Nightstand dry fit

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

Here is the original blog post over at Lumberjocks.com

Nightstand 4

After milling up the pieces and parts it was time to begin cutting to size and fitting up. The construction is all mortise and tenon and sliding panel. At this point the pieces are still marked with the position identifier and the orientation. I use kids sidewalk chalk to mark the pieces. Sidewalk chalk comes in different colors to mark light or dark wood, it’s dirt cheap, large sticks so it’s easy to find and handle, and it wipes off clean with a little elbow grease and a rag.


I had to tune up the panels to get them to fit snug but not too tight. A couple swipes with the shoulder plane and then run around them with a block plane to break the corners.

Nightstand plans redraw

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

Here is the original blog post over at Lumberjocks.com

Nightstand 2

Still working on redrawing the plans and I came across an anomaly. The back and sides are solid wood panels. The side panels fit tight edge to edge. The back panels have a 3/16 gap between the panels and the posts. I could believe the gap is for wood movement, sounds reasonable, but then why not in the sides. Both the back and the sides are similar grain orientation and both will be subject to movement. I suspect the real answer is that whoever drew up the original plans either wanted tight with no gaps and got it wrong on the back or wanted a gap for wood movement and got it wrong on the sides. Whichever it was it was immediately obvious as soon as I started putting the pieces together in sketchup.

I’ll add some gap on the sides and shrink up the gap on the back. Now that I have my own model I can size it any size I want and print a new set of dimensioned plans as needed.

A nightstand for Travis

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

Here is the original blog post over at Lumberjocks.com

Nightstand 1

I’m building a beside table / nightstand for my son. I found a set of plans I liked on the net, purchased from PlansNow originally published in Workbench Magazine.

Even though I have the plans I’m still drawing it up in sketchup.

I like to dry run in sketchup. I find it really makes my shop time go faster and I create fewer errors if I’ve walked through the entire cutting and assembly sequence in sketchup before committing.

If I start with a square block in sketchup the size of the surfaced lumber and then remove geometry similar to how I will do it in the shop I can see the sequence of cutting the lumber once in my head before actually cutting real wood. And then I can dry fit all of the parts in sketchup and see how they fit. I can grab a piece of the model and look at it from any angle before I’ve ever cut it and see fully formed before I ever see it in wood.

Here’s a picture of the start of the model so far. Got the posts and the rails modeled up.

The design calls for mortise and tenon joints throughout.

This is not my design, I dont own the copyrights to it so I wont be posting the actual sketchup model. I’m just drawing it for my own benefit.

Small Box, Purple Heart pegs, Canary Wood

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

14978

14976

A gift for a friend. A mix of walnut, yellowheart, and purpleheart. The top is canary wood. I made the lid last. If I’d have known how good the canary wood was going to turn out I would have probably used it throughout. The end sides are pretty thick walnut. I made some purpleheart dowels by pounding 5/16 squares of purpleheart through a 5/16 hole drilled in a piece of 3/16 steel. The dowels go through the sides of the box about 1/2 inch into the walnut.

Twin Sliding Lid Boxes

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

phbox3

phbox1

phbox2

A couple of boxes for xmas gifts. Purple heart sides, leopardwood top, birdseye maple on one end, cherry on the other, and a piece of birch for the bottom. Everything that was sitting in the cutoffs that was about the right size. Two coats of tung oil, a couple coats of shellac, and rubbed with some wax.

When I picked up the maple I rooted around to find a nicely figured piece. When you’re looking for the figure you take what they have and in this case it was the live edge. When I bought the piece I figured I’d just have to clean up the live edge when the time came. When I finally started laying the peices near each other I decided to leave the edge and see how it turned out. I decided I liked it and I’m glad to hear support for leaving it.

To cut the finger joints I use a router table and a solid carbide upcut spiral bit. I found using the standard 2 flute bits, even a shear cut, blew out the exit and end fingers far too often. With a spiral bit and a backing board I dont have any blow out. I dont need to scribe or tape, or support the end fingers.

The jig I use looks exactly like this one at The Router Workshop Boxjoint Jig.

I used a 1/4 inch bit for the two latest boxes. It’s so dang fast and easy I’ve started making sliding lid pine boxes as gift wrapping for other gifts. I use the jig to cut the finger joints, the bottom groove and the top groove for the sliding lid. Pretty much one setup and one tool.

