16th Century Gothic Style Metal Chest Project

Taught by Tom Latane' of Pepin, Wisconsin

Last Date Revised: June 19, 2008

Here's the chest that Tom Latane' built in 1991.

This is an ongoing chronicle of my education in the techniques of building and my construction of a 5" deep by 7" wide by 7" high steel chest. If you know anything about fine blacksmith-craftsmanship, then you will have heard of our instructor, Tom Latane. He concieved the idea of holding such a complex workshop a year or so ago and, working with John and Carol Adams, proprietors of the "Tunnel Mill" tradtional crafts school south of Rochester, Mn advertised for students early in 2007. They ended up having to hold 2 completely separate workshops due to the high level of interest.

The idea was that we'd participate in a 3 day workshop (in April, 2007) to get the project going, go home and continue to work on the chest using our notes and memories from the many demonstrations, then return in October, 2007 to continue the project through another 3 day workshop consisting of many more demonstrations, work-time and tutoring at the Tunnel Mill blacksmith shop. And that's what we did.

Our chest will be the same size as Tom's and may or may not use the same designs. I am pretty much a mechanic, not an artist, so I chose to follow Tom's lead in many areas of the decorative designs, with just a little design work on my own. I googled "Gothic arch geometry" to get the math for shaping the arches where I worked out my own ideas for the center panels.
Several of the other students skipped the Gothic idean altogether, but, as you can see, I stuck with it totally.

A couple of emails I wrote explaining the project to our club (Guild of Metalsmiths) and attempting to get some of the other students going:

July 21, 2007 message to our club's list server:

Subject: To the 12 other people on earth who know what I'm talking about
Sawing out designs on the 14 gage corners:
Well, I am well into my 3rd dozen jewelers saw blades and I sure have learned a lot. Maybe I won't need the full gross I bought to get this project done. I think I'm about 15 percent of the way.
Never having used a jewelers saw before, I was getting about 3/4 of an inch per blade in 14 Ga steel at the beginning. Now I get 6 to 12 inches per blade. To many of you out there, this is "old hat", but here are some of the things I think I have learned:
- Use plenty of beewax to lubricate the blade. I rub the wax on the blade every time I start a new cut.
-The blades can not stand to be twisted very much. If in doubt about a possible bind, lift the workpiece up slightly by lifting the blade and let the workpiece "center" on the blade before proceeding. This also works well for backing up in a cut.
-I tried holding the work in a vise while sawing, but this makes it hard to reattach and tighten the blade when pushed through a drilled hole. Instead, I sort of "hang" the workpiece on the blade, at the base of the saw frame, stand the handle of the saw frame on a solid object, press down on the top of the frame with one hand and tighten the upper blade clamp with the other.
-I had trouble sawing to the center of larger workpieces with my 2 1/2" throat jewelers saw, so I bought one that has a 4" throat. That helps a lot. But Tom L. told me that the blades aren't hardened at the ends, so one can twist both the bottom and the top of the blade to match, if needed to get the saw frame out of the way. Works fine.
-Light, light, light!!!!!!! The older you get, the more light you need to get the contrast you need to see well. I have been told the this change is up to a factor of 10!!! I have 2 overhead flourescent lights in my corner of the shop and 3 additional spot lights on the work to eliminates shadows.
-Obviously, the closer you get to the line, the less filing you have to do.

July 22, 2007 message to our club's list server: (explaining the previous message to folks who didn't know what I was talking about)

It's the Tom Latane' Gothic metal chest workshop, There are 2 groups taking it, 13 total people. In April both groups had their first 3 day workshop at Tunnel Mill and the second 3 day workshops will be held in October. We all got off to a good start in April, have a bunch of work to do between April and October, where we'll all get "straightened out" (I hope) and then we will finish them on our own.
The chest is about 7 inches high, 5 inches front to back and about 7 inches wide. All made of steel and heavily decorated. The 14 gage steel case is mostly covered in pierced, decorated 14 gage steel straps and plates, the piercing of which reveals 18 gage steel straps which are pierced and decorated in even more detail. "Hand forged" (on John's 500 pound hammer) , chiseled and filed legs. Etc, etc, etc, in the Tom Latane' style.

This workshop is a whole new experience for me. It seems a daunting task until you get into it, but once some of the pieces start to appear it all seems worth it. Tom is an excellent and patient teacher. He never seems to tire of answering the many questions that come up. To those who may not be very far along, I say "dig in". Those of us who have gotten going might also serve as a resource to the degree we can. You can't help but learn something as you go.

