orepass

The skirt boards look a little clunky on the chest which I am sure is why they are chamfered in the Anarchist Tool Chest. I don’t have any of the fancy moulding planes to make coves or ogees so I am going to plane a chamfer on the edge of each board. When I placed the dovetails I left plenty of room on the top of the lower skirts and the bottom of the upper. I disassembled the skirts making sure that I carefully labeled each one and their placement and marked the edge I wanted to cut. I did this by setting my round marking gage to approximately 1/2 inch and running a mark down each side. Next I used my combination square to mark a 45 degree angle between these marks.

A couple of comments about my tool selection. I resisted for a long time purchasing a round marking gauge preferring to use the old english style mortise gauge. After reading a lot of blogs I noticed that most people were using the newer style so I purchased one from Veritas. This was a great investment and greatly improved the accuracy of my marks. After a few months I decided to purchase a second gauge, unfortunately I picked it up from a local woodworking store and I was sorely disapointed. It sits in a rack by my wall unused due to its inability to hold a setting. Please buy a round marking gauge, they are awesome, but ensure you buy a top brand. The second tool that I used for doing the chamfers is the the Moxon style vice from Benchcrafted. This alone has changed my woodworking for the better. When I purchased the vice it seemed very expensive and I looked for alternatives, I’m glad I did not find any. I made the vice jaws out of Maple and installed the hardware and not a project has gone by since, that I have not praised its performance. There is 24 1/4 inches between the screws which easily handled the chest sides and anything that I plan to make in the future. I hope to see more of the vices produced by Benchcrafted in the future and maybe install them on a new bench one day.

I started to chamfer the edges using my Stanley #7 but quickly realized that a #5 performed the task well and was much easier to hold. The blade was set aggressively and made short work of the edges. It took approximately 15 minutes to do the upper skirt and another 15 for the lower. After reassembling the skirts I then had to plane off the last corner to get the pieces to mate. The next steps on the project are installation of the skirts, making the lid and then painting. I’ll complete the lid prior to the skirt installation and glue them all up together. It’s getting more and more difficult to man handle the chest inside where it is warm enough for the glue to set so I’ll try to do it in one more trip. There is something very satisfying about making a plane work and I finished the evening very satisfied.