Did I Just Ruin a Family Heirloom?

Jay's Custom Creations is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220CRZ sawmill or many other fully hydraulic sawmills, go to TimberKing.com. Did I just ruin a family heirloom? Maybe. I don't know. God, I love that. The servo motors on this machine are so much quieter than the NEMA motors on my last machine. This... I'm running it without dust collection just because it's a little bit of fuzzy stuff, but running the dust collector for this two hour job just sounds brutal. It's really... I mean it's... The loudest noise is actually cutting the wood. And this is kind of an intricate design, so it's going to take... The computer said it's going to take two hours to cut. I'm timing it as well with my watch to see actually how close that is. It should be pretty darn accurate, but it's very, very detailed. A little bit more detailed than what it needs to be, but I kind of want to see what it does, you know? Here's the lid so far. I think it's going to be great when it's all said and done. This is about an hour and a half worth of carving so far. It's just a really chaotic pattern. Not really chaotic, very busy. There's a lot going on. I duplicated this tree pattern quite a bit and flipped it around so you have some left and you have some right. What I came up with is this deer jumping over the banner with some pine trees in the background, which is very fitting for who this is going to go to. I have to do some clearing for this. So I've got the quarter inch end mill installed for the next cut, and it's going to clear out quite a bit. Like this whole tree right here is going to be gone. Some of this... Some of these other trees down in here will get relief. And then a lot of the deer up here will get relief. So you'll only see like some ridges where the mussels are and all this extra space will be removed. But one of the reasons why I went with this very busy pattern is because pine chips out. That's all there is to it. Pine is not a fantastic v-carving species. Something like ash. Ash is my favorite species to v-carve. It just v-carves flawlessly with very, very little chip out. But because this pattern is so busy and chaotic, I don't have to worry about stuff like this right here. We've got some tear out right here. All that tear out is okay because I can just pop the tear out off and not even worry about it. And it kind of sort of just blends with the chaos that is, well, the busyness that is this pattern. So there's going to be quite a bit of cleanup work, just getting all these fuzzies out of here with a pick. And that's going to be okay. When it's all said and done, I'm going to go with a dark stain of some kind, maybe a gel stain. I haven't quite gotten that far as far as settling on that. But I'll be able to get that all in here and it'll make it pop even more. And then also, all of these v-carvings, they expose end grains. So this is going to be all the profile of this carving is going to be darker than the flat surfaces. So it's just going to add to the contrast. But I'm set up to do the clearing path. So let's go ahead and get that. I typically have my quarter inch end mills set to have a 66% step over, meaning 66% of the diameter is what is going to be making the cut. That's how much material you're going to remove. However, when I made the flattening passes on this top and bottom, I realized that my tramming is just a little bit off. Now the flattening passes, I was using a two and a half inch diameter bit. And the greater the diameter, the more you will see the lack of calibration for the spindle tramming. So on this quarter inch end mill, you won't see it much. However, if it is off, you'll see little swirls where it moved around basically the diameter of the bit on those flat pockets. So to reduce that, I reduced the step over to 33%. And that means it's basically going to have more contact with the bottom of the pocket as it makes all of its cuts. Therefore, the bottom of the pocket should be a little bit cleaner with this small diameter bit, assuming that the tramming is not perfectly spot on. So that means it's going to be down on the material longer making the cuts. And one cool thing about the new control software is after you load your job, you can go to graph job and it'll show you exactly what it's going to do. And then up here, it'll give you a time, 13 minutes and 13 seconds to make this cut. What's interesting is when I had it set to 66%, it was 10 minutes. So reducing the effective cutting width from 66 to 33 is basically half, but it only went from 10 minutes to 13 minutes for this particular job. Please excuse this brief detour as I unload some more free logs. It is really hard to say no to free logs. My work truck, this truck is a 2012 F-250 6.7 liter. It's a nice work truck, but it's not a spring chicken by any means. It's 14 years old and it's starting to show some signs of age, especially in the interior where unfortunately I don't maintain it as much as I'd like to admit. But we're going to change that today. I found some shade. Shade is what I need to get this done before I take this trailer back. This is my first vehicle with leather seats and we're starting to see some cracking in the leather right where you get out. I don't like to see that. We're starting to see some splits in the leather. This one's getting a little bit worse. I don't like to see that. Of course, the backseat is my daughter's playground and anyone who has a kid in a vehicle knows that things, things start to show their age really fast where there's just, yeah, it is what it