Working on this chest has me confused. The instructions and the accompanying pictures aren’t entirely clear. I’m doing my best to figure it all out.
In the introduction of the book the author talks about the importance of doing something in order to understand it. This concept is not unfamiliar, it comes up a lot in education. It is true that doing something will help you understand it better. Living in the realm of the theoretical does not a chest build. Having to do would be much easier if the instructions were clearer.
Somehow, too, I seem to be about half an inch off on the dimensions the chest. I’m not sure how. The longest piece is only half an inch longer than the next longest piece. I put two one-quarter dados in the sides of the side panels. Two times one-quarter is one half. Everything should fit.
This seems to be how things go. One of the side panels has a pretty significant curve to it that I didn’t notice or ignored when I was cutting the pieces. My guess is that that is messing things up. My cuts aren’t perfect so that’s having an impact, too. All these little things add up.
I’m expecting to learn a lot by working on this project. However the chest ends up looking isn’t really the point of this exercise. The mistakes are part of the process. It’s the realizations along the way that I want to take away from this project. Repeating the work, trying again, and correcting errors make you better at woodworking. That’s really what the doing is.
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