I buckled down and deleted the original chest top and start that portion from scratch.

After creating a new cylinder, I deleted the bottom half and tried everything again. Modeling the top from the begining and the results were the same!! How frustrating can that be?

I started to try one thing, move it then try another and move it to see what geometry was being created. I also noticed that when I went into edit mode, the proportional editing button was selected. That is a problem. To make a long story longer, I ended up separating the side panels with the ‘y’ hot key and selected all the curved top pieces with the ‘L’ hot key and left the sides unconnected. When I scaled with <Alt> + ‘S’ everything seemed to work perfectly with the top. I then selected all the side faces, pressed ‘e’ then cancelled the extrude and scaled with <Alt> + ‘S’ to create a thickness toward the center.

Is all that, correct? I don’t think so because Kent did not do two separate extrudes and scales. In the end it will all be good.

I’ll add a bit more here. Like I said earlier, I started over with the top and completed the portion I could not get done using a technique that worked but was incorrect. After watching ‘again’ I realized that when he selected the entire top model, he did not press the ‘L’ key as I thought, he pressed the ‘A’ key. This led me to believe the side planks were separated as I thought and that using the <Alt> + ‘S’ with everything selected would work as shown. I tried everything again and I was correct. Everything worked exactly as he showed he just needed to be clearer about separating the side planks. Anyway, all looks great now.