My nephew broke the top of this cedar chest. His mother blames him, but I think he is an innocence little boy. The original design was lacking, it did not allow for wood movement that weakened the frame around the top. I tried to compensate for that by not gluing the sides to the top allow the wood to expand a little. I had to glue the front. I also used a breadboard design and mortised the top to the frame. It still may crack out, but better than the original design. I matched the cedar the best I could. It will get darker, I have never worked with cedar before and it may have helped to do more research on the wood. Yet the color palette does match. The duct tape that held it together before is gone and all the cracks in the wood have been cut out. The finish is a boiled linseed oil as the base, with gloss polyurethane over that. I waxed it after the polyurethane cured. I hope it fits on the chest, that remains to be seen, I did not see how it attached and tried to hold the dimensions true to the original piece; but, anything can happen.
I have left over wood from every project that stacks up in the workshop. I give much of it away for people to burn as kindling and have made toys from the wood. So I thought I would try to design and make some unique picture frames. It turned out to be a bigger project than I originally thought and thank goodness for Sketchup, because I could have not done these frames without it. 
