Norwegian Linen Chest

This small linen chest can be made in batches, and the lid presents some fun challenges during the process.

Project #2502 • Skill Level: Intermediate • Time: 2 Days • Cost: $20

Inspiration for a project can come from anywhere. Take this linen chest for example. I was recently visiting a friend of mine at his home a few hours away. Norman, who you may recall me talking about in an editor letter a few issues back, was showing me a few of the projects that he had built over the years. A small dome-topped box caught my eye. As it turns out, Norman’s great-grandmother had brought the original trunk with her from Norway. As the story goes, this trunk was called a “kerchief” box, or a box for handkerchiefs.

Norman had a feeling that his grandmother’s chest would be passed down to one of the ladies in the family, so he did what any self-respecting patternmaker would do—he built his own based on the original. Over his working career, Norman built dozens of these chests to either sell at craft fairs, or to give away as gifts. When I mentioned that I thought it would make a great little magazine project, Norman graciously loaded me up with all of the patterns and jigs that he had accumulated over the years associated with this project.   

Cutlist and Diagrams

Download the cutlist and layout diagram.

A Domed Top

Looking at this little trunk project, it looks deceivingly simple. The main trunk is simply butt joints and brad nails. The bottom is nailed in place, and has an elegant little profile on it. The complexity of this project is wrapped up in the top. As a woodworker, as I’m looking at any domed-top of a trunk or chest, I’m immediately thinking about a coopered glue up.  And, I’m sure you could do that. But, Norman came up with a different way to produce this top using two pieces of 3/4“ stock. I’ll get to that in a minute.  First I want to point out that several of the jigs that I’m using in this article are from Norman. I’d also like to point out that I’m doing a few things slightly differently than Norman did, just because I have different tools available to me. In short, there’s no right or wrong way to do any of this. There’s only different paths on the same journey.

Accurate Glue-Up

The top is glued up from two 3/4“ boards, with a bevel ripped along the glued edge. The bevel is cut at 17°. I use an angle gauge to tilt my table saw blade to an accurate angle. Also, because this will be the glue surface, I make sure to have a clean ripping blade installed.

After ripping the blanks for the top to width, they can be glued up. A simple gluing fixture eases this glue-up—the boards slip into place and are held by cleats. A few V-blocks on top with weight clamp the parts as the glue dries.

After leaving the lid over night, it’s time to transfer a pattern to the end of the blank. One cut out of thicker chip board works well, if you plan on reusing it over time. I lay out the pattern on both ends of the lid. Now, here’s where I start to deviate from Norman’s process a bit. First, I knock off the peak of the lid (photos 7 and 8). Norm used a profile cutter in the table saw (a beading cutter, to be exact). I don’t own one of those, so instead I used my Veritas box maker’s plane with a beading blade to form the bead. This bead is at a slight angle from the face, which makes it a little tricky to cut with a router table, but you could probably do that. This quarter-sawn pine planed beautifully, so I see no reason for me to approach it any differently in the future.

Now, as you can see in Photos 9 and 10, there’s a bit of material to remove around the edges of the bead. A dado blade in the table saw can eat this away. Or, a rabbet plane will work as well. I used a combination of two different rabbet planes—one with a bit longer fence to get on the inside of the bead. Here, you’re  looking to bring the surface of the lid down, leaving the bead proud of the surface. Most of the curving will be done later, I just took care of this heavy material removal while there was mass on the underside of the lid.

Now comes the fun part. The bottom of the lid needs to be hollowed out, turning the intersecting flat planes into a smooth curve. A majority of this work is done at the table saw, as you see in the photos below.

Cutting coves at the table saw isn’t as crazy as it sounds. By setting up a pair of fences running at an angle to the blade and using a wide push block, you can make several shallow cuts to remove most of the waste. I’ll list out the rough dimensions of this jig (and others in this article) so that you can have something to base yours off of. You’ll find those here.