I set the finger spacing to 1/4, then I cut the grooves for the top and bottom 1/4 of an inch in from the top and bottom. I cut the grooves 1/4 inch wide so the bottom is 1/4 inch thick. I do lower the bit when cutting the top and bottom grooves depending on how thick the sides are.

I do stopped grooves by lowering the piece onto the spinning bit and tipping it up at the end.

If I have a thin lid I’ll cut the top grooves on the table saw at 1/8 inch from a single pass on a standard kerf blade.

Minimal setup variations. It’s not a production setup but I do try to minimize the change up. Makes it faster and easier for me and lowers the chance that I’ll mess up a step.

A discussion on Spalted Maple

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

In reply to post Tapered Box

Don K. replied:
Beautiful…bet she will like this almost as much as the pendant. I real keep sake !!!!

scrappy replied:
Very nice box. Like the tapered sides/lid and great choice of woods.
Keep it up.

TopamaxSurvivor replied:
Fantastic!! Definitely beats a cardboard box :-))

trimtrac replied:
That’s a nice box. I need to read that fellows book

blockhead replied:
Beautiful job! Love the design and choice of woods.

ellen35 replied:
Great box! Design and execution outstanding…purpose noble!

SPalm replied:
Very nice take off on a classic box. Well done.

Tapering the sides must have been exciting. Especially the forth side. Any tips on how you did it, as in how you held it while slicing?

Steve

patron replied:
beautifull box !
simple and elegant .
i think i hear quasimoto ,
tuning his bells ,
for the big day !

jockmike2 replied:
Very beautiful box. unique too.

michaelray replied:
Great looking box. Nice choice of colors and excellent job on ‘wrapping’ the grain around the sides.

jhawkinnc replied:
Very nice! You’ve set a big precedent for all future gifts, though. 🙂

Innovator replied:
Beautiful box.

SnowyRiver replied:
Great work. Beautiful.

majeagle1 replied:
A real pretty box !
I love the spalted woods and the padauk adds the right contrast and really makes it stand out.
The tapered design is very nice also………. Job well done, thanks for sharing.

dustyal replied:
Nice job making wrapping paper… lol. I enjoy browsing and picking up on box ideas. Thanks for including the part on how you tapered it… I’m an amateur and probably would have tried to cut the tapers, then mitered.. and then.. toss it all out.

So, the side walls are thinner at the top than at the bottom—maybe tapering in thickness from half to three quarter thick? Box isn’t so tall that your saw depth could cut all the way from top to bottom? I might need to try this on some cheap poplar first…

Thanks for sharing…

ratchet replied:
Nice box! I really like the spalting and color contrast. What keeps the box lid from seating all the way?

coloradoclimber replied:
Thanks all for the kind comments. It was a fun box to make and cranked out pretty fast.

Simple answers first. The lid has a small step set back from the outer edge to keep the big part of the lid lifted off of the box. The idea was to have a small gap so the lid looks like it is “floating” just off of the box. You can only see the gap from straight on or lower but if she sets it on a high shelf you should be able to see it. Or maybe it will be a design element that will never be noticed, except by another woodworker :). I cut the rabbet around the lid on the table saw, cut with the lid flat and then with the lid on edge. I made the two cuts shy of meeting in the corner so it left the step all around the rabbet. The lid just barely fits into the box so the lid stops high and rests on the step leaving the small gap.

Yep, the box tapers from thick at the bottom, 3/4 of an inch or so at the bottom to maybe 1/2 inch thick at the top. The box is a typical mitered corner box made from 3/4 or so stock. It looks pretty thick and clunky before it is tapered. Add in the miter keys while it’s still square using a standard 45 degree sled run over the table saw blade. I even cut the lid square and sized the rabbet and step while the box was square. Once it’s all dry you cut the tapers.

Cutting the tapers was the slightly tricky part, not a big deal but that’s a lot of blade exposed. First I did a quick pass with a block plane over the miter keys to get the sides mostly flat. I did not have to worry about scuffing the sides since I was about to slice them off. Mostly the sides need to be reasonably flat so you can register a side against your miter fence.

I like to make my cuts so that the off cut falls away under the tilted blade. I dont like the idea of an off cut riding free on top of the spinning blade. So since I wanted the off cut to be on the bottom side of the blade I had to cut the sides with the box upside down. The open top of the box was riding on the table saw table with the blade tilted away from the bottom of the box. The first two cuts were pretty easy and pretty safe. Since the box is still square sided at this point I pushed one flat side against the miter fence and put a F clamp on it to hold the box against the fence. I then sliced off one end. Flip the box around to get the other flat face against the miter fence, clamped it, and sliced off the another face.

