[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] Our project on today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop" provides a little bit of everything.

It's a great lesson in some essential woodworking skills, provides some much-needed, good-looking storage for any house, and it's an excellent way to introduce people to woodworking.

Stick around and see how this one gets built.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ So the construction of our storage chest starts with a plywood case.

We really have a handful parts here to contend with.

First we have a front and back.

We have two ends.

We have a bottom and a top.

And I'm gonna start by cutting that all out of a sheet of plywood.

And I'm gonna do that here at the table saw.

But if you don't have a table saw, you can just as easily do it with a circular saw and a straightedge guide.

Now, wrestling a big sheet on the table saw takes a little bit of strategy.

So one thing I like to do when I'm cutting large sheets of plywood at the table saw is to take a step back.

And I like to actually push from about this area.

That allows me to direct the force into the fence, keep the workpiece up against the fence nice and square, and it allows me to watch the cut.

And as I'm feeding it through the blade, I'll take a step back behind it and finish the cut-out.

Now, there is one thing you do need and it really helps.

And that's an outfeed support system.

And really this is just a little bit of extra work surface.

So as you reach the end of the cut, the plywood doesn't want to fall to the floor and it's supported.

And usually what I'll do is I'll reach up with my knee, shut the saw off, wait for the blade to stop spinning, and then I can reset the fence and make my next cut.

So I'm gonna go ahead and break these parts out and we'll switch this out for a dado blade, talk about the joinery.

♪♪ ♪♪ Now, there's nothing real complicated about the joinery on this plywood case.

The front and back panel receive a rabbit on each end and that's to hold those end panels.

Then a little bit later, we'll cut a dado in the bottom side to hold the bottom panel.

But right now, let's talk about the rabbits on the ends.

Now, I've set up a dado blade in the saw, and I've buried it halfway into an auxiliary rip fence.

And that's nothing real crazy.

It's just a piece of plywood.

And it is set so that the width between the auxiliary fence and the outside tooth is exactly the width as our plywood.

And I verified that just by using a scrap piece of plywood of the same thickness, made a cut.

And I made sure that another panel fits in there perfectly.

And then the heighth is the only other thing we have to deal with.

And to set the heighth on a dado blade, I particularly like to use a metal ruler.

And I just sight down the blade and bring one of the teeth to the apex and set the heighth.

And again, I verify all that on a scrap of plywood.

So now that everything's set, I'm gonna go and make the cut on the ends of both the front and the back panel.

Now, these are pretty wide, so I'm pretty comfortable doing this without a miter gauge.

But if these panels were any narrower and they wanted to tilt a little bit, I would not only use the auxiliary rip fence, I'd use a miter gauge as well.

But these are pretty wide, so I'm pretty comfortable just making the cut as is.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Okay, so now that we have the rabbits cut to make the case, we can go ahead and tackle the dado.

Now, the dado for the bottom is gonna be cut using the same dado blade that we had installed for the rabbits, but I've changed the width a little bit.

Depending on what style of dado blade you have, it might be a little different, but most of them follow the same form.

And that's gonna be a series of chippers like this guy that are installed in between the two outer blades.

And then most of them will come with some shims.

And these shims are so you can fine-tune the width.

What we're looking for is a dado to exactly match the width of our plywood.

I made a couple of test cuts till I got this dialed in exactly.

And with most dado blades, it's gonna be one of those things where you have to adjust the width, make a test cut and make adjustments as necessary.

But now that I have it dialed in to match our plywood, I've went ahead and set the rip fence to position this dado about a half inch from the bottom.

We make the cut.

I'm gonna make these dados on the bottom edge of each of our outside case pieces.

And then we'll head over to the bench and do some assembly.

Alright, so with all of our joinery cut, we're ready to assemble, and honestly, as simple as the joinery is, the assembly is just as simple.

So the end panels are going to fit in the rabbits.

And really the biggest trick here is just making sure that the bottom dado lines up.

To do that, I'm just gonna use a spacer, same spacer I've been testing out all of our cuts on.

And we'll slide that into the front panel, slide it into the end panel, and that just ensures that those dados line up.

There's nothing worse than getting a case assembled, and then one of your panels shifted slightly, and then you're sanding out a bottom.

