Lemme get this straight ... you are looking at building a Mahogany
chest to hold riding gear; said box to be housed in a barn? a fine
tropical hardwood to hold leather gear used on a horse? on a budget of
$500? I don't KNOW that it can't be done; I would seriously question
if it SHOULD be done ... but heh, that's just me.



On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 21:50:06 -0500, "cshaw"
wrote:

Hi all,

My wife wants me to build a trunk for her to put her saddle and stuff in to
keep at the stables where she rides. I agreed to make it for our
anniversary, thinking I would find some really nice hardwood plywood for the
main panels and build a frame out of maple or walnut. I spent quite a bit
of time figuring out how to do it with the limited tools that I own right
now and was planning to get started this weekend. I was even going to find
some small pieces of exotic wood and incorporate that into the interior in a
couple places like some of the chests in "The Toolbox Book".

My wife brought me a magazine add Sunday and said she wants the trunk to
look like the one in the picture. It's entirely built from Mahogany. I
said "ok, I'll see if I can find some Mahogany plywood but I don't think
those dovetails are going to look right in plywood so it might not have
those except on the main frame". She gave me a rather disgusted look and
said "Plywood? It says here they don't use any plywood in their boxes. You
mean I won't be able to have those neat little squares on the edges like
this one does? That's one of the things I really like about it.". I told
her how plywood is used for fine cabinetry these days and if we paid someone
to come in and custom build cabinets for us they would probably be mostly
plywood and yada yada yada. She just gave me that look.

I own a 12" CMS, circular saw, biscuit joiner and a Bosch 1617 router with a
half completed router table and a few clamps. How in the world am I going
to get Mahogany panels 30" by 20" out of that. Can I buy boards that big?
Would I have to take out a loan? Can I by prebuilt panels that have already
been planed and joined? I've got about $500.00 to play with to buy the wood
and whatever tools I need. If I can get away with plywood and try to join
with dovetails will it look like crap? Maybe box joints would give a nice
look? Do they even veneer plywood with Mahogany? She mentioned one of her
friends having her box lined with cedar inside. Maybe a cedar panel with
some type of Mahogany veneer so I could honestly say there is no plywood?

My last resort is to lay down the $900.00 for the box in the magazine but if
I can't make this happen it's going to get much harder to explain why I need
an $800.00 table saw in the next couple months. Please help with ideas on
the direction I should go here!

Thanks in advance,
-Chris