One last hint for those in the workshop: Instead of temporarily riveting your components together, try using 0-80 screws and nuts. That way you can easily disassemble and reassemble things for a trial fit. One place they really helped me was when scribing the 18 gage metal under the 14 gage parts. Things are held tightly together so nothing can slip. They are available on the web but some Ace Hardware stores have them, too, but only in stainless steel (which is not a problem). They are just under 1/16" in diameter. If you decide to try them, note that the two Ace Hardware stores where I found them had 0-80's and 1-72's (bigger) mixed up in the same tiny boxes. Bring a magnifier and maybe a dial caliper if you have one.

At least one of the other students is WAY ahead of me.

I'd like to hear from others in the workshop to learn of their progress and insights they have on this project. We could support eachother as October closes in.
We could even have a little support group on the internet by making our own email list.

Work-in-Progress on Pete's Chest

The pictures above shows the progress from the first 3-day workshop.
You can see one of the legs in its rough-forged form at the right.

This shot shows the first time I could put some of the parts together.

Lots of progress between the last picture and this one.

Here's a link to my Excel-based Chest Process Time Sheet:

Chest Time Sheet

Result a while after the 2nd 3-day workshop (December)

I watched several demos during the workshop and took a lot more notes. Now I probably have about 40 pages of them!

I spent a lot of time riveting the decorative straps onto the lid. This had to be done before the ends of the lid could be tenoned in place and the edges peened over. There are 16 rivets holding each strap in place. I made a rivet header from two pieces of 1 1/4 X 1 1/4 X 1/8" angle iron and I'm glad I did. It took me about an hour just to make enough rivets to get this far. They are made from soft 16 Ga. wire.

I used Tom's expertise to help me get the ends of the lid tenoned in place and to get the ends peened over as you can see in the picture below. We did one end at the workshop and I did the other end at afterwards.

I also got the hinges shaped and welded and mostly fitted at the workshop. You can see them too, in the picture. They still have to be filed a little, but this will wait until they are applied to the chest.

The big deal is that the whole center section decoration work is done. You can see the that the three center panels are completed and ready for riveting in place. As with the other decorative elements, they have a 14 gage upper layer and a layer of 18 ga steel in back.

Making the Case into a "Box", work through February 3, 2008

I finally had to back up and do major surgery on the lid. During the folding over of the lid end on the left, the decorative straps, both the `14 gage and the 18 gage under it, slipped sideways enough to almost cut off the 20 rivets holding it in place. So I had to drill out all the rivets, fix the problem and re-rivet. It took another trip to Tom Latane's shop to get the strap out from under the folded-over end cap after the rivets were out. Tom simply heated the turned lid-edge to anneal it, tapped it in a few places against a special stake he had, and out came the straps!

The next job was to fit all four corners; another nerve wracking job, I might add. Since the corner pieces all have 45 degree angled centers, there's really no good reference for getting started, so you just choose a corner, square everything up as best you can, and temporarily "bolt" it in place with a few of the 0-80 screws and nuts. So, I finally have a basic "box". Then you add another corner, fitting as you go, sometimes backtracking to make an adjustment, sometimes not.

It was at this point that I had to make corrections to the EXACT length of the case so the lid will swing open and closed without binding. This involved shaving a few thousandth here and there and checking the fit over and over.

Completing and Attaching Most of the Decorations, work through April 20, 2008

Now I have shaped and temporarily attached the center decorations with screws. This includes the 14/18 gage strap for the lid, and the 14/18 gage decorations for the front and rear of the chest. I have also roughly shaped the hinges and attached them with screws, too. Now, for the first time, the lid can swing open and closed, so it begins being an actual "chest".

Next, I made the end decorations. You can see one of them in the following picture. It is a "cross" sitting atop a "column".

In order to get the size of the "cross" to look right, I made 2 samples of the "cross" part of the design in 16 gage mild steel. The first one was with a diamond that was 1" on a side. My wife thought is was too small. She has asked that I make that sample into an amulet. The next one had sides of 1 1/2" and that is what I went with for the final design. This was a good exercise for me. It made me dig out all my curved chisels, clean them up and calibrate them and even make a labeled stand for them. It also helped improve my confidence in my ability to make all those cuts and make them fit on the final product.
These end decorations are each made from a piece of 1/4" X 3/4" X 4 1/2" long flat stock. As you can see, there is a considerable change of shape from the original piece of flat stock.
First I worked the "column" area. All but about 1 3/8" of the 4 1/2" length is forged to about 3/8" square. Then the 1 3/8" section is forged (and thinned) to a rough 1" square. The 1" square is forged to a diamond shape. Then the diamond is carefully drawn out to be 1 1/2" on a side. This process thins it to about 1/16" thick,or a little more. I worked one pair of them, using a slightly different process than this but I didn't like the result, so I had to make another pair to get the effect just as I wanted it.
Now that the forging was done, I began carefully laying out my plan for the filing of the columns. I filed the top portion of the column first, then the bottom, finishing up by filing out the center section of the column area.

