Having watched the 1955 black and white film of a Hungarian riven chest maker at least 20 times [here's a link to it
https://www.youtube.com/embed/3V0gQ9M45G8 ] I decided to have a go myself.
My ash tree was not very straight so the boards needed to be riven quite thick before hewing and draw knifing to a useable size, which meant lots of hard work on the shaving horse!
Here's a few photos showing various stages of construction:
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| The shaving horse is used to hold the timber while it is shaped with the draw knife |
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| The grooving tool is used to make a groove on a side board which will receive the edge of a bottom board. |
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| Here a leg is grooved to receive the side boards. |
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| Four grooved legs. |
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| Two side boards, each grooved on one edge and tapered on the other to act as tongue-and-groove joints |
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| These pegs or trenails were riven from the ash then baked dry in my oven overnight. Then shaped with a knife and hammered home into a draw bored mortise and tenon joint to hold the sides together. |
The next step is to make the bottom boards. Usually these chests have bottom boards which run from side-to-side. So that I can use shorter timber I think I'll run them front-to-back [which I have seen done in a photo of one old chest]. I suppose shorter boards would be stronger too.
