Luckily LaPlaca WoodWorks was able to source two rather large pieces of South American Mahogany that will comprise 90% of the chest from Irion Lumber. The first piece is 4/4 (t) x 22″ (w) x 9′ 9(l), pictured below;
The good news is this single board is large enough to yield the two case sides and the top. The bad news is the piece was damaged by the freight company, both ends of the board were broken about 24″ up from each end of the board.
After thinking about the issue for a while, I felt the best course of action was to layout the sides and top on the board, each case side was towards the end of the board, the top was in the center of the board (thankfully undamaged at that point). After removing the smallest piece of the fractured part of the board, we glued up the damaged areas of both case sides in the rough.
Since the lumber is too wide for my 16″ jointer, the only way the top and both sides can be processed is via hand planes. Here we see removing any wind from a case side with a heavily cambered jack (fore) plane.
After being cleaned up with a jointer and smoother planes, the case side looks pretty good, the broken area is very hard to detect, the only telltale is the dark line on the end grain. At this point the case side is only cut to rough length (approximately + 1 1/2″), after the case side is cut to actual length, the repair will be undetectable.
