Rob Cosman strikes again

[Gary Benson]

I bought Rob Cosman's wood hinge box DVD, and like all of his videos, it was excellent. I also bought his hinge drilling jig to make things easier. I followed his sequence and the first one turned out nearly perfect (small lid fit issue), the second better, the third even better. Both of the boxes in the pics are made from birdseye and walnut. For the next set, I plan to be even more careful cutting and selecting the stock for the back, dowel, and lid for a better grain match. These are really cool, and will make for great gifts.
Thanks for looking,
Gary

[Todd Bin]

Hello Gary, nice boxes. I too watched to "hidden hinge" DVD. My issue is with cutting the dowels to size. I was using Cherry stock and I built the jig like he said and chucked up the 8 sided pieces in my drill but they just kept sheering off.

Could you offer any tips on making the doweling jig and dowels?

Thanks,

Todd

[Gary Benson]

Todd,
I had a number of them break as well. Careful shimming of the blade seem to size the dowels just smaller than the hole drilled in the jig. If I cut them larger, there was too much friction and the dowels would break. My other attempt was to clean the hold in the jig and make it slightly over sized. In the end, I turned enough to make my first 4 boxes. I'll try it again when I prepare more stock.
Gary

[Jim Koepke]

Very nice work. Did you make any images of the parts before assembly?

You have got me curios about the hinging you mentioned.

jim

[David Gendron]

Nice work on the whol thing. congradulation!

[Bruce Page]

Beautiful dovetails Gary. The contrast between the woods is striking!

Cosman is a great teacher.

[John Keeton]

Gary, you just keep building on the skills honed during your class in Canada! Great work, and sure gives me some ideas for a board of BE maple I have stored!!

[Gary Benson]

Jim,
The dowel gets segmented then connected back together with wire pins. Then you glue half of the segments to the box and half to the lid. Rob spends about 30 minutes on the specifics of construction and assembly, far better description than I could ever write. Pretty simple after you see it done once or twice, comes out very clean.
Gary

[Matthew Dworman]

Nice work, Gary. Really beautiful.

Matthew