That left me with a box with flats on two sides and tapers on two sides. Now comes the dicey part. Freedman’s book suggests making tapered seats for your miter fence and opposite clamping face so you can get a good clamp while holding the tapered sides. That sounds like a good idea to me, that’s my recommendation for anyone else trying this. I ended up free handing it for the remaining two side. I held the upside down box with the tapered side against the miter fence and sliced off the other two sides. It was a little spooky but mostly I kept my dang fingers back and crept up on it gentle, that’s a lot of blade exposed.

Dusty56 replied:
This is Ambrosia Maple , not Spalted Maple if you want to correct your post.
If you notice , the little holes in it are left behind as the Ambrosia Beetle grub bores its way through the Maple tree . The staining is a reaction by the tree caused by the boring process.

Spalted Maple is characterized as black “pencil” lines caused by a fungus in the wood as the tree starts to decompose.

Very nice gift box and you did a great job matching the grain on the corners : )

Blake replied:
So cool. Love the shape, love the colors, love the wormy figure.

coloradoclimber replied:
Dusty,

Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have to do a little more research and correct my postings. I bought a few sticks of this maple, saw the bug holes, saw what looked to me like spalting, and assumed that was what it was. I did not realize the beetle tracks also resulted in staining like this.

coloradoclimber replied:
Dusty,

After some “quick” research, so don’t hold be too strongly to this, I think there is some confusion.

I could not find a formal definition for spalting but the consensus seems to be something like:

”Spalting is any form of wood coloration caused by fungi.”

and

”Spalting is caused by the infections of wood with various kinds of white rot fungi. The characteristic blue-black zone lines of spalted wood form when incompatible colonies of fungi come into contact with each other and lay down barriers to separate their territories.”

I also read:

”Ambrosia beetles are beetles of the weevil subfamilies Scolytinae and Platypodinae (Coleoptera, Curculionidae), which live in nutritional symbiosis with ambrosia fungi and probably with bacteria. The beetles excavate tunnels in dead trees in which they cultivate fungal gardens, their sole source of nutrition. After landing on a suitable tree, an ambrosia beetle excavates a tunnel in which it releases spores of its fungal symbiont. The fungus penetrates the plant’s xylem tissue, digests it, and concentrates the nutrients on and near the surface of the beetle gallery.”

So based on this my take is spalting is the more general term. A fungus discolored wood is spalted. How the fungus got there is more specific. It sounds like the ambrosia beetle carries a particular fungus that it likes and that fungus causes splating. From my read it doesn’t sound like the boring so much causes the discoloration as the fungus spores carried along by the beetle as it bores around.

So I would say this maple is spalted. It may be the particular spalting comes from the fungus carried by the ambrosia beetle so it might be more precise to say ambrosia maple but my read is that spalting is a more general term and is correct.

An interesting side note:

”Dark dotting, winding lines and thin streaks of red, brown and black are known as zone lines. This type of spalting does not occur due to any specific type of fungus, but is instead an interaction zone in which different fungi have erected barriers to protect their resources”

SPalm replied:
Mr. Climber,

Your explanation is correct and how I had always heard it. It is the fungi doing the discoloration and spalting, no matter how it got there. (My first wife is one of the country’s top fungi experts).

I was also told that wormy wood was named because of the holes and tracks laid down by insects, not the color variations. But I have seen several hits on the web that use these interchangeably.

Steve

Dusty56 replied:
Perfect example of SPALTED MAPLE http://hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/maple,%20spalted.htm

Perfect examples of AMBROSIA MAPLE http://www.haleydaniels.com/maple-ambrosia.jpg

as known to 99 and 44/100% of woodworkers that have seen both.

I am not denying that a fungus causes both the streaking and the lines, however, your box is made from Ambrosia Maple is all that I’m saying.

Notice that there are NO holes in the actual Spalted Maple sample picture, just the black lines that I mentioned before.

I have also recently seen Curly Spalted Ambrosia Maple for sale, but you could clearly see all of the individual figures in the wood. ie: the Curl, The Spalted areas and also the Stained areas from the Ambrosia Beetle boring through the wood and introducing its particular fungus in its wake.

Let me put it to you this way … if you said that you were building a table out of Spalted Maple and needed just one more piece of it to make a replacement front leg and I told you that I had one for you and then showed up with Ambrosia Maple ….what would you do ? Ooops , sorry I forgot that they are the same thing to you. Bad example…..I’d use Oak for an example , but you probably think that Red and White Oak are the same thing as well.

