Cedar Chest

 

I have several wool bicycle jerseys and a couple of them got attacked by moths. The one is an old timer, so a couple of small moth holes didn't really bother me, but one of the new ones I special ordered all the way from New Zealand ended up with a couple of holes on the front of it. Since I paid good money for it and another one from the same outfit, I don't want any more damage to befall them. The Missus found a cedar chest so I bought it and drug it home.

The above photo shows the results after spending some time stripping all the blue paint off it. It's a Lane chest, so it was well made initially, but someone took a disc sander to it to strip off the initial finish. That left a few divots and a rather uneven surface, but I figured I could get it half-ass decent with some judicious sanding.

Here's the front after running the belt sander on it to level the surface out and then finishing with the random orbit sander, or DA if you're a body & fender guy. It appears the side panels will look similar if I sand the brown finish off them as well, which is the plan now. If you look closely on the front, you can see the faux doors have a brown frame on them. Originally those were raised about 1/4" to decorate the doors. They had been hit with the disc sander in a few places, so I shaved them down with a block plane prior to running the sander over the front. The inlet pieces are walnut that should give a nice contrast to the cedar after a coat of varnish.

Hoping to get the sides sanded down today, as well as plugging the hole where the lock used to be.