Barbers Box - Walnut and Cottonwood - WIP

[david ball]

Why a barbers box? This past christmas i received my first safety razor and started to learn wet shaving. Even though it does take longer to shave i do find it relaxing and enjoyable. I actually enjoy shaving. With this new found joy i now have a clutter of shaving items on my bathroom counter. A Razor, Brush, shaving cream, aftershave, extra blades and all my old gear. So i thought i would create a wooden box to contain it all. Mostly i was in need of a new wood working project and organizing my shaving gear was my excuse. Not that i need much of one.

I chose to use Cottonwood simply because i had some sitting around and i like the grain pattern. This last fall i had attended a hand planning class through my local woodcraft store and was taken by surprise at how easy it really was when you knew how to do it right. After the class i motivated to dimension rough lumber into usable boards. All i really had around at the time was a bunch of pine boards from the depo and a stack of cottonwood cut down for fire wood. So i took a few logs off the fire wood stack into the garage and started milling it down to boards. I used the table saw and a hand plane and ended up with few boards just shy of an inch thick all sides square and true. The grain in the cotton wood was surprisingly beautiful. That is why i had the cottonwood sitting around and the grain pattern is why i choose to use it in this project. I do have to say the cottonwood is not the best to hand plane, at least maybe for a beginner or just me. It tended to fuzz. Perhaps with a sharper bladed i could have avoided that, but it does seem to sand quite well to a smooth finish. Im not sure what to expect with the Cottonwood in the long term since it is not commonly used other then for fire wood and paper pulp from what i can find. I read somewhere that it is prone to rot when wet. My hopes is that by sealing it properly it will last. If it doesn't, well then i will have another excuse to do another project. Win win in my book. I choose Walnut simply because i like it and i thought it would be a nice contrast with the Cottonwood.

That is my set up for why and with what. After that i looked up all i could find on Barbers boxes and found out they were used back in the day mostly for traveling purposes i would guess. I honestly did not know they existed until after i thought about doing this project and googled "shaving box". After looking at a lot of images i went to Google Sketchup and designed my project. I try to always learn something new in every wood working project i take on. a new joint or method. So for this project my goal is to do as much as i can with only hand tools. Mostly because i do not own band saw (can't afford one) and i wanted to learn how to cut down thicker boards into thinner ones. So i bought my first rip saw and borrowed a bunch of other saws from my dad. Thanks Dad.

Onto the project. Below is my Google Sketchup model i will be working from.
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[David Nelson1]

That's pretty intricate box! I thought work small projects to start out with would be easier.... not true for me @ least. Good luck with the box. looking forward to pics along the way.

[david ball]

Below are images on me milling down the thickness of the cottonwood with my new rip saw. I first scribed a line all around the board 1/8" thicker then my final thickness with a marking gauge. I filled in that mark with pencil so i could see it better and followed that up with sawing in a kerf along the line with the rip saw. After i had a nice kerf all the way around i proceeded to saw through the board. I ended up with two pieces just over 1/8" thick and one just over 1/4"

One thing i noticed and ask for advice on. While cutting through my cut started to wander off the kerf on the nose end of the saw. I tried making deep kerfs for the saw to follow but still had the same results. It would always wander off in the same direction, to the left. Not sure if it was just me being a beginner or if there is something i can do to help with this. One thought is to build a Frame saw and use that. Since i think its because the end of the rip saw can bend or move more then the heel side i figured the frame saw with the bald tensioned on both sides that it would cut truer. As in all things with practice im sure i would be better. Any suggestion are welcome.

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[david ball]

More milling. Im taking some 5/4 Walnut i had sitting around down to 3/4" , 1/2" and 1/4" boards. Other then my saw wandering off the kerfs it went fairly well. You can see in the image bellow how much i got off track. But it cleaned up nicely. mmmmmm Guinness. The long board shown below was to be the 1/2" thick. I apparently got a little aggressive in my sawing and planing because it goes from 1/2" to 3/8" in the middle back to 1/2". That is mostly due to how far the saw wandered and how much i had to clean up to get it usable. I should be fine though since the long board will be cut down in sequence to make the sides of the bottom and top of the box so the thicknesses should match up just fine. Not too bad for just starting out hand sawing. The last image is of all of the boards all dimensioned and ready to start cutting the parts out.

