Got a few old floorboards lying around?
Well, here's a great project to turn them
into this beautiful treasure chest.
I've pre-cut all my timber for the front, the back, the two
sides, and the base.
What I'm going to do now is start assembling
my first layer of the box.
Before I do that, I'm going to pre-drill the ends on the front
and back to allow for the pedal pins to go through.
[WHIRRING]
Right-o, let's just throw a little bit of PVA on our join.
Put that there, nice and carefully.
And let's just place our pins in.
Now if there's any excess glue, just get a damp cloth
and wipe that way.
I've assembled my first layer.
Now it's time to flip that upside down
and start to lay our baseboards on.
Just before I do that, I'm going to measure our diagonals just
to make sure we're sitting nice and square.
923 and 923-- that's lovely.
Our first board, I've pre-cut the end, here,
to take the tongue off it, so that's
going to sit flush with the outside edge of the board.
I'm going to take that, drop it onto our base,
and pre-drill the ends to take our pedal pins.
[HAMMERING]
Now you notice this last piece is narrower than the rest.
I'll put this through the bench saw to cut it down to fit.
So what we're going to do is put the old tongue
in the groove, little bit of pre-drill.
Right, our base is now built. Time
to flip this over and attach our second and third layers.
Now I've already made these second and third layers
exactly the same as our first.
Now just with the damp cloth, just take away any PVA.
Now as you can see, I've taken the tongue of that top layer.
To smarten up the bottom of our box,
I've decided I'm going to put a skirting around the base of it.
Now I've already cut a 45 degree down this corner, here.
So I'm just going to butt that in.
And on end, here, we want to mark the short point of our 45
degree.
I'm going to cut that on our drop saw to form another miter.
To attach our skirting, I'm just going
to put some PVA on our miter and across the back of it.
Put that in there nicely.
And I'm just going to pre-drill a hole.
And I've got these lovely little pinhead brass screws.
Now the skirting is on.
We're just about finished with this box.
What you want to do now as measure up.
That's 800.
Now we're going to allow 3 millimeters on either side.
That becomes 806.
And this is 475.
We're Going to add six mils on to that, as well.
806 by for 481--
these are the internal dimensions of our lid.
We're going to start cutting out our lid.
I've taken our 481 measurement and I've cut out two sides
to length.
What I'm going to do next is measure
up 35 millimeters on each side.
And I'm just going to find the center of our side.
Now on those three marks, I just want to put a little pedal pin
in there.
We're just going to take this flexi little bit
of thin timber, put that on there.
Now that's really created our arch.
Let's trace around that, take our nails out.
Now I'm going to cut this out with the jigsaw.
[WHIRRING]
Right, that's finished.
Just repeat the process for the other side.
[CLATTER]
I've cut all our sides to length.
I'm now ready to start assembling our lid.
Right, now internal size of our lid was 806.
Now to get the external size of our lid,
I'm going to take the thickness of our two sides, which
is 12 mil.
I'm going to add 12 mil onto each side, which
is 806 plus 24 millimeters.
That's going to be the external dimension of our lid, which
we're going to cut all our slats at.
We're ready to put our front board onto our two sides.
Let's just throw a little bit of PVA on there--
lovely biscuits.
I've pre-drilled a hole.
And let's just tap our pedal pins in.
Next step is putting all our slats on.
Now as you can see, I've cut an angle on this first board.
I've cut that at 24 degrees, and this is their first slat.
I've also cut that at 24 degrees.
That, there, is going to form a beautiful little angle.
We can nail that on and all our slats can go on.
[WHIRRING]
As you can see, if I was to lay the slat next to the other one,
there's quite a big, ugly hole next to it.
So what we need to do is undercut all our slats
on a slight angle, to about 1 and 1/2, two degrees.
This is going to form a nice, tight join.
Using my binge saw, I've cut 1 and 1/2 degree angle,
biting that up to there.
That's just a lovely little finish, there.
If you don't have a bench saw, you
could use a circular saw with a guard on it,
or even an electroplaner.
OK, the base is all made.
The lid's just about finished.
Time to put on our hinges.
I want to come in 150 mil from the edge of my lid
to the side of our hinges.
And I'm just going to make a mark where
those screws are going to go.
And then pre-drill a hole to take our screws.
[WHIRRING]
Yeah, just before you put your screws in,
you just want to double-check you got the right length screw.
You don't want your screws going all the way through your lid
and going into your box.
Our hinges are on.
The next thing we need to do is just make sure
that our box is nicely centered with our lid.
Now I've cut this little pecker that goes in behind our hinge.
My hinge is about 100 mil long, so I've cut this pecker
to about 120 mil long.
It's going to leave a nice little detail around the hinge.
So I'm just going to set that in there nice and level,
going to mark around our pecker on our box.
And then also going to mark exactly where the screws go.
Lift our hinge up.
Now these will indicate where not
to put my screws to fix the pecker to the box.
I've pre-drilled my holes.
I've put some PVA on the back to hold it nice and tight.
Let's just put our last screw in.
And then just wipe off any excess PVA.
Right, it's time to make up our corner boxes.
These little bad boys here are 40 millimeters
by 40 millimeters.
I've taken a 30x10 and attached it
to a 40x10 using some PVA and some pedal pins.
Now this, here, sits straight on there.
Now as you can see, I've got about a three millimeter gap
to the underside of my lid.
And I'm going to attach this using some nice brass
screws and some PVA, as well.
OK, I'm going to throw our handles on.
Pre-drill the hole on there.
Just gently want that on.
The thing about these brass screws,
they're very easy to snap the head off.
That's why we got to pre-drill them.
Now a good little tip when you're putting in brass screws,
you can also put a little bit of soaping behind it.
That's going to help lubricate the screw.
The next step's throwing our chain on.
I've got this lovely little brass chain, here.
I'm just going to attach that from about 100 mil
down on the box to about halfway up on the lid,
just so the lid is just past 90 degrees.
So put your eye hooks in with your lid just off 90 degrees.
Measure the distance between the two hooks and chain to length.
Right-o, I've pre-drilled a hole to put this eye hook in.
And I've just slightly opened up that eye hook just
to allow the chain to go in there.
Let's hook the chain on now.
It holds it absolutely beautiful, lovely.
Right, time to put on our finishing touches.
I'm using Danish Oil here, but you could
put a varnish or a stain on.
I've taken the handles off, just while I'm oiling it,
and then I'll throw them back on when I'm finished.
Isn't it great what you can do with some old floorboards?
Easy As.