The coving process works like this. With the fences clamped in place, raise the blade so that you’re removing no more than 1/8“ of material at a time. Turn the saw on and push the lid across the blade (using a push block). Raise the blade up on the next pass, sneaking up to the template lines.

To create the entire cove, you may need to move the fence several times (I did three different fence setups). This left a “clover leaf” type look on the bottom of the lid (see photos 15 and 16). Even more material could be removed with an additional setup or two.

Bonus: Learn more about cutting coves on the table saw.

Here comes a bit of fun with a handplane and quartersawn pine. Norman gifted me, along with his jigs and patterns, a Stanley transitional plane that he had machined the sole to match the curvature of this lid. (That’s a true pattern maker for you—making the right tool for this one specific task). A few swipes with this plane really started to blend the curve. However, I started to think about how I would tackle this if I didn’t have this plane. A wide round molding plane would be the best bet­—I seem to have a few that are close to this radius. However, I also discovered that my travisher was almost the perfect radius, and it left a silky smooth finish. You can see this in Photo 18. Of course, a curved sanding block is  fine as well.

Now, the top of the lid is a little more straightforward. As long as you were able to get a rabbet plane down alongside the bead, you shouldn’t have any problem getting the curve of the top using a standard smoothing plane. Start by identifying the arris (ridge) formed by the flat planes. You want to remove this, creating a new facet and two new arris (left and right). Now, pick one of those arris and repeat the process. As you continue to tackle them, you’ll gradually work the top into a smooth curve that can be sanded smooth.

Build the Box

Set the top aside for a bit, and let’s make a box. This Norwegian box is pretty simple—curved ends with nailed on sides and a bottom. Keeping the sides uniform is really the biggest trick. As you can see in photo 21, I roughed out the ends at the band saw. Using a template to trim the sides up guarantees that they’re uniform. I had a template from Norman, but you can easily make a master template that can be saved and reused. Stick the template onto the sides with double-sided tape. Routing endgrain requires a sharp, clean bit. I found that the carbide compression bits from Woodpeckers are great for this task. I rout all the way around the template to make sure the ends are exactly the same size.

Now for the bottom. It’s a piece of pine that’s glued up, with a simple profile on it. A small roundover is routed on the bottom side, then the edges are beveled slightly at the table saw. It’s a simple, elegant look that I will probably pull forward into future designs.

Assembling the box is as simple as nailing the sides to the ends, then nailing the bottom in place. I had a jig from Norman to help with positioning. The jig, shown in photos 25 and 26, holds the ends in place and positions the bottom. Nails can be driven before nailing on the sides.

Dadoes

The final thing to do is to cut some dadoes for the top to register on the end panels. The lid simply sits in place over the ends (which are slightly proud). Position the box on the lid and mark the end panel locations. This is where the dadoes need to be routed to locate the lid.

The dadoes are cut using a router with a straight bit that is just slightly wider than the thickness of the ends. A 1/2“ straight bit gives just enough breathing room for the 7/16“ thick sides.  An auxiliary base is added to the bottom of the router that matches the curve of the top. The edge of the auxiliary base rides against a (curved) straightedge clamped to the top. You can see this in photos 28 and 29.

The key here is to keep the edge of the router base against the straightedge, and plunge the bit into the top. Then, slowly rout the dado. The curved base plate gives you good contact inside of the lid, and the straight edge gives you a reference point. You can square up the ends of the dado with a chisel if you want, or leave them round.

What Finish?

Norman had completed several of these trunks and had them painted in a traditional Norwegian style called rosemaling. This style of painting is done with oil paint and has a flowing style, usually depicting flora. It was seen as a great way to kill the long, dark hours of a Norwegian winter. The chest here is painted with linseed paint (check out the article here). To be honest, I did try to find an artist to paint this chest with rosemaling but had no success on this short of notice. Oh well, there’s always the next one (seeing how I now have all the jigs, there will be plenty of next ones).

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