Sunday, October 27, 2013

Seaborne chest part 1

The tool chest for the sea made it on board in one piece, and today I had the opportunity to start a new project.

On the Siem Marlin I was spoiled by having plenty of exotic pallet wood. I even have a perfect 12” wide board of idigbo waiting for me if I ever get back to that ship, provided off course, that no one have used it in the meantime. The wood we have here is by no means furniture grade stuff. All I have managed to find is 1.5” x 6” pine used for construction purposes. I had hoped for some pallets or pallet sides, but we don’t have any. So as usual I’ll try to get by using what is available.

I decided to build a small chest based on the Roy Underhill joiner tool chest, because I have always liked that chest. Furthermore I think it will look OK even with a coat of paint on it. That might be necessary since I am afraid there will be some missing knots etc. which will be hard to conceal.
The major dimensions of the chest will be roughly 8” x 12” x 16”.  I don’t want to build anything that will be too large due to the challenge of getting it home once it is finished.

Stock preparation began by crosscutting the lumber to length. We have got a cheap standard 22” saw with combination toothing on board. I used it for ripping the pieces to half the thickness, which was quite a big job. The pieces actually looked better than I had hoped for straight from the sawing.

I managed to rig up some work holding using a piece of the construction lumber as base and a small piece of wood as a planning stop. The planning stop was clamped to the workbench and it worked great. The best thing though was that I was able to use my scrub plane for dressing the stock. It was so easy I could hardly believe it. 
Nice curly shavings.

6 comments:

  1. You really have a challenge. I am amazed you could do so well with that saw. As for the pine, Chris Schwarz thinks it's preferred for tool chests because of it's strength/weight ratio.

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    1. It took a while, but I am not in a hurry. The idea is to give me something to do in my leisure time out here. My biggest challenge was that the boards have some reversing grain around the knots, so there was some tear out.
      I didn't time the operation, but my guess is that it took about 15-20 minutes per piece so a total of 45-60 minutes of actual sawing.

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  2. Hi Jonas,

    After last time your scrub plane probably feels like cheating! There definitely is something to be said for the right tool for the job.

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    1. Hi Brian.

      I couldn't have said it better myself.
      The old rule: Always use the coarsest tool possible is actually true.
      Brgds
      Jonas

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  3. The photo of your ship's workshop has put to rest my vision of you woodworking in the hold of an ancient, wind-powered sailing ship working by whale oil lantern.
    Bill

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    1. I would say that the only time you feel like 200 years ago is when the weather is really bad. The Sea hasn't grown kind even after all those years.
      Brgds
      Jonas

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