Mary Ostler

I made this cooler for my medieval society. I was getting tired of trying to hide my old plastic Colman cooler under blankets. Having to go into the red cooler of doom, always bugged me at events. I try hard to have nothing overwhelming modern in plain view. So one day I when to the local lumber yard, and picked up some 16″ laminated pine shelving. I don’t like using laminted shelving, but it is the widest / cheapest 1″ thick plank I can readily find.

I built the chest in a very simple six board design. For this project I decided to not just dowel peg the pieces together. I used recessed screws to hold it together, and covered over the screw holes with doweling. Once the box was built, I lined the inside with 1.5″ rigid insulation. I didn’t like the idea of looking at pink board, so I lined the insulation with skin ply. The inside was then urethaned, to keep the wood somewhat protected.

I use frozen water bottles for this cooler instead of blocks of ice. The sweating from the bottles wouldn’t damage the cooler, but I think a bag of melted ice would be problematic.

The outside of the chest looked kind of boring, and the laminations in the wood was very obvious. I decided to try and cover up as much of the wood as possible with wood burned designs. It took forever to get all the design done. I think if I was to do another chest, I’d just paint it. The words on the chest lid are ” usque ad milia basiem trecenta nec mi umquam videar satur futures non si densoir aridis aristis sit nostrae seges osculationis . Mary Ostler. Kent 1611″. Those are the lines from a poem by my favorite poet Thomas Campion. Roughly translated ” I would kiss (your eyes) three hundred thousand times, nor would I ever seem to have enough, not even if our kisses were thicker than the ripe ears of grain.” Man I love the cavalier poets.

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No, I will not make you one!