Classic Storage Bench

so I've had an idea for a while now about building some sort of storage bench slash blanket chest and after sitting down and coming up with a set of Sketchup plans it was time to get to work much like any other project that I'm building that's dealing with sheet goods I start with breaking them down with the track saw and the more manageable parts and then cutting the rest of the pieces down at a combination of my MFT table and the table saw the one big thing that I've learned while woodworking is that it's not important to have the pieces really all cut to an exact measurement like it doesn't really matter if they're cut exactly to the link you think they should be the the main important thing is consistency so by cutting all your parts at the same time you ensure that all of them are going to be a consistent length and width you I'm using my little gage that I've made here for cutting dedos and I have to cut a dado into the sides and the front and back to be able to accept the bottom bottom is made of the same 5/8 material that the rest of the plywood box is being made from for the joinery on this box I'm going to be using a combination of biscuits and pocket screws and here I'm just laying all that stuff out and I want to kind of let the biscuits fall in between where the pocket screws are going to be and so I'm just sort of laying out even measurements taken into account where the groove for the bottom is going to be the biscuits work great for not only adding a little bit of strength to the box but also they really assist in panel lineup as far as getting all the edges flush and what I like to do is just glue them in place clamp them up and once the glue is dry I can go back and add the pocket screws to accurately cut the bottom to size I'm using my combination square here to gauge the depth of the bottom into the sides and the front and back and then I can use that measurement to go and actually cut it down the sides to get a perfect fit then I can slide the bottom into place and a little bit of glue and finish clamping and glue enough box for the face frame material on the box I'm going to be using poplar so I'll first start by milling a flat face and flat edge at the jointer and then take all the parts over to the planer so that I can get them all to a uniform thickness once I have all the parts milled down to their final thickness I can then take them all over to the table saw and cut them down to their final width I start by gluing and nailing on the four corner styles onto the box first and I can cut those to their final length because I know for sure what those are going to be and by having those attached now I can then go back make a measurement and get a perfect fit by sneaking up on the cut so that all of my rails fit exactly like they're supposed to for the rails around the top I ended up using clamps to hold them in place because the box was slightly bowed and this ended up helping a couple of things that help strengthen the box and also straighten it out quite a bit for all the rest of the rails I just glued and Brad nailed them into place the trim is one of the more tedious but also one of the more fun parts of the project because now is when you get this sort of style the box however you want to depending on what trim you've chosen and I like to go and cut all of my trim all at the same time in the beginning and number each one of them so that I can then go back and glue and attach all them later the method I found that works best for me for attaching the trim or getting it to fit precisely is just to slowly sneak up on each one of the cuts and a sacrificial fence on the chop saw really helps this out quite a bit once all the parts are cut down to their final size I can then go back and glue and Brad nails them all into place I like to sort of take the wood filler that I'm going to be using for filling everything and sort of filled nail holes and cracks as I'm going the base trim at the bottom for me was sort of a late decision as I didn't really like the way the legs looked on the box as I sort of stepped back and looked at it so I had this trim lying around and it has the same look of the base cap trim that I use on the rest of the box so I just mitered it to fit all the way around and glued and nailed it into place to make the cap that would fit around the top of the box and cover where the exposed plywood and the top of the poplar rails and stiles met I rethought a piece down first on the bandsaw and then ran it through the planer to get it down to a fairly thin thickness and then mitered it around the top of the box by cutting it slightly wider than the box itself I could take my router and then flush trim it all the way around the outside edge I knew all along that I wanted some sort of solid wood top for the top of the box and I had these two white ends lying around in the shop for quite a while now and by cutting out the center of each one of the boards I was able to get quite a bit of nice straight grain material once I had the parts of the board's cut out that I wanted at the bandsaw I can then take them over to the jointer and just like before flatten one face one edge and then send everything back to the planer to get to a uniform thickness I ended up basically cutting down all the boards that I had in the shop and this allowed me to be very picky and pick out exactly what I wanted so that I could get as much straight green material as I possibly could and very minimal knots this was a fairly good-sized glue up as you can tell and it took quite a few clamps and quite a bit of glue to get all of this glued up together and I was trying to be as careful as I possibly could while I was adding the clamping pressure to make sure that all of the board's stayed within you know pretty close alignment to one another in retrospect I probably would have been a little better off to have use either biscuits or Domino's I just think it would have been a lot easier to kept all of the boards nice and flat with one another once I had the top glued up and pull it out of the clamps and cleaned it up a little bit with my belt sander I could then take my track saw and cut it down to its final size as far as mounting the lid I didn't want to over complicate things by adding some sort of hinge system I just wanted it to lift off and so I cut down some strips at the table saw that I could then take over to the Box make a mark and cut each one of the pieces slightly undersized both length and width wise which would give it a little bit of a loose fit on the inside which would make setting it on and off of the box itself fairly easy once I had all of those parts cut I could then glue and then countersink and screw them together and by using some reference marks of both the center of the length and width of both the top and the trim that would go around the inside I could line this piece up perfectly centered drill four holes and just mount it with screws only no blue one of the parts of the build that I struggled with the most was the top itself and I couldn't decide after I had set the top on the box if I what sort of detail that I wanted to add to the top and at first I originally thought about adding some sort of detail around the very top edge with a router bit but after setting it up there I really kind of liked the way it looked just sort of the heaviness of the top itself but also thought that it might look cool to maybe add some sort of a detail underneath the bottom and after pulling people on Instagram and that being sort of the majority vote if you will that's pretty much what I decided to do after sending both the box and the top a lot I could finally move on to the finish and for the top I'm using two coats of poly acrylic water-based polyurethane and the box itself I put one coat of white primer on sanded that smooth and check for any defects and then two coats of color I'm really very pleased with the final outcome of this project this is one of those that I've been wanting to build for quite some time and have had the idea of building so to finally see something you've been thinking about making for a long time sort of come to fruition it's really pretty neat I have plans available for this project if you're interested in it as well as an article linked in the description below with a few more details that I may have left out in this video itself be sure to check us out on all the social media websites don't forget to Like share comment and subscribe I really appreciate all the support you guys give me every week and all the positive comments so thank you very much for that until next time happy trails thanks for watching

Channel: Matt Lane

Views: 269,553

Rating: 4.9164124 out of 5

Keywords: Storage, Bench, Storage Bench, Classical, Home Decor, Interior Design, Modern, Moder Build, Diy, Doityourself, Make, Maker, Woodworking, Woodworker, Blanket Chest

Id: kJkY7vFLb6E

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2016