Sawdust on the Floor

Like a lot of woodworkers, I often will find a project in one of the monthly woodworking magazines. But as I am reading the article on how it was built, or look at the dimensions, I realize that slight modifications are needed to make it fit our home décor or my skill set.

The steamer trunk pictured below was one of those projects. I modified the size of the project to fit our living room and changed the way that the trunk was constructed. I also made a few changes on the inside of the trunk.

My steamer trunk measures 36” long, by 20” wide and 18“ tall. I made this cabinet as two distinct pieces, the base unit and the top cover. Most of the base is made from cabinet grade ¾” oak plywood, with applied 4/4 solid oak trim pieces. The cover is made using 4/4 oak that is laid on edge to form the frame for the top. I inset another piece of the 3/4″ Plywood,inside this frame for the actual top of the trunk.

I started the project by ripping the front, rear and the two end panels of plywood to a width of 14 1/2”. The corners of the base are mitered at 45 degrees and are joined with glue and biscuits. Because of the width of these panels, I was forced to cut the miters on my table saw. Maybe I’m a skeptic, but even after I tilted my table saw to its factory set 45 degree stop, I wanted to make sure that it was really at 45 degrees.

While I do own a digital protractor, and I do use it to check the set angle of the blade, I also check the actual fit of the cut. After setting the angle to an indicated 45 degree angle, I ran two scrap pieces of scrap plywood over the blade and then checked how the pieces actually fit together. If the angle was set up correctly then when I clamp the two mitered edges together they will form a perfect 90 degree angle. I check this by clamping the mitered edges with spring clamps, and then placing a framing square along the outside edges of the joint. If the clamped up boards fit securely into the corner of the square and are also tight along the arms of the square, then the joint is correct. If not, then it’s back to tweaking the angle on the table saw.

Once I had the angle set, I did final cuts on the front, rear and end panels. Then I turned to my biscuit joiner to cut #20 biscuits into the ends of the plywood to re enforce the mitered joints. The only adjustments I made to the biscuit joiner was to change the angle guide to 45 degrees. I also set the depth of the biscuit joiner as deep as I could so the biscuit wouldn’t come through the plywood. I also cut a dado into the bottom of each piece to accept another piece of the ¾” plywood that I used for the bottom of the steamer trunk.

Now it was time to assemble the base unit. I used a combination of glue and biscuits in the edge of the front, rear and side panels. I secured these with spring clamps. The bottom panel was glued into place and secured with several sheetrock screws. I predrilled for the sheet rock screws and counter sunk each screw. I planned to install decorative trim over these screws, so I wasn’t concerned about the appearance of the screws.

One of the other things that I did during this glue up process was to temporarily clamp a piece of scrap 2 x4 lumber that I had ripped down to a 1 ½ square along the insides of the corners. I figured this would help keep the corners square. Because these pieces were to be temporary only, I didn’t want to take a chance of them becoming part of the project by any squeezed out glue, so before I added these pieces I carefully removed all of the squeezed out glue from the corners.

Now it was time to add the decorative horizontal trim. The horizontal trim is made of 4/4 oak, and is 1 3/4” wide. After cutting the stock to width, and carefully mitering the corners, I attached the trim with # 10 biscuits. Again, I used my spring clamps to hold the corner joints tight. After installing the bottom trim pieces, I turned to the center horizontal trim. This trim is the same size as the bottom, and was installed using #10 biscuits, just like the bottom trim was.

You have two options when you use a biscuit joiner for the vertical location of the biscuit slot. Your options are to cut the slot with the joiner sitting on its base with the fence removed. The distance from the bottom of the joiner to the center of the cutter is fixed. The other option is to leave the fence attached and adjust it for the desired vertical position of the biscuit slot. When you use this method, you put the fence on top of the board and the cut is made below the fence. I choose to use the first method for this project.

To cut the bottom slots, I simply placed both the case and the trim on my workbench and then, with the biscuit joiner also flat on my workbench, cut the slots for the #10 biscuits. I wanted to use this same method for the center horizontal trim, but I was faced with a new problem, I had nothing to reference the base of joiner off of. My solution was to cut a length of scrap plywood that was 7 1/4 “wide. I placed this scrap plywood on top of the bottom trim, and clamped it into place. The top edge of the plywood served as the base for the biscuit joiner when I cut the slots for the center trim. 

Check back for part two of this project in a couple of days.

To see more information about the tools and products used to build this project, click on the highlighted links above.  Additional woodworking tools and products can be found in our woodworking store, WoodworkingProductStore.com.