With the column area done on both pieces, I concentrated on the "cross". For the pattern, I used a CAD program to lay out the circles that would be chiseled into the diamond-shaped "cross" area. I made several copies of it and pasted them onto the diamond shaped area. Then I marked them out lightly with a sharp chisel of the appropriate size. I used a 3/8" diameter chisel for the four outer circles and a 5/16" diameter chisel for the inner "quatrefoil". I then made about 3 passes around each shape, going deeper each time. I did drill a small hole in the center of the "quatrefoil" area to relieve stress in the center, allowing the displaced metal to move inward instead of pushing the center area out of shape. Once the waste was cut out there was very little filing to do to clean up. I try to keep the chisels nice and sharp.
The starting points for all the notches were carefully marked out, then I filed away carefully, just removing enough material to make a pleasing (to me) look to the part. Then some blending of the cross to the column.
These decorations were drilled for rivets and then temporarily attached with 2 screws each.

Total time so far: 265.55 hours (see Chest Time Sheet link, above)

Next step is to file the legs to shape. The rough forgings can be seen in the "lots of progress---" picture, above.

End of April, 2008

I have done a lot of filing on the legs, but there are still many hours to go. As the die that we used to stamp the legs wore, the cavity changed a little, so every leg is just slightly different. Now, at least, the legs are all the same size and shape, within closer than 1/64". Next job is to figure out the EXACT design for the sizes of the protrusions that are left, and DO it.

May 31, 2008. Just finished a 3 day Tom Latane' workshop to construct a key lock for the chest.

I have 15 pages of new notes, just from this workshop. Again, Tom really wants his students to learn about the craft, not just to follow one fixed set of instructions. So, he spends time explaining why and how things were done in the period being covered, so the student will be able to adapt their new skills more broadly in future projects. He may even demonstrate 2 or 3 ways to accomplish a certain task.

Here is the rough sketch of the lock works plan. In this workshop, about half the students were there to make locks for their chest and about half were there to learn how to make locks of this general style. No two locks were alike. He gave us enough information and over-the-shoulder tutoring to make anything from simple (my lock) to VERY complex. My lock, for instance, has only 2 simple "ring" wards, whereas some of the others had as many as 4 or 5 wards, of several different styles.
I modified the rough sketch from the reversed image Tom gave us and since we changed the style of the spring system during the workshop, I updated that, too. Some of the students will fasten their lock plate directly to the front of the chest if they want the "works" to show on the inside while others will make thiers reversed from what you see here so the lock parts are hidden from view. Hiding the lock parts means that the contents of the box won't be able to jam the works.

Here, below, are the parts and subassemblies that I made. I haven't done any decoration of the components yet, and haven't even decided how much of that I might do. The lock plate is 14 ga. steel, the ward box (upper left") is 14 ga., too.
Tom brought key blanks for us but did extensive demos of how to make the jig he used to form them and how he does that work. We still had plenty of work to do to get the blanks ready.
You can see the bolt at the top of the picture with it's single talon. In this style of lock, the key does NOT rotate through 360 degrees. The key only pushes the bolt far enough to free the hasp on the outside.
You can also see the tubualar ward brazed to the inside of the ward box (upper left). Then you can see the larger ring ward brazed to the lockplate. I was sort of a guuinea pig at forge brazing and used too much brazing rod, as you can see.
To the left of the lockplate is the spring that will eventually bear against the "mild steel arm" which, in turn, will resist the action of the bolt, keeping in firmly in place, latching up the hasp, when the key is not pushing it.
The small rectangular notched pieces on either side of the bolt are the yokes that support and guide the bolt. They raise the bolt above the surface of the lockplate so that any twisting of the lockplate during subsequent operations won't cause the bolt to bind.

This picture shows the lock semi-assmebled, as far as it goes for now. So far, the mechanism works pretty smoothly.

There's still a lot of work to do on the lock before it gets permanently riveted to the front of the chest, but I feel very good about my progress to date. And the continual development of my novice skills have improved my confidence immeasurably. Things that Tom demoed this time, that I would have "gulped" at a couple of years ago, give me no cause for alarm now.

I'll continue to add to this webpage as significant progress is made. hr> Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

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