clear timber for my panels, but had to sort through this lot. Most of it is walnut, and elm.
I will post more tomorrow, thanks for looking.
>Mark, is there a considerable difference between working with air dried instead of kiln dried lumber? I've never worked with air dried lumber. The few mills I have access to mechanically dry the lumber in some way.
>Not as far as working it with hand tools, some people say that kiln dried timber can be a bit brittle, perhaps a bit.. maybe. Air dried can seem harder, at least to me.
I think because of our damp environment, its also less predictable than kiln dried, and the need to acclimatize it in our workshops before working it. Well sometimes at least, If the timber yards shed is nice and dry, with plenty of air passing through, its a good resource. I like to use it for free standing furniture like tables, or where timber movement isn't as crucial, as it would be on furniture with doors. It's very old school to use air dried, which is nice sometimes. But I prefer to use kiln dried for its predictive quality, there are not usually any callbacks from clients because of splits or checks in the timber when using kiln dried.