Project — "Making a Silver Chest"

I have had a silver chest on my to do list for years. It is for my daughter and her husband as a wedding present. And, yes, they were married 4 years ago, so it is late — or just in time, depending on how you look at it. And if you are looking at her and saying to yourself, her great looks must come from her mother, no argument from this corner.
	At the time, I did order an insert tray  for knives, forks and spoons , and I will use that to make up the dimensions of the case. I bought it three years ago, and I was able to find it.      When I thought of this project and gift, I wanted to make something special that my daughter and her husband will appreciate. Not just a box.
But I do know my daughter has always appreciated wood for its own beauty, so I think I will work with that in mind.    When I have made jewelry chests, I have used resawn boards so that the grain can appear to be continuous on all four corners.  The piece of mahogany that I purchased has a nice grain pattern and I think that it will work nicely for the continuous grain feature. Here is the wood I was able to pickup. It is 2" by 8" by 6 feet. With a little work it will do just fine.    It is heavy. Thankfully, Andrea is strong.
	Now, I am planning to use just the Festool side of my shop. I do this occasionally just to demonstrate that the all Festool Shop can do wonders. This is particularly of interest to those many woodworkers who simply do not have room for a complete shop.        We will use the new Festool TS 75 to make the cuts. Andrea removes it from the Systainer. It certainly is larger than the TS 55 but is surprisingly easy to handle.
She uses the saw for the first time to make a right angle crosscut to shorten the plank.  There is about 2 feet than can be cut off and used some other time.
	Several days later and Jessica is here and is  holding the silver lining insert that I bought from Rockler years ago.  The catalog description says that it has cushions for eight place settings.
The velvet material is going to grab hold of every wood dust particle that  there is in the shop, so I have Jessica handle it carefully.
	But while she has it out, I want her to take dimensions of the insert. These dimensions will be the interior dimensions of the silver chest.
The mystery bag at the rear is really a couple of more yards of the velvet-like fabric. I was lucky to find the manufacturer of the insert and a notation of the fabric.    It will come in handy when we want to add the material to other chest parts.	—
	I do not have plans for this silver chest. I have Jessica draw a couple of simple sketches with the most basic of dimensions.  We will construct the chest with a lid at the top to disclose the liner that is pictured above. Next, we will include a front access drawer that can be used to store serving pieces — and there are a lot of them.    This will give us enough to start the wood selection task.

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