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[Tony Shea]

Nice work on hand milling your parts. This is the same proccess I use as I am not in possession of a band saw, unfortunatly. I actually enjoy resawing by hand (to an extent) due to the nice workout. But I do think a bandsaw is in my future.

My suggestion, if you're not already doing it, is to treat the board as if it was a tenon cheek. Kerf in your line across the top of the board, about an 1/8" deep. Then I start working down one edge of the board while concentrating on that one line and checking that the saw stays in the kerf across the top of the board. I work down that one side a ways and flip the board around. Then I start doing the same proccess on the other side, creating a V of uncut material in the middle. Then I'll cut the V down to where my kerfs end. I do this over and over until I get through the board. You can produce a very accurate resaw if you can saw to your lines accurately. This is opposed to relying on your kerf on the blind side of the board to track the tip of the saw, which never seems to work out for me. I always keep my saw cutting on lines that I can see.

[david ball]

I first took the longer board I dimensioned down to my table saw and cut out my box sides and lid parts. I was not yet ready to trust I could cut straight and accurate enough by hand. To that point I have nothing against power tools either. If I get better at hand tools I'll be able to work out in the garage longer into the night without bothering the neighbors. That and just the idea of being able to do it by hand entices me. So I will continue to use both and get to a point where I can produce projects by any means.

Onto the dove tails. I marked them out and cut them with following procedures I've seen many places. Cut the pins with a saw and clean it up with chisels. Saw the pins where the grooves will go and mark around. The first image below are of my first pins. Then of my first sockets. You can see middle small pin is inset. They ended up being a tight fit, not very clean since my lines and cuts are not very straight but it will hold nicely. Then while cutting the sockets on the face, which are in the 5th picture I SPLIT the board. At which point a sailor jumped into my garage and started talking, say words I'm not sure I can repeat here. Took a moment the walk a way before I did anything else wrong, came back and found it split cleanly and was able to glue it back together quite nicely. 6th picture shows after the glue has dried. After scraping it later I hope the crack will blend in. It should.

7th picture is of the bottom all done and test fitted together but not fully. 8th picture is of my last dove tail joint cut this round. It fits pretty good. I know there is still some gaps but I am happy with it. The last picture is obviously of the lid components. More later. I tend to be the weekend warrior but this is moving along at a good pace. It helps when you enjoy what you do.


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[david ball]

Tony. Thanks for the advice, i will try that out next time i need to re-saw some boards. If I'm picturing it right that should work out pretty good. Thanks

[Bill Edwards(2)]

A student of Federico Fellini?:D

The pictures, not the woodworking.

[Richard Wolf]

What's shaving?

[david ball]

Richard - Shaving is just a nasty habit i've pick up and just can't come around to kick.

I ran into a little snag. I needed to make some 1/8" dados and i don't own a 1/8" router bit. So this gave me a great reason to make a new tool. I search around and found plans to make a $5 Router Plane. in my first picture below you can see i did. I made two different cutters. One is 1/8" the other is just shy of 1/4". Later i will make a bigger one. This tool was a lot more help then i thought it would be. I do feel that in the future when i need to make just a couple of dados or rabbits it will be quicker to just chisel out most of the waist then use the router plane to finish it off. It worked great. Only thing is it does not make a very smooth surface when your done. That most likely will be user error and with practice and better sharpening of the tool I'm sure i can get a cleaner result. This is going to be a glue surface so the roughness of it will help with glue surface. This concludes the box sides. they are done and ready. On to the inside pieces.

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[Tom Sontag]

You did not say if the cottonwood firewood (lousy firewood btw) was dry. If not, expect the wood to move a LOT in drying, enough to ruin the project. I agree it can be pretty, but make sure it has been completely dried.

Going to be nice!

[Jim Matthews]

What's shaving?

"I once met a man, with such hair 'round his mouth -
- it look'd he had swallered a mule, left the tail hangin' out." overheard on Bob White Bingham's porch, Vilas, NC.

[david ball]

Well i finally finished. Over all i am very please with how the two woods look together. I learned quite a bit on this project and look forward to the next. I do have a few other pictures of the box in process which i may load later. For now it's time to enjoy.
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[Jim Matthews]

This is awesome.

I'm struck by the contrast between the methods to render the image and the final product.
My box designs are problems that reach irreducible limits; each piece defines the size of the next.

If one is miscut, the box gets smaller.
I was reminded with the last box I made (original 1 liter volume, finished at 50ml) that jewelry implies more than one item.