Cedar Chests: How to Make Them by Ralph F. Windoes is a practical woodworking book devoted to designing and building useful household storage furniture. Published in 1918, it combines a carefully explained first chest with a collection of alternative designs, working drawings, finishing methods, and instructions for making decorative copper fittings. This free PDF offers a focused project reference for readers interested in traditional cabinetmaking and making durable furnishings for the home.
Learning through a useful furniture project
Windoes was an instructor of manual training at Davenport High School in Iowa. His approach reflects that teaching experience: the chest becomes a way to learn how separate operations fit together in a complete piece of furniture. Measuring, preparing stock, assembling a square box, fitting its bottom and lid, and attaching handles and feet all have a clear purpose.
The book begins with red cedar, identifying the wood discussed as Juniperus virginiana. It considers its characteristics, historical uses, supply, and suitability for chest construction. A second chapter places storage chests in a wider furniture tradition, with discussion and photographs of older examples. This material helps explain the relationship between a practical box and a finished object intended to remain in a household for years.
How to build the first chest
The main construction lesson is a simple chest supported by a measured working drawing. The instructions break the work into manageable parts, including preparing and joining the boards, assembling the body, fitting the bottom, reinforcing the corners, shaping feet, and making handles. Windoes explains checking the box for squareness by comparing its diagonals, a useful workshop habit that applies well beyond this particular project.
The chapter also deals with the details that make storage furniture work properly. Several arrangements for fitting the cover are illustrated, and hinging receives its own explanation. The relationship between the lid, its supporting hardware, and the chest body is part of the project rather than an afterthought. Drawings make the intended shapes and connections easier to understand than a list of dimensions alone.
A range of chest designs
The design chapter expands the basic project in several directions. Examples include rounded edges, a broad chest that can serve as a cushioned window seat, paneled work, a chest incorporating a drawer, and designs with turned parts. An under-bed chest provides a different answer to limited storage space, while a chest of drawers shows how the same general subject can grow into more involved cabinet work.
These variations make the book useful to readers with different levels of experience. A straightforward box offers practice in accuracy and assembly; paneling, turning, or more elaborate leg treatments introduce additional work. Windoes encourages students to use the examples as starting points for their own designs. He also distinguishes fully drawn projects from additional illustrations offered mainly as design suggestions, so readers can see which examples supply construction information and which provide visual inspiration.
Finishing cedar and making copper fittings
The finishing chapter discusses surface preparation, scraping, sanding, filling rough places around knots, coloring, and applying finishes. It records period approaches to showing or changing cedar’s appearance, including shellac and enamel treatments. The descriptions help explain the visual choices seen on early twentieth-century chests, as well as the care needed before a finish is applied.
A separate chapter on copper trimmings extends the work into simple metal fittings. Illustrated patterns and explanations cover such details as corners, pulls, hinge plates, and escutcheons. This combination of woodworking and decorative hardware gives the projects a distinctive character and makes the book relevant to readers who enjoy handling more than one material in a workshop.
Matting boxes and household usefulness
The final chapter describes boxes covered with matting, including shaping the wooden body, fitting a top, attaching the covering, and concealing seams and edges with narrow strips. It offers another way to turn basic construction into finished household storage. An index at the end helps readers return to individual operations and fittings.
For a practical homestead library, the value is in making useful objects while building skills in layout, joining, fitting, and finishing. Readers interested in self-sufficiency can study how the author organizes an entire furniture project. The text preserves historical finishing formulas and claims about insect resistance; these should be read in their period context. Any new storage chest should use current safe lid-support hardware and avoid a locking arrangement that could trap a child.
Book details
- Title: Cedar Chests: How to Make Them
- Author: Ralph F. Windoes
- Publication: Copyright 1918; no numbered edition stated
- Publisher: The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee
- Language: English
- Format: Illustrated scanned PDF with text layer, 84 digital pages
- File size: 10.86 MB (10,863,731 bytes)
- Subjects: Woodworking, cabinetmaking, cedar chests, furniture design, finishing, copper fittings