Better yet , what if you had sent your wife to the lumber yard to get it and she came home with the “other” one? Would you say it was Ok to her because they are the same thing in your eyes?
Hmmmm…Squiggly pencil lines versus beetle holes and staining…Oh my!!

— When you arrive at my front door, please knock softly but firmly. I like soft , firm, knockers : )

coloradoclimber replied:
It seems to me the fault would be mine. If I told my wife to “just pick me up some oak” and she brought home whatever was at the store, red or white, she would be without fault (which if you’ve ever been married had better be the answer on the tip of your tongue :)).

If I want something specific the burden is on me to specify what I want. If I want wormy maple or beetle kill or ambrosia beetle infected maple the burden is on me to make that clear. If I want spalted with no beetle holes or worm tracks I better specify that. If I just want some moldy old wood I guess it wouldn’t matter.

It may be that 99.44% of all woodworkers who ever viewed the infinite varieties of fungus infected maple would immediately and without hesitation assert with great vigor the unique differences between beetle infected and simply rotted, I’m not that wound up. Although I do question your statistics. A simple google search did not turn up a clear and definitive answer, nothing on the order of 99.44%. Or maybe google just happened to divert me into the ignorant 0.56% of the definitions and web pages.

If 99.44% of woodworkers like to call this wood ambrosia maple, I’m cool with that. I agree that ambrosia maple seems to be a more precise answer. It seems clear the spalting in this wood is directly related to being infested by the ambrosia beetle. It is still not clear to me this is not spalted maple, looks pretty fungified to me. Anyhow, if you want to call this ambrosia maple and you think my calling it spalted maple displays an ignorance vast beyond measure, I’m cool with that too.

As a near meaningless side note the lumberyard where I purchased it had a whole stack just like this and it was labeled and sold as spalted maple.

Dusty56 replied:

http://www.turningblanks.net/servlet/the-Ambrosia-Maple/Categories

”displays an ignorance vast beyond measure”…..I would never say that about you. I will however say it about the lumber company that you say is selling this as Spalted Maple.

I was only trying to point out that your particular “spalting”as you call it , was due to the Ambrosia beetles activities. That is why it is known as Ambrosia Maple.

Check out these links that clearly distinguishes one from the other.
http://www.heirloomwoodcrafting.com/sawmilling_spalted.htm
http://www.heirloomwoodcrafting.com/sawmilling_ambrosia.htm

Also , Spalting occurs from a fungus reacting with a dead or dieing tree whereas the Ambrosia Beetle staining is spread throughout a living tree by the sap flowing through the wood fibers.

coloradoclimber replied:
hmmm,

I’ll have to investigate that when I get a few more moments. If things are as your last sentence suggests, “Ambrosia Beetle staining” then that may be different that spalting.

If the discolorations are caused by something other than fungus, some staining that is unique to the attack of the ambrosia beetle, then is seems reasonable to differentiate ambrosia beetle stained wood from general fungus discolored wood.

From what I read, albeit limited reading, the marks, lines, and discolorations in the beetle infested wood are from the fungus carried by the beetle. The discolorations are caused by the fungus and therefore fall under the general heading of spalting, that is assuming you believe the statement ”Spalting is any form of wood coloration caused by fungi.”

If on the other hand the discolorations are caused by something other than fungus there may be more to this.

I will chase your links and see what they tell me. You never know what you’ll learn bouncing off of other people.

bigike replied:
cool box, nice contrasting woods

hershey11 replied:
Thx. This’s useful, as at first glance the farmer may think there is no difference.

Tapered box, padauk and ambrosia maple

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

78392

78391

I made this box for my lady friends birthday. The box isn’t so much the present as a container for the present. I bought her a pendant and I wanted more than a cardboard box to give it to her in. So I whipped this out.

The woods are ambrosia maple and padauk. I had already been planning on using the maple. She likes maple and I had this nice piece sitting in the shop. The idea to use the padauk came from Phil’s Oak Box with Padauk Lid project. I really liked the colors and thought the padauk would work well with the maple.

The decision for the tapered sides came from the book “Box Making Basics by David Freedman”. I knew the same old straight side box wasn’t going to cut it. I had to jazz it up a little. The tapered sides and top give it a little different look and hopefully make it a little more visually interesting.