is. This is a seat cover pack made specifically for my truck and trim model made by Seat Cover Solutions. For my setup, we've got the two front seats, installation instructions, a little tool, I guess, to tuck it, everything in the corner, all of the headrests that are necessary, as well as a steering wheel cover, which I may or may not use, headrests for the back, and then also the 60-40 split on my backseat with a cup holder so that there is a spot to still allow the cup holder to operate. Sweat is already on all these, but that's not included with the new purchase. I'm about to put the covers up front, and I noticed on the passenger seat, I didn't know that was there, I didn't know that was there, and I didn't know that was there, so perfect timing. This is pretty clever. They put a zip tie on these elastic bands. There's no way you're getting an elastic band through there. Not going to happen. But the zip ties, you can feed through nice and easy. This is a nice, clean install. I am really glad that we went with black. It kind of visually darkens the interior of the truck, makes it feel a little less bright and obnoxious. I still have access to this cup holder in the back, and even as filthy as it is, I still have access to it. Tucks away neatly. I don't think I'm going to use the steering wheel cover that came with this kit. It was somewhat unexpected, and I'm not a fan of steering wheel covers in general. Something else that was unexpected is just how soft these are. Not really soft. I guess that's not the right word. They are soft. What I'm trying to say is the thickness of this padding wasn't expected. There's a lot of lumbar padding right here, and that is not only unexpected, but it is very much welcomed. That was a weak spot with these chair designs, with these stock chairs in this truck, and I sat in here already, and this feels wonderful. So much padding, actually, that I had to lower my seat and push the seat back because we gained so much thickness. So, that's going to be nice. Want to go for a ride? Crazy? Go on. So a little while ago, Seat Cover Solutions reached out and said, hey, let's work together. And I obviously said, absolutely. Because, for a couple reasons. Number one, like I said, this is my work truck. I don't baby this truck. And I'm putting some wear and tear on the leather seats in here quite a bit. And number two, if you've noticed in the back, my dogs. I've got two Belgian Malinois dogs, and I'm trying to truck train them. And I don't know if you know Belgian Malinois, but they're like ping pong balls. They're non-stop, back and forth, left and right, up and down, all over the place. And, having that extra little protection for that back seat, so their claws aren't digging into leather, well, that's welcomed as well. Not only do these seat covers offer added protection, but they are really comfortable. That was unexpected. I wasn't expecting them to have as much padding as they have. And that padding does not interfere with heated or cooled seats. This truck actually has heated and cooled seats, which is amazing in the summertime to have air conditioning on your butt. Anyway, thank you Seat Cover Solutions for supporting this video. If you want to learn some more, I'll have a link down in the description that you can check out. The main carving on the lid is done. I'll clean that up later. Now we're going to switch over to the box. And I want to make a couple trays to go in here. Those trays need something to slide across. And then on these interior corners, something I did on my dining table I think that helped quite a bit, is I want to glue in a block that goes all the way down, just to strengthen this connection. These pieces are 3 quarters of an inch, and this is kind of a big box. While this connection should be just fine long term, adding another glue block all the way down will do nothing but add strength to the corners. These are the four blocks that I'm going to glue into the interior corners of the chest. And I wanted the edge that was sticking out to be a chamfer. And rather than swapping out the bits in my router table to put in a chamfering bit, I thought, you know what, it would be pretty easy to just whip up a quick little sled that I can keep near the planer. And anytime I need to make a chamfer on a piece that fits in here, well I can run it through the planer much more conveniently than swapping out router bits. So, unnecessary, all things considered, but a quick win. These corner supports are eventually going to be cut flush of course. And these supports are for the trays. And easy alignment here, I just lined up the bottom edge of this board with the top of the opening for each one of the panels. So no crazy measuring, just get it close with your fingers, clamp it down. That's got a good glue bond all the way across, that should be pretty darn strong. And the trays I'm going to make, I should be able to make two trays out of these two boards as far as the frame goes, not the bottoms. I'll put a slatted bottom on both of them. But the trays aren't going to be massive. One of them is going to be a little bit less than half the width of the case. And the other one is going to be kind of narrow actually. That's going to allow a lot of space in between for quick access down below without removing the trays. Of course the trays can be removed. But I think it's going to work out quite nicely. And also, the trays are going to be pretty shallow. But because this board is down quite a bit, they'll still have extra height, more height than the sides of the trays actually are. So