Ask me how I know.

So I'll use that guy there to lock that together.

And now all we have to do is apply some glue and some fasteners.

Now, the plans call for screwing the front and back panel to these end panels, and really, since there's glue there, all those screws are doing is just holding everything together until the glue cures.

So instead of screwing it, I'm going to go ahead and just use a finish nailer, shooting some about 1-inch, 18-gauge nails.

And really, again, all those are doing are just holding everything together till the glue cures.

So let's get some glue applied here.

With our spacer.

There we go.

One side down, three to go.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Alright, so at this point, we basically have a plywood box.

And this is where this project, in my opinion, gets kind of fun because this box ends up being the skeleton to whatever your storage chest ends up being.

At this point, you can kind of customize it and make it whatever style you want.

I'm gonna start by doing the cottage, kind of country style one that's outlined in the plans.

And really, this all is done with molding.

It's either molding you can buy or molding you can make in your own shop.

And it just gets scabbed on here and the design ends up being whatever you want it to be.

So to start, I'm gonna start with these corners.

And these corners are gonna be pieces of hardwood.

In this case, it's poplar.

And I've rabbited one edge of one piece, and they kind of seat together to form this L-shaped corner bracket.

And this just will sit over the outside edge of each corner and get glued and nailed into place.

And I'm going to be painting this.

So I'm not terribly concerned about these nail holes.

I'll come back and fill them when everything's done.

But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make sure that the top is flush with the top of the box, get glue applied, nail them down, and then we'll come back and add some more molding.

So I'm gonna get these added on, then we'll look at the molding.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Alright, so now that we have the corners on, we can go ahead and address some of trim.

Like I mentioned before, trim's just poplar hardwood, and it's just cut to length.

So I've went ahead and cut the top and bottom rail to length at the miter saw.

And when I'm cutting trim like this that has to fit between two objects like our corner trim.

I like to cut it a little bit long, and then I'll come over here to a shooting board.

A shooting board is basically a plane that's held on its side, and it allows you to square up and fine-tune the length of a workpiece.

You take a couple of passes... ...and it cleans up the end grain, and it allows you to fine-tune the fit.

So I have both these guys fitting pretty well in there.

So now we can go ahead and get those glued into place.

♪♪ ♪♪ Alright, so now I'm going to work around the rest of the case, adding that top and bottom trim, then I'll come back and add a pair of verticals on the two long sides.

And then we'll tackle the thing that really gives this country-style chest its look.

That's the beadboard panels.

Alright, so like I mentioned before, these beaded panels are really the icon of this country style, and while you could buy a sheet good that has a bead in it, like a plywood or a hardboard, we decided to use solid wood for these.

And these are just a pine beadboard.

And these are usually available at most hardware stores.

They'll usually be pretty thin.

These are about quarter of an inch thick, and they'll be four or five pieces of this per bundle.

And they're about 3 1/2, 4 inches wide.

Now, this does mean that when you assemble them all, you're probably going to have to rip one of these down to get it to fit.

And I actually ripped down both edges.

So I have a small tongue right here.

And this guy, I've ripped down just a hair.

What that does is it kind of centers up this bead inside the opening, just makes it look a little bit better, in my opinion.

So when I drop this guy in here, I can spread them out a hair just to get a nice, tight fit and because these are solid wood, they're gonna expand and contract.

So we don't want to nail everything down.

Instead, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a nail in each corner.

And then if you notice, these are bowing a little bit, you can also stick a nail right in the center of each of those individual beaded panels.

That way, they can still expand and contract as the humidity changes during the seasons.

And once those are installed, we're gonna come back with some of this edging.

This edging is just some poplar that's been routed with a roundover on one edge.

And it fits right along these openings here.

And that covers up where that beadboard meets the case.

And it looks really good.

It gives it a nice, finished, clean look.

However, it is gonna be a little bit tedious.

So I'm gonna go ahead and get these panels in place, and then we'll spin this around, clear off the bench.

I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna do with the top because it is a little bit different than what the plans call for.

Alright.

So like I mentioned, I'm doing something different for the top here than what the main drawings in the plan has.

The main drawings in the plans have the top as plywood, with some decorative molding added.

