Mästermyr chest

(2023-09-21)

You always need room for your stuff while at viking events. A good chest is a nice way of storing them, while also providing sitting comfort, works as a table and more. It's the ultimate furniture for your viking reenactment.

One really nice find is the Mästermyr find. It's also an interresting chest to create while doing woodcrafts since its assembly is fascinating.

The actual Mästermyr find

The Mästermyr find was a magnificent find. A wooden chest was found by a farmer while plowing his field at the island Gotland. The chest was found to contain a full set of tools for a craftsman working as a blacksmith and carpenter and was later found to be from the viking age.

Since I already had made a handful of this type of chests I decided to build anotherone as a gift for someone who was new to viking age reenactment. She had started sewing a lot of clothes and gathered gear so I figured she needed somewhere to store in both at home and at events.

The chest described here is by no means a true replica of the Mästermyr chest, but at least carries the same visual style.

It took about three evenings to create, but then I had access to eletrical plane and saw. With wider planks the time waiting for glue to harden could have been skipped, but it actually takes a lot of time with all adjustments since hardly any angle is 90 degrees anywhere in the whole chest.

Pattern

Below I've created a rough pattern for the chest I created. You may click on it for a larger version of it (that goes for all images in this article).

Note this pattern has a range of differences from the actual Mästermyr chest. For example the cut-outs halfway down the short edge of the sides as well as the lid fastening and cut-out for a lock mechanism.

Materials

I would have liked really good wood, like ash or oak to start with. Unfortunately the only one I had access to at the moment of inspiration was spruce. The planks of solid (somewhat solid, spruce is spruce) wood was 20x195 mm and I had like five meeters of it.

I also had some nails and some wooden glue.

Creating the chest pieces for later assembly

The long sides

I started with measuring the side boards of the chest. I wanted it to be between 70-80 cm long since it looks good and the chest become large enough to hold a lot of items.

For material efficiency I wanted to use the full width of the planks and started by thinning them out to about 12-15 mm thickness using a plane.

When the planks were even and smooth and thin enough I marked the slanting sides of the boards and sawed them in shape.

For the sturdy strength of the chest I needed a rim at the side edges and bottom edge. For this I adjusted a filister plane and got to work. I managed to bring myself sweaty before I was done, and maybe I should have gotten a better results using an overhand cutter but I really hate using those due to the sound and lack of craft feeling while using them.

The short sides

For the short sides of the chest I had to glue pieces of spruce together using long clamps ("limknekt in Swedish").

I had to wait marking the cuts on these until the sides were ready since they determine the measurements.

The short sides has a grove for the bottom board of the chest, sloping sides, and a protruding top section to guide the lid and keep it in place.

Bottom of the chest

The mesasurements of the bottom is crucial. Using a plane to make the edges tilt more or less like the sides of the chest is also good. It's hard getting exact measures since everything is tilting in multiple directions so repetitive adjustments is easier than exact calculations.

Lid

The lid only has some cut-outs for the guide pieces of the short sides and some rounding for being nice to touch. Apart from that it's a solid piece of plank.

The lid has

Assembly

One good thing with the Mästermyr kind of chest is that if you assemble it it stays together without glue or nails - unless you touch it. The slanting sides all makes a construction that can hold without external force.

While glueing I got in a bit of a rush, so I wrapped it all togheter while glueing it all at the same time. For good measure I hammered in some nails for it to hold since the glue wasn't dry when I brought it home in the car.

Finishing up

Filing the sides down makes a better visual impression. The sides appear thinner while allowing for more room for maneuvering stuff inside the chest - while risking little for sturdiness of the chest.

Also rounding the edges of the lid is good. You will use the chest for sitting on, putting lamps or eating gear on, and a lot of other stuff. You will keep it close to you and might bump into it. You don't want nasty edges that will hurt you.

When everyting was adjusted to be tight enough some sanding and some lindseed oil treatment was applied.

Lessons learned

• Everything always take more time than you'd expect. I'd love to put in more nails in this chest, creating hinges, and a lock rather than the current lid.
• You can probably never sand enough for a smooth finish.
• Spruce is probably good for something, but cheap spruce is very thirsty for glue and hard to get a good surface on. But it IS very light to carry and doesn't bring a lot of extra weight to your event packing.
• I somehow made the taps for the lid a bit offset. The lid only fits one way. This will be an annoyance in the long run and has to be adjusted eventually to cope with.
• For a material like pourous spruce tar is probably better for coating than lindseed oil.
• As always - thinner materials makes more beautiful pieces. They look far more elegant. You may cheat by thinning out the edges of the planks if you want to keep robustness and strength.

More pictures from the process

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Similar previous chests

I have done similar chests before, a few examples can be seen in the images below.