Storage Chest for my Planes and Sharpening Stones 2

Putting a plan into action

I had originally figured I would use the 3/4" oak I had left over from my bed project, but after piling up the pieces that I would use, and trying to lift the pile, I decided that oak was too heavy/dense for this project. I went to Home Depot and bought 8 1"x12"x4' pine boards. They were actually 3/4" x 9 1/4" x 4'. I got all of them for a little over $24. They had knots and stuff, but I figured this was just a storage box, and not anything fancy. I really wanted to practice using my hand tools and thought the wedged through tenons on the sides would be a challenge.

I brought the wood home and started cutting it up and gluing it together.

While I was waiting for the glue to dry enough to scrape it off, I practiced planing some Red Elm I cut from fire wood I got from Mark and Patrice. I made a make-shift bench hook too.

I am not sure how strong pine edge-glued joints will be in the long run, so I made sure to stagger the glue joints on the sides and ends so that solid wood would straddle the seams. I drew some pencil lines on the end-grain seams for the picture.

I decided to add a dado where the ends meet the sides. I only made it about 1/8" deep. I used a stop block on my table saw sled to cut the dado outer edges consistently.

I used my small router plane and a pairing chisel to clean up the dados.

Test fit with just the dados. Now I need to cut the tenons.

I used a marking gauge to set the length of the tenons using the width of the side minus the dado depth.

Than I marked the ends of the end pieces.

Then I used a tri-square  to mark out the positions of the tenons.

Then I used my nifty 90-degree magnetic  sawing guide and my Japanese razor saw that I got from David Barron to cut the tenons.

Then I sawed out the waste between the tenons. Then I chopped and paired with chisels to clean up the tenons.

After marking out the position for the mortises, I drilled a hole where each one will go, and started chopping out the mortises.

I got one corner mortises and test fitted. I still need to add an angle to the side of the mortises, so I can add the wedges to the tenons so as to create dovetail shaped tenons.

I made good progress this weekend. I am really enjoying slowing down and taking my time to make my projects. No rush.

P.S. to this post:

I chopped two more corners worth of mortises last night (8 total mortises) before the Black List came on and I had to stop. I didn't pre-drill the holes this time. I just chopped the traditional way and it worked a lot better.