Entryway Bench

I start off by rough cutting lumber for the floor boards, slightly over sized.  Then I run it through the thickness planer a few times to smooth, flatten and bring it down to finished thickness.

Now that the two wide faces are smooth and parallel to each other, I trim and square the edges on the table saw.  Then I lay the boards out and determine which faces will be "up" based on the coloring and grain.

Then I cut a slot in both edges of each board.  The "up" face goes against the fence, that way it doesn't matter if the slot is absolutely centerd on the boards, they will all be the same anyway.  I follow this by setting up a 45 degree bevel bit in the router table to just knock the corners off of the "up" faces of each board except the outside edge of the end boards.  These chamfered edges do two things; they look nice, like tongue & groove flooring (which is essentialy what we're doing) and they will help minimize the appearance of cracks between boards as the humidity changes and the boards shrink up.

I lay all the boards out again and put them back into the order I thought was most pleasing.  Then I cut some splines that will fit into the slots, half in one board, half in the one next to it to tie the boards together, without solidly binding them together like gluing would.  This will be a free floating floor, each board is free to expand and contract as need be, but because the boards are loose, they will each move just a tiny bit and we will avoid the problem of movement in a large slab.  The splines help to keep the floor boards all aligned with one another and prevent dried mud or crud from filtering down into the floor under the chest.  It is not water tight, however; if you dump a bucket of water in there it will find it's way through the bottom. So, please don't do that.

Time to mount up The Toothy Monster.  This is a stack dado head, a set of two special saw blades and a series of chippers that go between the two circular blades.  It cuts grooves and dades.  You may recall that a groove and a dado are essentially the same thing except that a groove runs with the grain of the wood and a dado run across the grain.  With this I will cut the grooves that will house the ends of the floor boards

The floor boards have already been milled to finished thickness, so my job now is to adjust the dado head with shims to get a groove that is snug enough to prevent rattling, but free enough I can get the boards into the casework without force.  I cut a few test cuts in scrap wood to get the right fit.

The smaller panels are not much of a problem, but this back panel is a bear!  I have to keep it pulled in against the rip fence so the groove is straight, and keep it pressed down hard onto the table saw surface so the groove is the same depth all the way across.  I set up extra support to help hold it up as it comes off the back side of the saw since I don't have a helper today.

Next I clamp the four sides of the bench together and drill screw holes.  Sounds simple doesn't it?  And it can be if you have a couple extra hands to help hold things in place while you place and tighten the clamps, doing it single handed is a bit tricky.  I want to flush the panels up nicely so the base molding will fit well and the corners, especially in the back, will fit flat and even.  There is a decorative edge routed on the front side that helps to hide any misalignment, but being out of align will still cause great gaps between case and molding, so I'd just as soon do it right.  I drive in screws, but use no glue.

Once that's all done I remove the clamps, get an accurate measurement for length of the floor boards - I rough cut then 1/4" longer than I expected them to be - and set the chop saw to cut at the finished length.  I remove one end panel, cut the floor boards, sand the rough edges away, slip each into the grooves and install splines between each board.  When I get to the end, I fit the missing end panel back in place and see if it fits back in as it should.  If not, I need to trim that last floor board a bit.  But, by the grace of God, it's perfect.

So I take a short break and crack open an ice cold root beer.  When I'm finished celebrating I apply glue to the loose end panel, fasten it back in place with glue and screws, then remove the other end panel and do the same there.  I check it for square.  If it were off it would make fitting the lid more difficult so I'd pull the case into square with huge clamps.  But it is not, so I leave it alone and move on to the next step: Hardware.

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