56 gallon hatbox

[Jamie Buxton]

My woodworking club has an annual box contest, and an occasional 2x4 contest. I built a dual entry: a box made from a standard 8-foot stud. To give myself a challenge, I aimed at the biggest box I could manage. The pic below shows the result. The box is 25 inches in diameter and 25 inches tall. The walls are .045" thick. The top and bottom are domed for strength, and are .090" thick. They were formed with two crossed layers of wood in a vacuum press. The wood is Douglas Fir.

[Jim Dailey]

Jamie that is amazing!!!

Where did you get a douglas fir 2 x 4, I didn't think they existed anymore.

All kidding aside that is an amazing bit of work, not to mention utilizing that amount of cubit area out of one 2 x 4!!! Your workmanship looks stunning.

Two thumbs way up!!
jim

[rick fulton]

Jamie,

That's amazing. Very creative. Looks solid too. Convenient that you found a knot-free vertical grained 2x4. Are the wall joints lapping each other? Side-to-side and end-to-end? Any detail shots?

Also proves you don't need one of those spinney things to make a round box.

Good luck with the contest's. Thanks for sharing.

rick

[John Renzetti]

Hi Jamie, As others have said, Amazing. And very creative. Can you give some insight on the construction process. I'm assuming that is also your mug in the picture holding the box.
take care,
John

[Keith Outten]

Jamie,

Your 2 by 4 box is very cool. Geez, I am so impressed at how innovative and creative woodworkers can be.

I assume you used a steam bender to bend the thin strips.

.

[Alan Turner]

Wow!!! Did you resaw the two by a couple of times, and then edge glue, and then resaw to finished thickness to make a fewer number of thin edge joints?

However you did it very impressive.

[lou sansone]

cool... did you use just 1 2x4 for the project ? how did you lay up the sides of the box

lou

[Terry Hatfield]

Jamie,

Amazing!!!!!!!!! Very, very cool indeed!!!

t

[Chuck Wood]

Jamie,

That is some very nice work!!!:D Unbelievable!!! :)

[Allen Bookout]

Has anyone said amazing yet? I will just say - incredible!

I would have lost a bet that anyone could have done that out of a 2x4.

[Jim Becker]

Wow...unbelievable!! Amazing what you can do with one stud!!

Oh, free bonus avatar for you, young man!

50529

[Jamie Buxton]

The construction process went like this....

I started with one standard 8' 2x4. I trimmed off a knot close to one end, then jointed both edges. Then I resawed it into slices which were 3 1/4" by 94" x .045". (The bandsaw kerf is about .040", so almost half of the stud disappeared in sawdust in this step.)

To make the cylinder which is the box's walls, I cut 9 leaves to 79 1/2" long, and edge-glued them into one big sheet. To edge-glue a pair, I laid them out flat on a table, and pulling the edges together with one hand while taping them together with masking tape on what would become the outside face. (Remember that I started by edge-jointing the 2x4, so these edges are straight and clean.) Then I flipped the sheet over, broke the taped seam over the edge of the table, and ran a bead of glue into the joint. When the leaves are put back flat on the table, the glue mostly squeezes out on the inside face, and I cleaned it off with a scaper while it was still in the cheese stage. After the glue cured solid, I removed the tape. Then I bent the sheet around to form a cylinder, and glued the ends together in a lap joint. This edge-gluing scheme may not be the most-secure in the world, but it was the best I could devise for leaves like this. The box is fairly sturdy; it has travelled in the back of my pickup to and from a club meeting, and endured the poking and prodding of a bunch of curious woodworkers.

To make the top and the bottom, I first made a domed bending form. I started with a sheet of styrofoam rigid insulation which was 1/2"x4'x8'. I laminated three layers together with spray contact cement to form a blank 1 1/2" thick. With a sander, I free-hand sculpted it into a domed shape about 3/4" taller in the middle than at the edges. When my straight leaves were bent over the form, they butted near the middle, but overlapped slightly near the edges, so I trimmed them with a hand plane. (These edge joints don't have to be exact. Heck, they don't even have to touch.) After I got one layer of leaves trimmed, I made a second in the same way. I then slathered one layer with glue, laid the second one at right angles to the first, laid them over the bending form, slid them into the vacuum press, and sucked vacuum on them until the wood conformed to the form. After the glue cured, I took the wood dome out and trimmed the edge to a circle. I used a few narrow strips to make the rim on the lid, and to reinforce the cylinder's bottom where the box's bottom glues in.

And yes, it was just one 8' 2x4. You can even see the stud's grade stamp on the box's bottom!

[Howard Rosenberg]

Details, man.... details!

Fabulous work!

Thanks for sharing.

Howard

[John Schreiber]

Great stuff. I never would have thought it could be done.

[Mike Spanbauer]

Okay, that is impressive. I LOVE these skills tests. They really challenge and stretch the imagination.

I conjure up similar games for team building activities (not this challenging, but along the same lines... toothpicks, marshmallow's, etc) that can be done in a day.

Truly impressive.

mike

[Mike Weaver]

Wow! Very Cool!

Thanks for posting the pic & the details!
-Mike

[Jason Roehl]

Just think...if you had a veneer slicer, you wouldn't have all that sawdust waste, and could have made the box twice as big! Impressive result, nonetheless.