you can put a little bit taller stuff on the tray compared to its actual depth. It's a box with a box and a box. Everything in woodworking is a box. Two boxes and a box. The trays slide easily. They have a little bit of a loose fit. But that's better than a super tight fit. And the bottoms are just slats that are not connected to one another. They will shrink up just slightly I would imagine over time. And that's going to be okay. Because last time I checked, I don't think that this is intended to be a sandbox. So little gaps in the slats. That's fine. Oh, I still have to trim the sides. Flush trim these. We'll get to that in a little bit. I have to make a lid support. And the lid. The lid, the lid, the lid. The lid is gorgeous. I love the way that this turned out. But my least favorite part of all this is the little tedious cleanup in between every little spot. You can't put a finish on all of these fuzzies. You've got to take care of all that. I've been delaying this because, well, I don't want to do it. It's tedious and my attention span for tedious is not what it once was. But I think it's time to just put some headphones on and get it done. I got all of this cleaned up and the pockets where the trees are looked like they were just missing something. So I used a v-carving chisel and just carved in a bunch of scratches essentially. To make it look like needles on a tree. And it may or may not be showing up right now as far as the camera goes. But visually where I'm standing here I can see the shadows quite well. And it adds a very interesting touch to it. So all of this should pop considerably once the finish is applied. Today is the day that I have been dreading working on this project. Because it is stain day. I'm going to change the color of this and go dark. I was laying in bed last night thinking, when was the last project that I applied stain? And I think, if my memory serves me correctly, I think it was 2014, 2015-ish. When I made those half-flat bar stools out of 2x4s. Which we still use every single day here right now. But I think that's the last project that I stained. Because I love wood, the color of the wood. Walnut, of course, looks wonderful with just a clear finish on it. You get to see the color of the walnut. Sapele or mahogany looks wonderful. Just that natural color. Just put a clear coat on it and appreciate the color of that wood. Hickory looks wonderful. I love the look of hickory. Don't change the color, just put a clear coat on it. Ash looks wonderful. I love the look of ash with just a clear finish on it. But pine looks good if it's not already weathered and aged, in my opinion. This is fresh wood. I took this tree down, cut it up on the sawmill, and dried it. And this is new, fresh wood. But it also looks aged. And it looks weathered. And it looks a little bit too rustic, in my opinion. Especially the back. We're in a shadow. It just looks too... I don't know what the word I'm looking for. This doesn't look like fresh lumber to me. This to me looks like reclaimed lumber that I planed the surfaces off of and exposed the original color of the wood. But it's still full of defects. That's what it looks like to me. And I think if I just put a clear finish on this I'm not too thrilled with... I'm just not too thrilled with a clear finish on this. I think it's going to look so much better with a darker stain on it to make it kind of appear older than what it is just based upon the character of the wood. That's the main reason that I don't really like applying stain. I have appreciation for wood all different species and I just love the way that wood looks naturally. But the second reason I don't want to apply a stain is my patience for this type of work is so small. It's too tedious for my brain right now. Especially this stage in my life. So I don't want to stain it but I'm going to. So that being said I'm essentially a noob essentially a rookie at staining. And if it looks great cool. If it looks like crap cool. We're just going to roll with it. This lid is also another reason why I want to put stain on this because as it is right now the finish will make it pop a little bit but because all of the carving basically exposes end grain if I put a finish on here the end grain is going to really darken and that will really do a good job of making a much more high contrast visual centerpiece. This is the main main thing on the blanket chest where people are probably going to look at the most and if this pops more with finish on it well I think that's going to be a win. Not finish. Stain. If it pops more with stain on it I think that's going to be a big win. Stain. The chest is done and thankfully the cat didn't destroy the stain. No more than I did. I don't think I did the best job on the stain but that's okay. Before I get into showing you all this I want to talk about something that I consider the Michael Jordan effect because I think it's relevant here. The Michael Jordan effect, the Michael Jordan syndrome a couple years ago I was reading an article about a particular NBA player and I'm not a big NBA fan or follower but I understand what goes into an NBA career from the outside looking in. So this particular guy had a longer than average NBA career started on the bench then became a starter for many years and then in the later stages of his career he was traded to many different teams I think it was like 7 teams in 4 years and he came off the bench in all those different teams to play a specific role and reading the article the article was highlighting this guy's career bringing him up, propping him