And it looks great.

But with this country-style chest, we opted to do a pine top.

And I think it's gonna look really good with the painted case and maybe a stain on the top.

There's two other things I'm gonna do differently as well.

So I'm envisioning this storage chest being like a toy box maybe from my parents' house for my kids.

So there's two things I want.

The first is I want the lid to be attached to the chest.

And I've done that here with a piano hinge.

That guy's pretty easy to install.

Piano hinges come in long lengths.

So I just used a hacksaw to cut it to size, positioned everything, pre-drilled it and screwed it in with about 45,000 screws.

The next thing that I want is I want this lid to support itself, and I don't want little fingers to get pinched because any of us that have kids know their fingers tend to find their way into places that can pinch them pretty easily.

So here I've opted to use one of these guys, and this is a self-supporting lid stay.

What this does is it supports the lid open in various degrees, depending on how you set it up.

And it also allows the lid to close softly.

That way, those little fingers have time to get out of the way before the lid fully closes.

And even if it does close on the fingers, it's gonna support the weight so the fingers aren't gonna get pinched.

Now, these guys are a little bit more complicated to install than the piano hinge.

There's a couple settings depending on what manufacturer you find of these, and most of them are designated by the position of this little bracket in here.

And those have some super accurate measurements that need laid out before you install them.

You're gonna have to refer to the instructions that come with these to get the correct measurements.

But take your time, lay them out accurately, and that way, this guy will work how it's supposed to.

So I'm gonna go ahead and get the rest of these screws installed and see how she works.

♪♪ ♪♪ Alright, there we go.

So with the hinge and the hinge stay installed, really all I have left to do is take care of the rest of the beadboard and molding, and then this thing is ready for some paint.

Right now, my window seat looks a lot like the one that Logan built, but instead of that country look with a beadboard panel, I want something traditional.

So to give my window seat the traditional look, I'm going to start with this base molding.

That base molding is going to tie my window seat down and give it a firm foundation.

After that, I'm going to take this cap molding, which has a traditional profile to it, and I'm going to wrap the interior of each of these panels.

And with those details, I'm gonna have a window seat that's gonna look great at any traditional home.

So my first step is to start with the base molding.

I have a piece of molding here with a miter already cut on one end.

I'm going to apply the molding and hold it tightly against my face and line up that miter with this corner.

Then I'll take a sharp pencil... ...and mark the back.

So it's over to the miter saw, and I'm gonna go ahead and cut this and apply this first piece.

Now, one thing about cutting wide moldings like this, it's always best to cut them from the back.

That way, any tear-out from the miter-saw blade will occur on the back and you'll have a clean cut on the face.

With the first piece of molding attached, I'll then progress to the front, to the other side and then to the back.

Now, the reason for this progression is the last piece of molding we apply will have to fit between two miters.

It's always easier to fit between two miters with a long piece of molding than a short one, and it's in the back.

So if there's a problem, it will be hidden.

Well, it's time to apply our last piece of molding.

So what I need to do is to mark it first, but I can't do what I did before where I butted a piece of molding against a miter, let it run long and marked it.

What I have to do for this last piece is hold the base molding up high so the bottom edge just contacts that miter.

I let it run long above this other side and then I can mark it off of the edge.

With that done, I go to the miter saw, and I want to split that line because this last piece of molding needs to fit exactly right.

Well, I think I've got a good fit here, so I'm gonna go ahead and put some glue on the base and nail it in place.

Earlier, when we applied the base molding, we wrapped it around the outside of our window seat.

With this cap molding, it's a little different game.

We're gonna wrap that on the inside of each of these panel openings, but it's easy enough.

What you want to do is precut moldings.

They're a little bit long.

Clip one end with a miter, and then it's as simple as holding it in the opening... making a mark.... right at the intersection.

And then you go to your miter saw, and you split that pencil line.

When you apply them, do them each individually, one at a time, nailing and gluing them all in succession.

If you go ahead and place all your pieces in there and then try and pull them out to glue and nail, it's a little hard.

So go ahead and do them each one at a time and work your way around.

The last step in the construction of the traditional window seat is to make the lid.

Now, unlike Logan's box, there's no hinges here.

