Tips for cutting the top off a box with a handsaw

[Christian Thompson]

I've been working on a tea caddy and finally got it glued up yesterday. I've seen lots of videos and instruction on how to saw off the lid with a table saw, but not so much with a handsaw. How do you guys normally do this? Do you use a guide block or try to saw the corners and meet up in the middle?

Thanks,
Christian

252403

[Zach Dillinger]

Treat it like a resawing project, although I'd use a much finer saw for this than I would for resawing. Mark your line, then angle the box away from you. Only saw the two lines you can see. Flip ends quite often to make sure you track the line properly. And recognize that it isn't going to be perfectly smooth, you will have to do a little clean up.

[Christian Thompson]

Thanks. That makes sense. Do you tape it together or stick wedges in the kerf as you finish up? I guess you could just leave a section in the middle of each side and finish that up out of the vice? I'm probably over thinking this...

[Jim Belair]

I just leave a section in the middle of each side to hold the whole works together.

[Christian Thompson]

OK. Thanks. Sounds like a plan. We'll see how it goes this weekend :-)

[Jim Koepke]

While spending some time in the shop a few thoughts on this came to me.

One was to go for a wide kerf with the thinest blade on one's plow plane. Likely kind of messy.

Then one could also try using a panel gauge with repetitive - deeper cuts.

Finally an idea came to me about the gauged "straight line cutter" like this:

http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?cat=549

It is after all just a very short saw blade with an edge gauge. It wouldn't be terribly hard to cobble something like this together.

Please note that these ideas are not based on experience or reality but just random thoughts passing through a wondering mind. As always, ymmv.

jtk

[Jim Matthews]

Score all the way around so that the saw has something to follow.

If you can clamp a guide block on each corner, like a saddle it will be easier to keep perpendicular to the face.
I would only cut the line that can be seen on the side nearest you as you saw.

A set of small wedges (or thick card stock paper, the same thickness as your saw plate) will keep the kerf open.

[Derek Cohen]

I've been working on a tea caddy and finally got it glued up yesterday. I've seen lots of videos and instruction on how to saw off the lid with a table saw, but not so much with a handsaw. How do you guys normally do this? Do you use a guide block or try to saw the corners and meet up in the middle?

Thanks,
Christian


Hi Christian

I posed a similar issue a short while ago, and there is a pictorial of how I did it ...

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?193743-How-would-you-saw-the-lid-for-this-box/page6

Regards from Perth

Derek

[David Keller NC]

Hi Christian - I build a lot of boxes, and I usually use a handsaw rather than my tablesaw for this work because even a thin-kerf blade on a tablesaw takes too much wood out of the kerf for my taste.

Derek's method is really clever for the angled cut one has to make for the box that he posted the link to. However, since I assume that you're simply looking to make a straight cut around the box, here's what I do:

1) Very carefully assess whether you want to gauge from the top of the box sides or the bottom - slight misalignment of the pieces during glue-up, or slightly different widths of the sides/back/front will cause the guaged line not to meet up correctly when it's set in around the box. You can correct this once the box is cut open by planing the mating surfaces with the plane, but doing this accurately isn't straightforward, and you want to minimize any adjustment as much as possible.

2) Once you've established the gauge surface (I usually use the bottom of the sides/back/front, because the box is glued up on a flat reference surface), use a cutting gauge to cut a line all the way around the box.

3) Go over this line several times with the cutting gauge to deepen it.

4) Clamp a very straight piece of hardwood to your gauge line to act as a guide for a very, very sharp single-bevel knife.

5) Using the clamped-on guide, run the single-bevel knife all the way around the box so that the gauge line now has a vertical side and a sloped side (the sloped side should be on the same orientation of the box all the way around the 4 sides - I usually choose to use the top as the angled side). The kerf needs to be deeper than the gullet depth of the saw that you intend to use, and it needs to be slightly wider than the kerf width of the saw.

6) Saw almost all the way through all the way around the box, being very careful to hold the saw vertically. If the gauge line was prepared properly, it will guide the saw.

7) Use a very sharp knife to finish the cuts and split the box open. If done carefully, there will be very little clean-up necessary to get the lid/box mating surfaces to fit together accurately.

[Ryan Baker]

I'm having deja vu to Derek's thread. :)

Mark all the way around. Saw as carefully as possible, checking your guide marks frequently. Use a guide block if you wish. Do a little clean up as necessary. Don't overthink it.

Be careful not to close the kerf up on the back side if you clamp it in a vise.

[jamie shard]

5) Using the clamped-on guide, run the single-bevel knife all the way around the box so that the gauge line now has a vertical side and a sloped side (the sloped side should be on the same orientation of the box all the way around the 4 sides - I usually choose to use the top as the angled side). The kerf needs to be deeper than the gullet depth of the saw that you intend to use, and it needs to be slightly wider than the kerf width of the saw.


I'm having trouble understanding this one... ???

Is the hardwood guide clamped on the gauge line (so that the vertical knife intersects the sloped gauge line) or a kerf+ width apart (to establish two lines for the saw to cut between)?

[David Keller NC]

Jamie - I clamp the hardwood guide on the gauge line as a guide for the flat (non-beveled) side of the knife. That leaves me with a deepened gauge line, if viewed in cross-section, with a completely vertical side, and a sloped side. The point is to get a cut-through surface that is nearly perfect on one half of the box (typically the bottom half for me), and the other half that will require a little clean-up.

