Excellent work Mike as well as providing pictures and text for someone to follow along. Thank you for giving your time to do so.

The build is coming along quite nice. Enjoy following along.

I appreciate anyone who views my stuff, even if they aren't interacting on YT.

There IS software that keeps you annonymous on YT; I have a friend who uses something; he cannot comment either, but he can sub and get notifications.

For the record my videos go up every Friday at 5 pm. I also try to get a shorter Wed mid week vid up at the same time, although that doesn't always happen.

Hello, gentlemen.

It's time to put a bottom in this chest.

The bottom will be simple.

I need to make some boards that will go along the sides of the box at the bottom, so I break out my hand saw and start sawing.

I love this old Atkins.

And here are three of the four that I need.

And each of them need to be trued up with the hand plane.

After which all I'm going to do is glue them to the internal sides. I will add a few finish nails later, but honestly, this is long grain to long grain, so I don't foresee any issues with glue failure anyway.

Once the glue is dry, I have a board prepared for the bottom, which I intend to fit to the interior of the box.

First step with that is to lay that board flat on the bench and set the chest on top of it

And draw a line on it that matches the interior dimensions of the chest.

Note that this was done before i actually glued the rails to the bottom interior of the box. I got that out of order, pretend like I didn't. ;D

Then I'll take mt carcass saw to it.

After cutting it to rough dimensions, I plane it down close to the lines

And it is just a matter of planing and shooting the ends

until it fits as closely as I can to the interior of the chest.

Then glue and install.

I only applied glue to the long grain portion of the fitted bottom. I'm hoping that not gluing the end grain will allow the bottom to expand and contract with the seasons without splitting or cracking. We will find out long term if that was right.

I hope to post more either Thursday or Friday.

I apologize about the time between postings. I will endeavor to do better, and i appreciate everyone who views and interacts with my thread.

3 minutes ago, Handfoolery said:

I hope to post more either Thursday or Friday.

I apologize about the time between postings. I will endeavor to do better, and i appreciate everyone who views and interacts with my thread.

Don’t feel bad. My threads go weeks between posts. Ya know… life. That’s what I like about this site. Nobody here is paying for a show or expects anything more out of anyone than what they have to share.

Edited April 29Apr 29 by Zack

Thanks. And yes, life, lol.

39 minutes ago, Handfoolery said:

I hope to post more either Thursday or Friday.

Looking forward to it! And as Zack basically said, no worries between posts! We happy to have you here when you can be and sharing this wonderful hand tool journey. I'm especially interested since I have been delving into dovetails recently, and I am getting better.

How did you get your pine to behave so well while chopping the waste between the pins and tails?

Just now, John Morris said:

How did you get your pine to behave so well while chopping your dovetails?

Pine requires an extremely sharp chisel, more so than any hardwood I've worked. I keep a pasted strop to hand and strop frequently with dovetail work.

Pine also contains silica, and will dull your tools really quickly as well. Sharp sharp is the key.

@John Morris , regarding dovetails, take your time when you cut them.

Wanted to add that sharp is the key to any hand tool woodworking.

A hand tool is not spinning at 6k rpm; if it is not crazy sharp the tool will fight you.

It's coming along nicely & thanks for the updates.

Thank you. I am glad Spring finally came so i could actually work again, lol.

Time to work on the top.

In building this chest one of the goals was to be able to add tools to the underside of the lid in the future. That's a problem because the thickness of the top is around 3/4". I want to be able to screw into it.

So the goal first off is to fit another piece of wood into the top opening, similar to how we did the bottom, but without the rails. You will see as we go.

This is going to be the internal piece for the lid. It's about 1/2" thick.

To trim this to the interior of the box, I set it on top and make pencil marks that will help define the corners, or depth, of the chest.

Then I'll use these marks to give me lines to cut to.

Then of course we gotta cut it to rough dimension.

.