kirkpoore1
Old Oak
As you guys may recall, back in August I was in Wales for a week long vacation. Shortly after arrival I managed to lose my passport, so I had to make a quick trip to the embassy in London to get a replacement. After getting that done, I still had a couple of hours to kill so I walked over the Victoria and Albert to look at their medieval woodwork collection again. Once again I encountered this Italian cassone (marriage chest) and took some better pictures this time:
I found the shape of the chest to be a real change of pace from anything I'd done or even seen before, and the 500 year old paint job to be a radical departure from the clear finishes or stains that mostly get used today. Looking closely at the structure, though, it didn't really look too hard to build. I decided to give it a shot.
The chest is roughly 60" long, 21-1/2" tall, and 17-1/2" deep (front to back). Except for the length, that seemed to be a practical size. I decided to keep the profile and just shorten it. The V&A has some details including pictures with the top open on their website which also helped out with the details:
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O109268/cassone-unknown/
The original front had been hewn from a single plank, and the top shaped from only 3 boards. I decided to go with multiple boards for each to allow the workload to be practical and keep the weight down. I have a lot of sycamore (Platanus occidentalis, not your sycamore) in my wood shed, and it's all 15+ inches wide, so that would work for the chest ends. The original chest was built of poplar, so I called a friend who sells wood and got 24 bdft of quartersawn 4/4 poplar for a little under $3/ft. These boards were 6-1/2" wide (rough sawn) and just over 8' long, so I was able to get six 3" x 32" out of each of the first three boards.
For practical purposes, i.e. not wanting to have each front or top board trimmed on the inside to a unique curvature, I laid out the front and the top to sections of a circle. Here are the ends during and after being cut out:
I decided to make the ends of the poplar boards curved to match the front curve, then plane down the outside to give a matching curve there. I don't have a compass plane, so I put together a jig to hold the boards while I used my router:
The jig is a 2x4 piece ripped to my poplar board width. It has a plywood template screwed to the top, a couple of tabs sticking forward off the sides to hold the work boards straight, and a backing block under to allow me to clamp the whole thing including work board in my Veritas twin screw vise between the screws. I used my longest router bit with a guide bushing to cut the curves. It turned out very clean and easy.
The picture shows two test examples, one mounted and the other already cut. I managed to make all the cuts without putting any cuts on opposite faces of the same board.
Results were pretty decent:
Not perfect in all cases, but much better than flat.
Next up I resawed another piece of scyamore down to form the bottom and back of the chest. I then cut a shallow dado across the insides of the ends to hold the bottom, and nailed these parts together:
Finally I could test fit the front boards and determine the correct bevel angle on each to make their long edges match up.
Ok, that's it for tonight. By now you should be hearing ominous music in the background as I have already made an annoying but not fatal mistake. More later...
Kirk
I found the shape of the chest to be a real change of pace from anything I'd done or even seen before, and the 500 year old paint job to be a radical departure from the clear finishes or stains that mostly get used today. Looking closely at the structure, though, it didn't really look too hard to build. I decided to give it a shot.
The chest is roughly 60" long, 21-1/2" tall, and 17-1/2" deep (front to back). Except for the length, that seemed to be a practical size. I decided to keep the profile and just shorten it. The V&A has some details including pictures with the top open on their website which also helped out with the details:
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O109268/cassone-unknown/
The original front had been hewn from a single plank, and the top shaped from only 3 boards. I decided to go with multiple boards for each to allow the workload to be practical and keep the weight down. I have a lot of sycamore (Platanus occidentalis, not your sycamore) in my wood shed, and it's all 15+ inches wide, so that would work for the chest ends. The original chest was built of poplar, so I called a friend who sells wood and got 24 bdft of quartersawn 4/4 poplar for a little under $3/ft. These boards were 6-1/2" wide (rough sawn) and just over 8' long, so I was able to get six 3" x 32" out of each of the first three boards.
For practical purposes, i.e. not wanting to have each front or top board trimmed on the inside to a unique curvature, I laid out the front and the top to sections of a circle. Here are the ends during and after being cut out:
I decided to make the ends of the poplar boards curved to match the front curve, then plane down the outside to give a matching curve there. I don't have a compass plane, so I put together a jig to hold the boards while I used my router:
The jig is a 2x4 piece ripped to my poplar board width. It has a plywood template screwed to the top, a couple of tabs sticking forward off the sides to hold the work boards straight, and a backing block under to allow me to clamp the whole thing including work board in my Veritas twin screw vise between the screws. I used my longest router bit with a guide bushing to cut the curves. It turned out very clean and easy.
The picture shows two test examples, one mounted and the other already cut. I managed to make all the cuts without putting any cuts on opposite faces of the same board.
Results were pretty decent:
Not perfect in all cases, but much better than flat.
Next up I resawed another piece of scyamore down to form the bottom and back of the chest. I then cut a shallow dado across the insides of the ends to hold the bottom, and nailed these parts together:
Finally I could test fit the front boards and determine the correct bevel angle on each to make their long edges match up.
Ok, that's it for tonight. By now you should be hearing ominous music in the background as I have already made an annoying but not fatal mistake. More later...
Kirk
