This is a wood and steel chest I made a while back. The timber is pine that I found on sale at a local hardware store and the steel was from a local steel merchant.

I had to make the wooden lid first as this would set the curvature the I would have to hammer the steel to. To do this I hand planed bevels onto strips of pine and joined them together. This was very much a trial and error approach as I got close to the curve I wanted by using a large number of strips, and then just made the curve smooth by bevelling the edges until they met up. 

Once the wooden lid was done I could move on to making the steel edges for it. This was the really hard part, as I had to manually hammer the steel over an anvil until it reached the right curvature. This was done cold, as I have no forge and no plans to build one as I live in a bushfire prone area. After I finished hammering the steel I welded it all together, and did the same for the rectangular box section as well, thought this was a lot easier than the round lid.

Finally I simply made a pine box, fit it to the steel frame, and then sanded everything ready for finishing. Unfortunately I could not get my hands on steel blackening solution, so the patina was generated with a mixture of paint and cleaning solution. The timber finish was a stain-varnish blend applied in several thin coats

The latch on the front was made with some 5mm thick steel I bought, and a heavy steel butt hinge from the local hardware store. I patina-ed this by heating it up on the stove and then spraying with wd40. If you attempt this, please make sure you have adequate ventilation, the spray of wd40 on hot steel generates a lot of vapour and sometimes flames.