Cedar Chest

My wife discovered some moths in her sweaters and an emergency was instantly declared. A cedar chest was decreed.

All hands on deck for a cedar chest! All other projects are thrust to the backburner for the time being!

Fortunately I had several slabs of fairly wide Monterey cypress that would let me build the chest of wide planks.  The first step was to run them through the planer on a sled to flatten one side.

Once that was done I selected the best ones, and marked them for cutting to rough dimensions. I'm planning 12" x 16" x 36". Since my table saw is too small to cut boards of these dimensions, I used a skilsaw.

Following that, the 12" wide boards were resawn on my bandsaw.

I wound up with 5 boards, plus a couple other pieces I can press into service if things really go sideways!

However since my bandsaw's throat capacity is only 13", I could not resaw the top and bottom pieces which are to be 16" wide. So I had to bust out my Alaska mill and resaw them that way.

The Alaska mill is a bit coarse, so I left the boards oversized so they can be trimmed to thickness on my planer.

It actually went pretty well. The top will be the Monterey cypress and the bottom will be Deodar cedar, very aromatic.

I'll let the boards acclimatize for a few days, then run them through the planer and then trim close to final dimensions. I am thinking finger joints.

One issue is going to be taming the sap in these boards. Previously I have set the sap in Monterey cypress by baking the boards in the oven, but these are too big for that. Maybe one end at a time?! Need to come up with something creative here.