Boxes Round 2 - The One Day Box Challenge

After the middling success of my finger jointed boxes, I still had a bunch of dimensioned material lying around suitable for a couple of larger boxes. So I decided to abandon the finger jointed technique, and instead challenged myself to use whatever technique I wanted, but to take no more than one day to do each box.

Aaaaand we're off on the One Day Box Challenge!

First up was some beech, I had three pieces about 10" long each. I decided to use the Golden Ratio to set the dimensions of the box, so I cut one piece in half for 5", and then trimmed the other two pieces to about 8". I decided to use an overlapping butt joint, similar to some boxes I had built last Christmas.

After gluing them up (OK that was overnight) I decided the butt joint was not durable enough, so I wound up pinning the corners. For that I used bamboo skewers. It turns out though that bamboo skewers' diameters are wildly inconsistent, so I drove them through a series of smaller and smaller holes in a drill gage, until I got them to where I wanted.

I tried the same trick on some ebony, thinking that contrasting pins would be cool, but it was impossible to keep the ebony 'dowel' straight especially as the diameter got smaller.

I routed a groove on the insides of the pieces for the bottom to fit into. Amazingly, I had a piece of catalpa kicking around that was almost the perfect size for the bottom.

So once the pins were glued in place, I sanded the sides of the box down to make the pins' surface match the box surface perfectly.

The next box was similar, but was of plum with a spalted elm bottom. I decided to have the joints stick out a bit in a kind of salute to the Craftsman style of yore.

Anyways I think they turned out alright. My wife was impressed enough with this recent flurry of boxes that she asked me to make her a jewelry box.

I have also done some work on the cherry table, will show more on it next time.