It's just a simple fit lid that lifts on and off.

I have the window seat upside down.

This is the lid.

It's half-inch plywood and it's edged with solid wood.

I've cut more of this cap trim to form a rim around the inside of the lid to keep the lid centered on the window seat.

Now, one thing I want you to notice is that I have a 16th-inch spacer here to stand the cap trim off of the side of the window seat just a little bit.

And that's gonna allow some room for paint and make the lid snug but not tight.

Well, that completes the construction of the traditional window seat.

What's left now is to carefully give it the once-over, make sure all the nail holes are filled, cracks filled, and that it's sanded smooth to accept a finish.

Now, I'm gonna put a couple of coats of paint on this.

And when it's done, I'll place it in front of a window, and then all I'm gonna need is a good cup of coffee and a book.

Let's take our storage chest project in an entirely different direction.

Now, Logan and Chris both went with projects that are ultimately gonna get painted, and they'll look great.

Because they're painted, they can use lower-cost materials -- birch plywood for the cases, poplar lumber for the trim and some pine molding.

Easy to find, low cost.

I went with a different look on mine but a lot of the same techniques.

So instead of birch plywood, I'm using rift sawn plywood.

And what rift sawn means is that the grain on the oak is all running in one direction.

There's no wild and crazy cathedral patterns here.

Because what I'm looking for here is I'm looking for this chest to look like some of the old travel trunks or steamer trunks that you see in antique malls and things like that.

So I want to emphasize those really straight lines.

So to do that, I'm gonna use oak trim pieces that I've cut here.

And I've gone through the trouble to select boards that again have that rift sawn, real straight grain in order to emphasize those lines.

Then for the bottom piece, instead of a much wider piece that I had before, I'm gonna use a narrow piece at the bottom.

Then there'll be another one at the top, just like Logan and Chris have been doing.

But this time, I'm gonna add a third one right in the middle.

And I think, again, that's gonna create that long, low look that I want to get with this project.

So I'm gonna get these attached and then we'll see how we can build on that to create other layers of detail.

So in addition to adding that third center rail here, what I want to do now is to divide up those two openings.

So you can see, I've already got a good start on creating these smaller pieces that fit in there.

And that gives it that frame and panel look that you'd see on an old steamer trunk.

So what I can do now is just put a little glue... ...on the piece, and I've lined it up with center lines, and then I'll just nail it home.

I'm gonna do something similar on the lid.

But then I also want to get Logan and Chris back and we can talk about how these storage chests all finished up.

I think the best part about this project is just how easy it is to customize.

Exactly.

Start with a plywood box and then depending on what applications you make with molding and trim and your favorite tool, the pin nailer, for this project, you can come up with completely different looks.

And this is a project that suits any woodworker at any level.

It gives you plenty of options for appearance.

It's easy to do.

I think it's also because it's fast, too.

So I mean, even if you are what we would call an experienced woodworker, this is just kind of a fun one to turn out.

Mm-hmm.

Now, my trust is a simple applique of frame and panel pieces with some store-bought molding.

Lots of options.

Looks great.

And it's the one that adheres most closely to the plans, too.

But that doesn't mean that you can't translate it into something else.

Exactly.

You know, mine was an option for our designer's notebook in the plans.

And I took it a little bit further and went ahead and I antiqued it, aged it, added a little wear and tear to it to kind of give it a vintage vibe.

And I think it looks great.

And you also went with a hinged lid on it, too.

Exactly, keep those little fingers safe when it turns into a toy box.

Well, for mine, I went with natural finish, so I started with oak plywood and then applied oak trim to it.

Tried to pick out some nice straight green pieces so that it looks good.

And then I kind of wanted that steamer-trunk, travel-trunk look to it.

And I could have done that with the lid.

But I know that this is such a versatile piece that in addition to being storage, could also serve as a coffee table and table thing, too.

So then on the inside, to register the lid, I have some cleats on either end that let you know where the lid should go on there and keep it from sliding off.

The plans for making your own storage chest are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

It's also the home where you'll find more project plans, tips, and videos to get you excited about being in your shop.

And then you can join us right back here in the woodsmith shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Phil: If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free "Woodsmith" book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