Design

This is the first "for no reason" project I've done for a very long time. I simply wanted to try to make something smaller and using only hand tools. Thankfully Matt Estlea has amazing tutorial videos, which really made me understand what I've been doing for the past 5 years

Creation

This is entirely made from a section pf lowgrade C24 construction lumber which had a clean looking grain (i.e. no knots and the grain was surprisingly straight), the only time I used the table saw was to get the initial cut list.

From then, there was cross cutting, shooting boards, precision, cutting out the dove tails, precision and even more precision for marking.

Now the sides are complete, it's time to start the strangly thearoputic and frustrating part, making the lid. Involving using three boards, selecting what grain looks nice and also what is structurally stable. Then flattening the bottom using a handplane, taking off any high spots so that it doesn't rock a flat surface. Once the top is no longer rocking, we do almost the same process again, but this time to get it to the correct thickeness, but rather than checking for rocking, using the side of the plane to verify there's no hills or valleys in it. I was pretty much ankle deep in shavings during this process.

Once happy the top was flat and didn't rock, I planed a rabbete in the underside of the lid so that it didn't rock.

Finally a plinth, and plywood base attached, a finger hole filed in and the piece is ready for finishing

Lessons Learned

This entire project was a learning process and following Matt Estlea's tutorials gave me such a better understanding of the skills I had aquired. There is also a very excellent part near the end of the student series, where Rob doesn't want to sand anymore...

Matt Estlea telling Rob to get on with it

which is essentially (not a direct quote)

"You've spent many many hours getting here, don't skimp on the finishing part... you knob"

Materials