The Indiana Jones Catalyst.

I suck at photoshop!

When I was a young boy, if you asked the horrible question "What do you want to do when you grow up?" you were bound to get one of three answers, depending on my mood.

An Artist

A Writer

or

An Archaeologist

What can I say, Indiana Jones had a huge formative influence on me. The Temple of Doom blew my mind and fueled my imagination for years and years.

The project I'm working on now, building the pieces shown in the Maciejowski Bible, feels like the best calling of all three choices together. History, art, and writing in one. In truth I've been working on it for several years now, and the idea has run through several incarnations. The key was always finding the right source material.

In a fairly recent incarnation I was focused on furniture centered around the medieval Viking culture, my direct ancestors. I had a plan written up for a chest I've built several incarnations of The Mastermyr Chest. An important archaeological find of a six board chest with slanted sides that was filled with woodworking and blacksmithing tools. (most likely boat building equipment)

My interest in medieval history, viking history, and woodworking has led me to build several versions of the chest, though I haven't built one in year, nor have I ever built one proper in size and accurate in dimension to the original. I was going to include an accurate representation with plans in my book. I then woke up to realize several things. Lots of people have built and documented the building of this chest. Some I like and some I don't, but it's fairly popular.

Then  Don Weber made a DVD about the chest for Popular Woodworking and covered it best of all including the forging. I tapped out and cast around for different ideas. In the end it's worked out best for me.

But I still have the measured drawings I created for the chest. The measurements taken directly from the book published about the find. I was unsure what to do with them. So I thought I'd post them here for people to download.

Here's the instructions. Click on the link below and you will go to a public file on my Google Drive account. In the upper left hand corner of the screen, under the word "FILE" you will see a downward pointing arrow. Click on the arrow and your computer should start the download process.

Here's the link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw7SmVUy7iIOOTN2Q1piRzlwaXM/edit?usp=sharing

Writing about it almost makes me want to build another one this weekend. I'd better hold that thought, I've got a 13th Century footstool to go and start gluing up this evening.

Ratione et Passionis
Oldwolf