Lift Lid Tea Chest

This was a fun project where dad and I both contributed to the final product.

Tea Chest for Tea Lovers

A friend and I were not sure what to get another friend for Christmas when he suggested building a tea chest. My dad created the woven pattern on the lid, I built the box and incorporated his design, and my friend supplied all the tea (not shown.)

The sections below provide a brief walk-through of the build process.

Materials include:

Paduak (Outside box and main parts of lid)
Maple (Inside liner)
Baltic Birch Ply (Inside divider)
Purple heart, Wenge, and Maple (Lid highlights)

Material Break Out!

The first step is to layout where the pieces will be cut from the padauk board. I wanted to ensure the grain for each box wrapped around the corners in a continuous fashion so I marked out four blanks, one blank per box.

I fguired if I’m going to make one, I might as well make four!

Once laid out, I pulled out any staples and cut out the blanks.

Plane & Resaw

The second step is to clean up the blanks and get them to their final thickness. In order to get the wrap-around grain pattern I needed to resaw the blanks to get two pieces. Normally I prefer to use a bandsaw for this, however there just isn’t space for it in my shop right now so I used my table saw with a thin blade.

First I run them through my planer, resaw on table saw, then plane them to final thickness. The ‘X’ identifies the inside of the box as the resawed faces have matching grain and will be on the outside for the continues grain around the corners. I also marked the ends with a letter (A to D) and ‘V’ to identify which box it was (A to D) and the outside of the boxes (where the ‘V’ breaks)

Sizing the Tops & Sides

Next I cut he top panel (created by my dad) and padauk sides to rough size.

Additionally I created maple bottoms but did not record that process. (Bottoms can be seen table below.

Top panels (above, left-side) will be cut in half to create 4 panes for the chests. Padauk blanks (above, right-side) will be cut in half to create sides of chest.

I custom cut each box so it was important that I keep all the pieces together. (Right)

Time to Get Groovy

I measured the thickness of the tops and bottoms, marked the top and bottom edge on each side, and cut the grooves on the table saw.

Again, it was important to mark the tops and bottoms carefully to have a continuous grain pattern on the outside of the box.

Notice the grain pattern in the above pieces are ‘mirror’ images of each other. This is know as bookmatching and is a result of the resawing I did earlier - this ensures the grain is ‘continuous’ when I mitre the cornes.

The grooves will be cut on the opposite side shown above.

All pieces of the boxes shown on the right.

Close-up of the grooves cut.

Assembly

Next, I cut the sides to length and mitered the ends. Now it is time to glue and assemble.

I find the best way to assemble these types of boxes is to lay all pieces inside face down, aligning the top (or bottom) edge against a straight edge. I then reinforce and tape the seams. Once taped, I flipped it over, applied glue to the joints and ‘folded’ the box being careful to put the top and bottom panels in the grooves.

Outside is all taped and ready for glue and assembly.

Applying tape to the outside face at the joints

After I assemble I add a couple of clamps with light pressure until the glue dries

Key Details

To strengthen the corner joints (glued mitres aren’t that strong) we add some keys - they add both strength and intricate detail.

I cut the key holes on the table saw, glue the keys and tap in (lightly!) with a mallet and let the glue dry. I then saw them off with a handsaw and clean up with a chisel and sandpaper.

Keys before cleaning up and sanding.

Cut Lid and Install Liner

To ‘open’ the box, I cut the box in ‘half’ on the table saw and then installed the liner. The maple liner is slightly taller than the lower half of the box to align the lid.