I've tried deeping the gauge line with a double-bevel marking knife, but the bevel adjacent to the hardwood guide wants to cut into the guide itself.

The idea with this procedure is to get an accurate gauge line that is deep enough so that the teeth of the back-saw fit down into the line. That prevents the back-saw from wandering and scarfing up the surface of the box. Other than that, this is essentially what Derek illustrated - if one executes Derek's method perfectly (i.e., doesn't allow the saw to wander slightly away from the guide when cutting into the box), I would think one would get the same results from both methods.

I've tried what Derek illustrates, but I'm not good enough to execute it. It typically takes about 5 to 8 saw strokes to establish the kerf that the backsaw will track in, and invariably I will fail to hold the backsaw tightly against the guide during one of those strokes, which results in a scarfed-up surface on the box. I'm guessing that's why Derek mounted magnets in this guide - it would make it easier to avoid the typical mistake I make.

[Michael Ray Smith]

Thanks, David. I've been wondering how to do this myself, and your method is very similar to the technique I use for cutting the sides of a dado. I use a stair saw for dadoes to get the right depth, and I may try a stair saw for boxes to keep from cutting all the way through.

[jamie shard]

Jamie - I clamp the hardwood guide on the gauge line as a guide for the flat (non-beveled) side of the knife. That leaves me with a deepened gauge line, if viewed in cross-section, with a completely vertical side, and a sloped side. The point is to get a cut-through surface that is nearly perfect on one half of the box (typically the bottom half for me), and the other half that will require a little clean-up.
....
The idea with this procedure is to get an accurate gauge line that is deep enough so that the teeth of the back-saw fit down into the line.

Thanks for that extra info to get me across the line! Now I understand. :)

[Christian Thompson]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

Derek, your post came out right as I was trying to figure out what joinery to use and is what convinced me to go with the half-blind dovetails. I wasn't sure if yours was a special case since you were doing a more complex top. Do you use the guide blocks when you do a standard straight-across top?

David, the marking line definitely sounds promising. I will probably try that next time.

In the end I decided to keep it simple and planned on doing some cleanup at the end. I marked around the edge using a square rather than trying to gauge of the top or bottom. Then I used my dovetail saw to saw the corners at an angle trying to work down both lines. I used some slivers to wedge open the kerf while it was in the vise. Then I clamped it on the bench top to saw the middles.

252612 252613 252614

I did missed pretty badly on one corner. Conveniently that picture also shows the worst gap in the dovetails. The dovetails definitely didn't come out as well as I had hoped. This was my first time cutting dovetails in anything but pine and the african mahogany was difficult to work with. I think that particular gap was a marking knife malfunction :-). Either way, I have some filling to do before finishing.

252611

In the end, though, I was able to clean it up enough to get it to close tightly without it getting too short...

252616 252615

Thanks again,
Christian

[David Keller NC]

In the end, though, I was able to clean it up enough to get it to close tightly without it getting too short...

Christian

Good to hear it went well, Christian. That's one aspect that I'm sure you recognize - there are zillions of ways to accomplish the same task, especially with handtool woodworking. Whichever one of those ways works out for you in the end is the "right" one.

Comment about the dovetail gaps - I would highly recommend that you not fill the gaps, particularly with wood putty. Even sawdust and glue may not be a good idea. When the box is finished, the finish will differentially absorb (or not absorb, depending on what you use to fill the gap) the finish, and the fill will be a lot more noticeable than the gap itself.

There are two ways to hide a gap in a dovetail that I'm aware of - 1) cut a small sliver wedge of the same wood as the box and tap it home when the box is assembled with glue, then saw/plane the excess sliver down to the final surface. 2) peen the dovetails when you assemble them and before you plane them down to the final box surface. I think Derek has a tutorial on his website showing the peening method.

[Christian Thompson]

Comment about the dovetail gaps - I would highly recommend that you not fill the gaps, particularly with wood putty. Even sawdust and glue may not be a good idea. When the box is finished, the finish will differentially absorb (or not absorb, depending on what you use to fill the gap) the finish, and the fill will be a lot more noticeable than the gap itself.

There are two ways to hide a gap in a dovetail that I'm aware of - 1) cut a small sliver wedge of the same wood as the box and tap it home when the box is assembled with glue, then saw/plane the excess sliver down to the final surface. 2) peen the dovetails when you assemble them and before you plane them down to the final box surface. I think Derek has a tutorial on his website showing the peening method.

Thanks. This is good advice. I was planning to use slivers for the few big gaps and superglue and sawdust for the rest. Maybe I'll try a test and see what the sawdust looks like with finish and skip it if it looks bad.

[Christian Thompson]

Well - a year later I finally finished this project. I don't get very much shop time in the summer and, with 2 young kids, even winter shop time is limited. Either way, it is finished now and has been delivered to my Mom. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

The outer box is made with African Mahogany finished with BLO and wax. The inner boxes are curly maple. She is using it to store loose tea so I wanted to make the inner boxes as food safe as possible. I finished the outside of them with Shellac (thinned with Everclear) and glued them up with the FDA approved glue. She currently has a wax paper lining in them, but the wood is pretty neutral smell-wise so I think she would probably be fine without the liner.

Thanks again for all the advice along the way!

277966 277967 277968 277969

[Chris Griggs]

Beautiful work Christian!

[Jim Koepke]

Very nice and just in time for Christmas.

jtk

[Christian Thompson]

Thanks guys!