The box is made as a standard straight walled mitered corner box with standard identical miter keys top and bottom. After the glue dried I raised the table saw blade as far as it would go, tilted it 6 degrees and sliced all four walls of the box. The lid is tapered at 10 degrees. The lid is short compared to the box so I had to give it more taper so it didn’t look straight up and down.

The finish is a single coat of pure tung oil thinned 50/50 with turpentine.

Letter Box

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 082014
 

My daughter is a letter saver. She probably has every card, note, and random letter she has ever received. Heck, she probably has the actual winning Ed McMahon Sweepstakes letter crammed in there somewhere.

Anyhow, she needed something to put them all in, and since they are important to her I thought something more than a cardboard shoe box was in order. I put in a lock so she could keep them private if she desires. The woods are ambrosia maple and walnut. The dovetail corner post was cut using an incra router jig.

hannahbox01

hannahbox03

hannahbox02

hannahbox04

hannahbox06

Secret Boxes

 Woodworking  No Responses »
Jan 072014
 

Here is the original project posted over at Lumberjocks.com Secret Boxes



About this time last year a friend showed me a little wooden box she had. She knows I’m a woodworker and she said “I’ll bet you can make these”. I took a quick look and thought, yeah, these look pretty simple, I probably could. My next thought was, hmm, christmas is coming up, and I need some presents, and these little boxes look pretty simple and pretty cool…..

And so a whole batch of little boxes were born. Unfortunately I gave most of them away without taking any pictures. They were a huge hit with the ladies, young and old, from little girls to little old ladies, they all delighted in these little boxes. Then you tell them these boxes are called “secret boxes”, their eyes light up.

So with christmas coming up again I cant really make and give these away again (the bar gets higher every year) but I thought some of you LumberJocks might be interested.

These boxes are called secret boxes, I understand the name comes from the idea that if you use the same wood for the lid as the body the lid becomes hard to see and supposedly not obvious how to open (seemed pretty obvious to me, and to the little ladies, one and all). So not so secret but everyone still likes the idea.

The box is basically a hogged out piece of wood with a sliding dovetail for a lid. The box itself is dirt simple. Take a piece of wood, hog out the center, cut a sliding dovetail, make a dovetail lid, assemble, done.

(box body)

(box lid)

I made two sizes of boxes, the big ones are about 3/4 x 2 x 5 inches or so. The small boxes about 3/4 x 2 x 2 inches. The lids are about 3/16 thick.

Since I was going to make a bunch of them I decided I needed a jig or two. The trick to make this more of a production operation is to make a jig to hold the boxes for hollowing them out. The jig is made out of a piece of milled square 2×4 cut to the same length as the box with a groove cut in it the same depth as the box. You then screw a router template to the top and you have a hollowing jig to hog out the centers. I’ll get to the jig in a second.

First you start out with raw blocks of wood milled to the final outside dimensions of your box and final thickness of your lid. Contrasting wood for the lid really stands out.

(wood blocks)

*Step 1*: Cut the groove for the lid into the body of the box. Cut the groove a little narrower than the narrow part of the dovetail of the lid. I used a straight bit in a router table. You could very easily use a dado blade if you have one that cuts a flat bottom. Now you have a block of wood for the body with a groove cut in it about 3/16 of an inch deep (the thickness of the lid) and (for my boxes) maybe an inch and quarter wide, right down the center of the box. I used my router table, a straight bit, my fence, and a captured cut. I know, I know, I know, no captured cuts (if you don’t know what a captured cut is google it. It’ll probably tell you *not* to do it). And yes a couple boxes did get away from me and got ruined. If you’re gonna do a captured cut for goodness sake use pushblocks and keep your fingers back.

*Step 2*: I suggest hollowing out the inside of the box next, before cutting the dovetail. Once you cut the dovetail you’re going to have a nice sharp dovetail edge. If you cut the dovetails first and then hog out the box you run the risk of dinging the dovetail edges and it really ruins the clean joint. To hollow out the boxes I made a simple jig / template for a hand held plunge router. The jig consists of a milled square piece of 2×4 cut to the length of the box with a groove cut in the middle just barely larger than the outside dimension of the box. A router template is screwed to the top of the 2×4.

(jig side view)

To use the jig the box is slid into the jig from the end

(jig with box inserted)

The jig is then clamped into your bench vise. Clamping in your bench vise serves two purposes. First the whole jig and box are rigidly held so you can route it. Second the jig sides are flexible enough that clamping the jig compresses the jig sides and clamps the box tightly in the jig.

