11 Comments
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Aletha Huffman's avatar

I can’t wait to meet this blanket chest! If it were smaller or we lived closer, I’d commission one. Love it.

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Frew Schmidt's avatar

I could make a smaller one for sure!

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Kurt Andrews's avatar

Brother, you already know how impressed I am with this table/chest. Your right about the hinge. I hold my breath every time I watch your video of the finished install. I think the twisting is all on the hinge. I don't think there's anything you could do to correct it.

Take a shot at a scaled down version for practice & maybe try pistons for the assist, though those come with their own problems.

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Frew Schmidt's avatar

Yeah my wife and I discussed pistons as maybe a good option to help both the noise and the twist. I might even try to just remove this hinge and switch to that kind, but need to do research. Thanks Kurt!

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Kurt Andrews's avatar

You can always trust an engineer. Just sayin'

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Daniel Limb's avatar

I've been keeping track of your build elsewhere. Nice to see it finished!

It looks great, all of those mistakes are lessons to learn from - It's easy to forget this fact.

What made you choose such a bold colour?

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Frew Schmidt's avatar

My wife and I discussed the color ahead of time. I very much dislike the current minimalist design tendency. I don’t want things to be baroque, but I really don’t want things to be needlessly plain. I knew I wanted to paint this because basswood is very plain, no grain to speak of. On top of that I was pretty sure I’d end up needing to fill some gaps and that isn’t really something I know how to do with raw wood. My wife wanted a purple and this is the closest to purple I could find from Real Milk Paint. I really like how the color looks in person!

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Ryan Olson's avatar

I would imagine that engraving circles is incredibly difficult. Were you able to use some sort of tool to chisel in an exact arc or is it just a lot of painstaking small chiseling?

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Frew Schmidt's avatar

It's *basically* a loop of metal in a metal tube that you grip in a set of dividers. I should have taken a video of it in use. Maybe I'll do that in another article. Anyway you can see the creator of the tool use it here, 6 minutes in: https://vimeo.com/878475170

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Maxine Schmidt's avatar

This is beautiful! And useful, which makes it even more beautiful to me.

Becky read this over my shoulder. She is very impressed, can see the errors that you pointed out, and knows deeply the satisfactions and frustrations of this kind of work.

When friends admired her work, she used to say "Thanks, but if you could see [the back or some other hidden aspect] you can see where I [made some mistake]." I have finally persuaded her to say "Thanks! I enjoyed doing it." Keeping track of your mistakes is good so you learn from them, but why diminish someone's joy in your work by degrading it? That said, I have really enjoyed the story of this chest.

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Frew Schmidt's avatar

Yes! I literally messaged the Melinda mentioned in this article and she said: "In fifteen years ago Frew's defense, sometimes you should just let people enjoy things." These mistakes that I am mentioning are for my own growth and for woodworking readers. I have not pointed them out to Catherine and won't to other people who see the piece in person haha

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