Building a Hope Chest

Hope chest advancing progress

I have raised all of the panels for the lower frames and now it looks like a completed box except for the lid. I am starting the lid tomorrow so watch out for any technique that might be of value. I plan to form, joint and raise the panel completely with wooden planes and may video progress just for fun. We'll see.

Here are some details of my progress to day. Sanity reigns when I am making. How did you enjoy the posts on the strengths of my mitre joints with splines in. I thought the whole thing was amazing. Now that the chest is together you could stand a tank on that too. This is real woodworking fun. You don't get this with machine only woodworking. or at least I doubt it.

OK. Those of you who believe the best way forward is to use metal cast planes for all your work. that's far from true. Those of you who believe only bevel-up planes have any value. That's not true. Those of you who believe it's thick irons only that work best. That's not true.

Those of you who believe that Stanley #4s and #5s are junk compared to modern-day counterparts and should never be used. That's not true.

You see I had all of these planes ready for use and to be honest I switched back and forth between them to get the best result in the very diverse grain I was working with. Actually, the nearest I got to a one-size-fits-all plane was was very clearly the oldest all wooden one. My old jack and jointer slid effortlessly over the wood and straightened and flattened the most awkward grains throughout. That said, the Stanley number five would surface and edge boards more readily than all of the really refined planes and so too the #4 Stanley. The new Veritas bevel-up smoother gave pristine surface to the endgrain bevels after the smoothers and jacks had removed the bulk of the waste and my Woden #5 1/2 worked on some of the difficult areas of reverse grain.

It takes about ten minutes to raise a panel like this with a simple bevel. Very easy to do with hand planes and very safe too, but the work can be hard. Expect to sweat a little and even puff and blow perhaps. great upper body workout again.