I wanted to submit something for your Viewer Project portion of the blog. It’s a trunk that I made for a former player of mine that is getting married on Friday. She’s a great kid and did absolutely everything I asked of her the three years I had the pleasure of coaching her. The trunk was made from scrap I had around my shop – poplar, alder, maple, maple ply for the top and mdf for the panels. The corners were mitered using my ts55 and are reinforced with Dominos. The finish is some exterior latex I had left over from a plantation shutter job I did this summer. I put on two coats of primer and then two top coats. I don’t think I’ll use paint next time since it didn’t come out as smooth as I would’ve liked. If I do another one of these I’ll probably end up using a tinted lacquer. After it was painted I beat the heck out of it with some old keys and took some chunks out with a chisel. Once that was done I applied Mohawk’s Van Dyke Brown Glazing Stain. I followed that up with two coats of USL.

I know that the hinges don’t match the feel of the piece but I wanted to use them. They are the new ones from Rockler that allow the lid to stay in a fixed position. The little tray in the middle was to fix a bow in the front panel. I had to pull it back in so that the lid would shut. Not what I wanted to do but it did the job. Thanks for your time.