I decided to finally make a coffee chest to store my green coffee beans. It needs to hold up to 30 pounds of beans, about 6 months supply and it must odorless.

And it must be visually appealing. Unless you are Oscar Wilde...“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is useless."

I have some pear wood from a tree I cut down long ago. It has no noticeable odor and since it is air dried it planes nicely.

And little scraping and the surface is super smooth!

As I don't have enough pear, I chose this nice piece of mahogany for the legs. Hopefully it will make a good color match.

A boards cut fair and square...I think the color look great!

16 mortises and 16 tenons...that some crazy cuttin' and choppin' ....

I'll do a dry fit and decide on a panel design. I also need to think about the lid...strong enough to use as a seat? Some wood hinges?

July 16, 2015 Update

I was able to, with a bit of trimming here and there, get a good fit of all the joints.

A couple of rough measurements and I cut some maple stock for the four side panels. It took a while to get the book match correct, but I think they came out ok. The color is good match to the pear as well.

And the big picture....