(box jig clamped in bench vise)

The template needs to be exactly centered over the groove in the 2×4. It should be exactly centered front to back and side to side. OK, not really. Since I couldn’t get the template *exactly* centered over the groove I cheated and made the jig _adjustable_. Lengthwise the jig is not a problem. The box can be slid from end to end until it is centered under the template cutout. When the jig is clamped in the bench vise the box will be held in place. For side to side adjustment I cut the groove in the jig about a 1/16 to 1/8 over size and used shims to center the box. I used some thin wood slivers and some strips from some old business cards to get the boxes exactly centered under the template cutout.

Just stack up enough shims on either side until you get the box centered. Once you figure out the shim sizes for the stack of boxes you have milled up it’s pretty fast and repeatable.

Once I had the jig and box clamped in the bench vise I used a 1/4 inch solid carbide up cut spiral straight bit and a router bushing sized to the template cut out. I used a plunge router with a turret stops and routed out the box in a series of maybe 3/16 ths of an inch increments. Plunge the router, route out the interior of the box within the template, lift up, rotate turret to next depth increment, repeat. Keep going until you’ve routed down to leave yourself about 1/8 th of an inch thick bottom in the box.

So now you’ve got a box, with a groove where the dovetail is going to be, and the cavity of the box hollowed out.

*Step 3*: Cut the dovetails in the box. I used a 14 degree dovetail bit mounted in my router table. In order to get exactly the same cut on both sides of the box I did a captured cut between the bit and fence. The fence references the side of the box and the thickness of the dovetails to the edge of the box is the same on both sides. Again, use push blocks and caution if you choose to use this method.

Now the box body is pretty much done. The box is hollowed out and the dovetail is cut in the box.

Now to make the lid. To make the lid I picked a contrasting wood. The one shown here is maple for the box body and zebrawood for the lid. Maple and bloodwood was my favorite.

*Step 4*: I first cut a block of wood from some 4/4 stock just a bit over the lid width, maybe 1 and 3/4 of an inch wide. I jointed one surface and edge and resawed a strip maybe a 1/4 of an inch thick. I then planed it down to the final thickness, about 3/16 ths of an inch. I then took that strip of wood to the table saw and ripped it to just a hair over the final maximum width of the lid at the widest part of the dovetail.

Back at the router table, with the 14 degree dovetail bit still in place I routed down the edges. I did a standard cut with the fence to guide me. I had the fence moved out to just expose enough of the bit to just cut the dovetail. Once you have the dovetail cut you start fitting it to the box. I cut my lids slightly oversized and made multiple passes over the dovetail bit, just barely trimming the lid, until I got a perfect fit.

A perfect fit, that requires a comment. What is a perfect fit? A perfect fit is one that is snug enough that the lid stays firmly in place when the box is tipped, that provides firm resistance when closed, but is not so snug that when the wood swells the next summer the lid gets firmly wedged in place. You might wonder how I know this. Well along about the next spring I was back in the shop doing some lid tuning so the recipients of these boxes could get the lids off. As soon as the lids swelled they wedged TIGHT. They were tough to get out. I just hope I didn’t trim off so much that come next winter they don’t shrink so much the lids fall out.

*Step 5*: Now that the lid is dovetailed to a perfect fit, cut it to length and slide it into the box. Take the box with the lid in place and treat the box outside edges as you want. I used a 1/2 inch radius round over bit in my router table and went all around the outside edges of the box. If you route the edges do it with the lid in place. This insures the lid edge treatment is a perfect fit with the rest of the box.

Here’s roughly the workflow:
– Decide the dimensions of your box and lid and make a jig / template.
– Cut and mill a stack of blanks for the box bodies.
– Cut and mill a stack of blanks for the box lids.
– Groove the top of the boxes for the lids, slightly undersize. Router table with straight bit or flat bottomed dado blade.
– Plunge route the box, hollowing out the box body.
– Dovetail the box for the lid. Router table with dovetail bit.
– Dovetail the lid. Slightly oversize and work you way down to a perfect fit making multiple passes.
– Trim the lid to length.
– Edge treat the entire box. Router table with round over bit.

And there you have it. If you make a jig and set yourself up with a planned workflow you can crank out a stack of these boxes in pretty short order. Hey! Christmas is only a couple months away, you better quit sitting here reading and get out in the shop and start making boxes!!

 Older Entries  Newer Entries