Our 25-year-old son just got engaged to his longtime girlfriend and we are very excited for the happy couple! He is an avid fly fisherman and has a birthday coming up in July. His fiancée mentioned to me she was planning on getting him fly tying supplies and asked if I could build a tackle box/fly tying station keep everything in.



I wanted to keep the box fairly lightweight so that he could carry it into fishing sites without too much trouble -that ended up driving a lot of the design/joinery. Rough dimensions are 18“ long x 11“ wide x 11“ tall. To maximize storage space for small items I settle on a fold-down front panel with a bank of three drawers in the middle flanked by two pullout frames to hang frequently used items. Top will also be hinged with additional storage underneath.


Carcass is ½’ thick Walnut frame and veneered 1/8” plywood panels glued in place to add some rigidity/strength. Given the thinness of the stock I went with simple half lap joints to maximize glue surface area for the frames.





Because frames are so thin I use electric router to create 3/16 inch deep rabbit after assembly, which minimize the chance of any disastrous splitting.




Carcass sides, back and bottom are joined via a simple rabbit joints glued and screwed where feasible.





Couldn’t really figure out a good joinery solution for the 2 inch wide fixed front panel. If I'd been thinking would have changed orientation of rails/stiles on carcass sides so would have had some end grain available for DT's - uuugh! Went with through dowels. Not very strong by itself. I’m hoping internal dividers and overlapping top will add some strength.




Stop rabbits dadoes plowed four vertical internal dividers. Sliding measuring stick super helpful to get this dimension exactly right.




¼” thick vertical dividers glued in place. Because are so thin I added ¼” square drawer guides and kickers which also create a “housing” to glue horizontal drawer dividers.




Three graduated height drawers fronts are flush, internal fit. I always enjoy planing drawer fronts to get a nice fit in their pocket. Not sure how you do this without hand tools?