From Tree to Blanket Chest

Jay's Custom Creations is supported by Timber King Sawmills. For more information on my 1220CRZ sawmill or many other fully hydraulic sawmills, go to TimberKing.com. That's a tall, skinny tree. Well, I'm not done per se with the project, but I've reached a pause and I got to work on this again at a later date. I'm putting this project on pause because I have a few other things that are a little bit more pressing and I want to carve out some stuff on the top of that thing. So this is just a basic raised panel chest. I mean, it's just a box, right? Nothing crazy special. I have made many, many blanket chests in a day, and the majority of them have been pocket hole blanket chests. A blanket chest is one of those projects that, regardless of your skill level, you can take this and adapt it to basically any skill level. When I first started in woodworking, I didn't know how to do raised panels. I didn't know how to do rails and stiles and all the joinery that's involved with this. Although, that being said, this is basically an exercise in router bit setup. But before I learned how to do this, I would use butt joints and pocket hole screws to make the frames. So you basically have a skeleton of nothing but all of your rails and your stiles. And you take the skeleton of the front and back and left and right, and you put them all together with pocket holes. You assemble the frames with pocket holes, then you just glue them together. And then on the inside, you just attach plywood panels to it, and it looks like a paneled blanket chest. Put a top and bottom on it, and there you go. Very, very basic, beginner-friendly project. And I've made many, many, many blanket chests like that. This one, I'm pausing for a couple reasons. Like I said, I want to use the CNC machine to carve out something on the top. When I made this also, I wanted to verify or make sure that we had a nice flush end right here. So I made the front and back stick out by a quarter of an inch, giving me this little lip right here. And the plan was to route this down and make it nice and flush with the router. However, I kind of like the, well you can't see it right there, but I kind of like the shadow line that I'm getting from that. So this isn't for me, this is for a friend of mine as a gift for helping me out quite a bit over the past two years. And I want to give him the option of, hey, let's trickle this out just a little bit more. Do you want that to stay there? Do you want this to be flush trimmed? Should we add a little bit more decorative touch with maybe a routed edge on the bottom? I think I mentioned it, but I put some runners on the bottom just so that the OSB on the bottom is not going to scrape carpet or whatever when you move it. Now OSB, why did I use OSB on the inside floor? Well, because it's incredibly stable and I had some on hand. I didn't spend any money. Actually I did. I bought the hinge, that was $15. But other than that, I didn't spend any money for this. All of the wood was harvested from the property right here. And that pile of lumber that I started using to make this, that's all that's left of it. This is all stuff that I, the trees I took down, cut up on a sawmill. That's all my stuff, which feels really, really good. I didn't use all of it for the blanket chest. I had to pause that today and knock out 40 kits. So this is 40 birdhouses for VBS at church starting in two days. So this is a last minute, get it done. And I wanted to do it at the last minute, that way we don't have any major cup, bow or twist on these pieces if they sat on a shelf for say a month or so. Anyway, I had to get this done before tonight rather. And I wanted to get this as far as I possibly could to where I could pause it. We'll return on this once the CNC is built. But I wanted to pause this because this coming up week, I've got a couple obligations outside. Once the storms hit outside, turning my attention to this. Avid CNC 2.0, got a lot of cool stuff planned. But before I could get that done, I wanted to get to here because this was like food for the soul. I just wanted to get a woodworking project done. I wanted to get a... It's not done, but it's done. You know what I'm saying? I wanted to get a lot of shop time under my belt and just get back in the swing of making a mess everywhere in the shop. Before I can build the CNC machine, it has to go. There's no other way around it. It has to go right where this tool island is. So these tools are being shoved up against the wall. Those tools on the wall are being shoved up against the wall. And all my hand tools and no electricity tools are going on the wall that has no electricity. Eventually, I need to put boards up along this wall that will match the boards that I put up on that wall. So I got a lot of upcoming actual woodworking shop stuff. It's just a matter of time and order of operations getting all of the things done first. It is Saturday night when I'm recording this video right here. I hope to get the rest of this video edited and published for you guys tomorrow morning, Sunday morning. And I can't guarantee another video on this woodworking channel next weekend, but I do guarantee that the shift has happened and I'm trying to focus more of my attention on the woodworking channel than my homestead channel. If you don't know, I've got a homestead channel where I've been producing a lot more videos over there than I have over here for sure over the past couple years. Kind of like a chronological format. So it's whatever day it is as far as the date from the date in which we purchased this land and all kinds of fun stuff outside. Like my wife's 155 foot by 32 foot garden and compost station and all that good stuff. So if you're interested in that type of content, check out our homestead channel. And if not, well, I'll see you hopefully in two more weeks with the start of the CNC build. You guys take care. Have a great day and I will talk to you soon.