Man I got stuff laying all over my yard. I got a toy here. A toy over their. Here. Dead
body. Here. I don't know what that was. (sigh), time to do something about this.
An outdoor storage chest that's safe for kids. The lid won't fall down on little heads and
little fingers won't be pinched.
Just what moms ordered. Grab a materials and cut list from simply easy diy dot com. Then
you can cut all your boards to length
in whatever form, fashion or other you deem appropriate. I however, built this before
I put that list together, so your going to see me wing it.
Do as the monkey says. Not as the monkey does. or some variation of those two sayings. I
think I just called myself a monkey.
The legs and the side slats of the storage chest will be joined using dadoes. However,
if you don't have a router or router table
not to worry.
You can use pocket holes to do the same thing. I'll have a separate design plan for that
version as well. Check the description.
I'll have all the links.
So for the dadoes my router fence I'm going to set that so that I'm about a quarter inch
from the outside edge of the board. That will allow me to route the dadoes
for both sides of each leg without needing to readjust the fence. I'll talk more about
that over on the blog post.
A couple pieces of blue tape set the start and stop points for my dadoes because I don't
want them going all that way through
the board. Start at one piece of the tape. End at the other.
And that is pretty much what I'm looking for.
I'll just repeat that process for all four legs. To make sure I route these dadoes on
the right sides of all my legs I like to
just set them up as they would be in the project. Also don't forget to check out the extended
bonus footage video over on simply easy homesteading. As always you can check the description. Also
the link will be at the end of the video. A little sanding to clean up those edges.
you can square off those ends with
a chisel if you like. I'm not building fine furniture here so I routed mine a little longer
than needed so i wouldn't have to do that.
The length of the dadoes, that's one thing. The width of the dadoes is something else.
They need to fit snug. Now what I did is I just used my thickness planer to plane the
boards to a thickness that was going to fit in that dado snugly. If you don't want to
mess with all that, like I said earlier, you can go to my website simply easy diy dot com
and get the design plans for the pocket hole version as well.
Add some clamps and wait about 30 mins. Once the glue is set, remove the clamps and now
I can set the other set of slats for the outdoor storage chest in place.
I find the best way to set the other ends
into the dadoes for the other side is to clamp the ends straight like so.
Now I can clamp that whole thing together till that glue sets up.
Any glue drips can be cleaned up with a chisel.
The part of the chest where the lid attaches to will be exposed to some additional stresses
so I wanna beef that portion up.
So I'll glue and tack a ledge to the back. Clean up the glue squeeze out. Then I'll take
a moment to smooth those edges.
I'll take a quarter inch piece to fill this small void here. I planed this down using
my thickness planer but you can purchase
boards in that thickness as well.
This final piece gives me a nice solid base to mount the lid to.
Speaking of the lid time to glue that up. This is not a tutorial on the proper technique
for glue ups. Normally I would glue two
or three boards together in groups. Then take those and glue them together to get something
this size. However, in this instance,
I'm using the cheat method.
Put everything in clamps and then add strips to the underside
of the lid. That helps straighten the
boards on the top side and adds stability.
Doing that allows me the opportunity to take it out of the clamps. Flip it upside down
and clean the glue squeeze out of the top.
That is pretty much what I'm looking for.
Top sill piece.
Trim that flush.
There we go, much better.
Now I'll flip the whole carcass on it's back side and attach some ledges
for the bottom slats.
Their is this small lip on the inside of the storage chest and when I lay a bottom slat
in, it creates this gap.
So to fix that I'll simply transfer some marks to cut a notch in the board.
Now I can put that in my bench vise and notch the notch.
That works.
Other side.
I'm left with this odd sized piece. I'll take a measurement and rip to width on the table saw.
I will actually fix that in the design plans so that you don't have to worry about that.
As for me I just happen to be building this without first sketching it out on the computer.
A piano hinge cut to length attaches the top.
and a safety lid support helps keep it from falling down
on little heads or necks.
Get a materials and cut list from simply easy diy dot com.
Check the description for the link.
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