Old Fashion Ice Chest Build
Old Fashion Ice Chest Build 
Well here's what
the final product should look like...I hope mine turns out similar;
however, I am not using quarter sawn oak, so the wood grain will
be different.
It all starts
with cutting stock oak, jointing edges, making biscuit slots,
and gluing panels together:
Finally the baren
wood starts to show some life as door panels and face frame are
assembled. These get mortise and tenon joinery instead of biscuits.
On this day, the
completed panels get finishing touches and the carcass begins
to show its final form.
Let the assembly
begin...pipe clamps everywhere.
This weekend finds
the inn a little slow, which equates to extra time in the shop...not
all bad. Most of the time is spent on making moldings, finishing
off the doors, sanding, and installing hardware. One note, this
project has introduced me to scrapers and after using the flat
scraper on panels and gooseneck scraper on the cove molding (shown
below), I wonder how I've done without them!
Next it's off
to the finishing shop. Before working on the ice chest, I'm experimenting
on some test pieces to get just the right finish for this mission
oak piece.
- Lots of different approaches and combinations were attempted. Shown above are the most promissing contrasted with a genuine quartersawn, mission oak sideboard from our inn. The samples vary from too orange to too dark. The center piece gave the best match. Note the difference in grain texture between the sideboard quartersawn oak and the plain sawn oak on these test pieces. In many respects, I wish I had used quartersawn stock for this project, but I think the ice chest will still look nice. Maybe next time.
- The finishing details on this project are in many respects just as interesting as the build itself. To get the rich mission appearance, I first raised the wood grain with water and lightly sanded to remove swollen high spots. Next, the entire oak surface was stained with a maple color water soluable wood dye from Homestead Finishing Products. After drying a second stain (Penchrome American Walnut) was applied over the first and rubbed to a tint just slightly darker than the final desired appearance. Lastly, I hand rubbed two coats of Old Master's gel varnish to bring the wood to its final form. All in all, this process took a little experimentation to get just right, but after that, it was really more fool proof than a bruch applied polyurethane finsih and the results are really nice.
Finally some
photos of the actual ice chest finishing described above.
I'm not a big
mission furniture fan, but I am really impressed by the curves
and proportioning of this piece. I'm certain it will be a nice
addition to our home and a well used storage chest for fine glassware.
Four important lessons were gathered from this project.
