Purchase the plans for this project: https://www.simplecovestore.com/product/dovetailed-blanket-chest/

For the blanket chest i'm using 5/4 quarter sawn African mahogany. I went with 5/4 because the plans call for a final thickness of 7/8 which is quite difficult to achieve with 4/4 stock unless the lumber is nice and flat to begin with. I lucked out when picking my boards because not only were they wide (13 inches), but they were all 14 feet long and from the same log! This means I wont have to worry about the boards looking different when they age.

The final panel width is 16 1/2 inches so I will need to edge glue a couple of boards together to get to that width. I chose one of the 13 inch wide boards and the 7 inch wide boards to make up my panels. Since I have a 12 inch wide jointer, I removed an inch from the 13 inch wide boards before milling. I cut the side panel pieces at 20 inches (1 inch over size) and the front/back panels at 41 inches (again, 1 inch over size) before milling.

I milled the boards to 1" in thickness  and then head over to edge glue them together. After the glue dried I ran them through the drum sander to take them down to the final thickness of 7/8 of an inch. 

I set my table saw fence to 16 1/2" and ran all 4 panels through to get them down to their final width. Using my crosscut sled and a stop block, I cut the side panels to 19 inches and the front/back panels to 40 inches. Finally, I like to sand my panels with my random orbit sander with the rougher grits (80, 120) before cutting the dovetails.

Products mentioned (Some links below may be affiliate links which help support what I do):

• Purebond Mahogany Plywood