up but you read the comments and it was like 95% just absolute negativity this dude's trash he's washed up what a loser, he needs to get out of the league he's made enough money, get out of here and it's like maybe I'm getting older I just realized it's like the Michael Jordan effect the Michael Jordan syndrome everybody instead of comparing or judging something based upon the objective they judge it or compare it or the person to the greatest of all time and that's totally not fair in like 99% of situations if the objective isn't to be the greatest of all time it's totally not fair and I bring that up because did I just ruin a family heirloom? maybe I don't know is this a family heirloom? I don't know on the last video to this project when I made the case somebody said I ruined it by putting an OSB panel in the bottom of it and I think that's hilarious because you don't understand the objective and you're being incredibly judgmental for no reason so was the objective for this project to be something comparable to a Queen Anne highboy solid cherry or solid walnut with no glued up panels every board is a full width board and it's just a flawless finish if my comparison or my objective was to achieve something of that level then oh buddy did I fail I absolutely failed but it wasn't it was the opposite of that my objective was to make something that was completely utilitarian I was asked by a friend of mine to make a box make a box to hold his hunting gear it doesn't have to be anything fancy he just gave me some overall dimensions and said can you make a box I just need something to put all my hunting gear in and I thought yeah that's no problem so the bar was set really low just make a box and if I'm just going to make a box let's just slap together some plywood with some pocket hole screws to form a box and then you cover up the plywood edges with some solid wood and then a plywood panel with edge banding all the way around it boom slap a hinge on it there's your box and I thought well you know what this guy has helped me out tremendously and I really much appreciate him so let's make this a little bit better and let's make it something that he might be proud of rather than simply fulfilling a utilitarian need so then instead of plywood panels let's go ahead and make a pocket hole blanket chest and I've made many of these in the past where you just simply take some one by material for your rails and stiles and you pocket hole it together to make a skeleton and then on the inside once you have all four frames pocket holes secured together then you put some quarter inch plywood on the inside and what you have is some flat panels inside of a frame very very easy to do and if you've never made rail and stile joints maybe that's a fantastic way to make a beautiful project without all of the little bit more complicated joinery and I've made many of those in the past and I thought well you know what rather than pocket hole screws I've got some rail and stile bits for the router table so let's make these rail and stile joints and then put a plywood panel on the inside and then I thought well you know what that same bit has a raised panel bit so let's go ahead and make raised panels I haven't done that in a while and then it slowly evolved into let's try and use as much of my woodworking arsenal as possible and then it kind of became a game for me you know what instead of a flat panel top where it is glued up the same way that these panels are and it's just a one by all the way across it let's add a little bit of mass to the thing that will interact with the most the lid and so you know you feel a little bit more substance when you're lifting up the lid let's do this like a cutting board top and if I'm going to do a cutting board top well then I have to use the CNC machine to flatten it because that's wider than both my jointer and planer and if I'm going to use the CNC let's also personalize it and make it a little bit more interesting for him long term and let's do a bunch of V carving on here and personalize it and what not and you know what I got that done and this just looked a little bit boring and plain so I broke out the hand carving chisels and I hand carved all the inside of the trees not the deer, the trees and that looks pretty cool and I got to use some hand tools that I haven't used in quite a while so that's awesome and you know what I didn't use pocket holes for the main construction but we can use the bock hole machine to make the trays that go on the inside so I got to use another one of my tools to put the trays together and you know what the trays need something to rest on so we put those runners on the front and back right there for the trays to slide across and they're a little bit longer, the stock was a little bit longer than what I needed so I had to cut them down I could use my miter saw but I've already used the miter saw on this project on the base so why not break out some hand tools and I used it wasn't many cuts but I used my hand tools to make those cuts to length and then I cut the chamfer with a hand tool and you know what, speaking of chamfer rather than using the router table once again let's take the opportunity to bust out a little sled right there to go through the planer so I can chamfer all this, I've never done that before that was cool, that was fun and you know what, I got to sand these trays, well the fastest way for me to sand trays and boxes is the cheat code known as my belt sander over there so I used the belt sander to sand all the boxes really really fast that was really really