I hope you folks remember my good buddy Duane from the Steamer Trunk Series. Many of you have been asking for an update on “Big D” so I am excited to post these pictures. Duane is doing very well and he’s apparently been busy cranking out steamer trunks like a mad man! And I don’t know about you guys but I think I need to pinch someone’s cheeks. Not Duane’s…..the cute little girl’s.

Here are some of the pictures I had promised. The one with rustic walnut and cherry is the one I built for the Buckeye Cruise for Cancer that will be auctioned off in February 2010 and the other two are the ones I built for the kids. I fell in love with the walnut and maple one and I plan on building one similar for myself. Please tell the story as it may give others inspiration that have cancer or a family member with it.

Here’s a project submitted by Doug. Let’s check it out:

Just thought I would send in some pictures of my latest project. I built it for my girlfriend to use as a tack trunk to keep at the barn where she boards her horse. It is made from walnut with a aromatic cedar bottom for both the trunk and sliding tray. I went with a no fuss finish using Watco Danish oil. This was my first attempt at hand cut dovetails and I think they came out pretty well. I think your website is great. Keep up the good work. Thanks for your time

This Viewer Project comes to us from Russ. He writes:

I wanted to submit something for your Viewer Project portion of the blog. It’s a trunk that I made for a former player of mine that is getting married on Friday. She’s a great kid and did absolutely everything I asked of her the three years I had the pleasure of coaching her. The trunk was made from scrap I had around my shop – poplar, alder, maple, maple ply for the top and mdf for the panels. The corners were mitered using my ts55 and are reinforced with Dominos. The finish is some exterior latex I had left over from a plantation shutter job I did this summer. I put on two coats of primer and then two top coats. I don’t think I’ll use paint next time since it didn’t come out as smooth as I would’ve liked. If I do another one of these I’ll probably end up using a tinted lacquer. After it was painted I beat the heck out of it with some old keys and took some chunks out with a chisel. Once that was done I applied Mohawk’s Van Dyke Brown Glazing Stain. I followed that up with two coats of USL.

I know that the hinges don’t match the feel of the piece but I wanted to use them. They are the new ones from Rockler that allow the lid to stay in a fixed position. The little tray in the middle was to fix a bow in the front panel. I had to pull it back in so that the lid would shut. Not what I wanted to do but it did the job. Thanks for your time.

You can download SketchUp here and if you are looking for the original file used to make this Steamer Trunk tutorial, you can download that here. Also, check out the SketchUp Room in the Wood Talk Online Forum. There is a growing list of models there available for download.