Pine Blanket Chest Completion

Completed pine blanket chest.  

The mitered dovetailed base all glued and clamped. Here I'm adding glue blocks to the inside of the corners for strength and support of the dovetailed case.

Close up of the mitered dovetail before cleaning up the glue squeeze out.

Hardware is from Horton Brasses.  A pair of hand forged strap hinges made for a chest lid, a half-mortise chest lock and the antiqued brass escutcheon. 

The back of the case gets a shallow mortise for the strap hinge. 

The half-mortise chest lock gets a morise on the inside of the front.  This took some time to get centered on the front and a stepped mortise.  A deep mortise for the lock and a shallow one for the plate.

I added an edge molding to the front and sides of the lid for the chest. I shaped a simple round-over with just my block plane. 

A batten was also added to each end of the underside of the lid to help keep the single 20 inch wide top flat. Some more shaping of the molding working carefully to mitered front corners.

The key and escutcheon are installed. The lock has a plate with a pair of small hooks the gets mortised and screwed into the underside of the lid.  These small hooks engage into the lock to secure the lid. 

With the chest opened the strap hinges are visible. I quickly figured out that the till lid was the simplest and quickest way to hold open the chest lid. A lid stay of one sort or another could be a good idea but I wanted to keep this chest as close as possible to one that was built over 200 years ego.