fast and I want to put a round over on these edges of the box but I don't want to use the router table again, I've already done that so why don't we just do a little round over at the sander that was quick and easy to do, I've used so many different tools on this project, of course a drill for the screws and brad nailer for brad nails here and there gel stain, I haven't stained anything in quite a while well, I brushed the gel stain on, let's go ahead and spray the shellac on, I haven't sprayed a finish in forever so bust out Harbor Freight HVLP sprayer haven't done that in a while, and you know what I was cutting some pieces up here and I have used the miter saw on this project, but what about some is this a good setup right here with these openings for some quick rough cuts with a circular saw so I did that with a circular saw this project turned into a use as many tools as possible in my arsenal here, and the router, I used a hand held router rather than a router table to do the round overs on this and then the flush trimming down there I've used the bigger Rotex sander to sand as much as I could, and then I've got a smaller Rotex sander to sand in the areas where it wouldn't fit and this isn't a look at how many tools I got kind of a thing I've been doing this for woodworking since 2008 or 2009 something like that, so you accumulate a bunch of tools it was a matter of trying to get a little bit of time on everything as much as possible and it's so much fun to do when you consider that my objective was really low, just make a utilitarian box, and this isn't the Taj Mahal by any means it is way higher than my objective so no, I didn't ruin it by putting an OSB panel on the bottom I don't think so anyway oh yeah, the kickstand for the lid support this is another controversial thing on the internet I've made many, I've probably made two dozen of these blanket chests hope chest, blanket chest, war chest call it whatever you want to call it and I've never taken the time to add, you know gas struts or some type of expensive hinge to hold the lid open I just, I don't think it's necessary just make a kickstand, they're so easy to do, and in this case I've already got a little piece right here this runner for the trays that's a corner for the kickstand to live in and you just cut a piece of wood that's basically the same width as the interior of the box right here, and it holds it up just fine, not only does it hold it up just fine but you can beat on this and it wiggles a little bit, but it's not gonna fall you really have to whack into it, do something that you shouldn't be doing for it to actually fall which as far as I'm concerned, that's the same thing as cooking on a stove, don't touch the hot stove don't run into this the trays still come out easily they don't get in the way of the lid or anything so there's that and then the kickstand just falls into place when you let go let me see if I can put it back in place one handed with my elbow holding it up yeah I can do that you just find the spot so one thing that will happen is over time, this will wear off and you'll see some aged signs on the bottom of the lid and is that a problem? I don't think so, I've restored, not really restored I've worked on quite a few old chests that were in a museum, a friend of mine owns a museum down in Starkville, Mississippi every time we've worked on fixing those chests, it was always fixing something that was broken, or repairing something that was broken, and we never messed with any cosmetic blemishes that occurred over the years because the cosmetic blemishes are what gives a piece life, you can see how this piece was used over the years and it's just character so yes, this will probably wear out a little bit right there as far as the finish goes, I don't see it damaging the wood any, but no, I'm not going to do anything about that, and I don't think there's any more protection necessary right there, because that's just going to add character and it's just going to give this piece a little bit of life the lid support conveniently just lives right there it's just a rough board doesn't have to be anything fancy doesn't really take up any space the lid, I think turned out great I love I love the look of this lid I think that the hand carving in there really adds a lot to it when I had it looking, you know, just like this it looked like something was just missing and it also makes the deer kind of stand out a little bit more having all the trees up here anyway, this is one of my favorite v-carvings I think I've ever done so we've been living in the shop for almost two years now, and this is the first piece of finished furniture that I've been able to make here in the new shop space I've made a lot of other small things but nothing like a full piece of furniture and it just feels good like I said, I've tried to use as many tools that I have available to me and it was just a lot of fun and I think I really needed this project and of course, it's a gift for a friend of mine who's helped me out tremendously so win-win-win all the way around if you're interested in the vector that I used for the lid, you can just personalize it with a different name on there I think that'd be great for the bottom of a cutting board I'll have that available on my website is anyone interested in plans for this? I won't take the time to make plans unless there's any interest so if you are interested in a full set of plans for this chest then I'll make those as well that's it for this one, you guys take care, have a great day and I will talk to you in the next video