Bigger is not always better. Throughout my history of building furniture a general trend has emerged that I believe my parents first pointed out when I was in high school making various pieces of furniture for their house. I tend to build furniture that is very large and masculine. I think this is because I want to build something that is stout and will stand up to the test of time causing me to overbuild projects and simply, bulky furniture design tends to catch my eye. My dad likes to say that I build things to withstand a hurricane. A little over a year ago I built my daughter a toy box that fit this trend. Although it technically fit the space it was designed for, and could store quite a few toys, my wife and I came to the quick conclusion that it was simply too big and over bearing. Back to the drawing board.
Since the previous toy box did not have a great fit in any room in the house I will build a new sleeker model and eventually pillage the old toy box for any useful materials and parts.
A few years back I received a gift from my parents. A USB thumb drive which contained every issue of Wood Magazine. If you are not familiar with Wood Magazine it is full of excellent comprehensive building plans. At first I was simply looking for inspiration to help me determine what I wanted the new toy box would look like. I wanted something that not only had a fun and playful design but could eventually be used as an heirloom blanket chest. Often these two things do not go hand in hand. After searching past issues of Wood Magazine I stumbled across a set of plans that fit my criteria. The toy box was not only the right size, but it also allowed me to implement a few ideas to give it my own personal touch.
Since this is one of the first projects I have had in a while where I did not have a deadline to complete the project I really wanted to exercise my ability to be patient, not rush and enjoy the process of building a piece of furniture that one of my kids could keep and eventually hand down to their own children.
The plans without any modifications are exactly what I was looking for, so I decided to only change a few minor things to give it that personal touch. To start off I want to not only change the type of wood but I want to showcase two drastically different types of wood. I don’t want to cover the natural wood color with any kind of stain or dye. I want the woods natural color and grain pattern to shine. With that in mind I have decided to use Sapele for the sides and Ambrosia Maple for the top, front, and back. To showcase the drastic difference between the ambrosia maple and sapele I also plan to cut plugs from the maple to fill in any holes I’ll drill in the sapele. Essentially I plan to try to showcase light and dark woods as many places as I can throughout the project.
Another area where I plan to have a little fun was on the tray that will rest on the inside of the toy box. Until this build I had never included dovetail joinery in any other project. In addition to adding dovetail joinery, I am considering a couple of options:
- Alternate the use of Sapele and Ambrosia maple for the 4 sides of the tray.
- Laminate the wood on each side with Sapele on the outside layers. all 4 sides consisting of 3 layers. (Sapele/Maple/Sapele)
- Laminate the wood on each side with Maple on the outside layers. all 4 sides consisting of 3 layers. (Maple/Sapele/Maple)
- Opposing laminations on each side of the tray: 2 sides=Sapele/Maple/Sapele, 2 sides=Maple/Sapele/Maple,
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