Making boxes is a fundamental part of woodworking. Whether one is making a bookcase, drawers or a container for keepsakes it often is made in the form of a box.
It was my good fortune to purchase a bunch of files in a hardware store clean out sale a little over a year ago. One of my friends is like me a tinkerer. He is more likely to work with metal whereas mine is more likely to be done with wood. My thought was to take some of the duplicate files along on a visit to his new home near Nevada City, CA. Unfortunately a pandemic and a forest fire in his area has put that on hold for a while.
Since his birthday is in the near future it occurred shipping them to him might be best. Then it seemed making a box to hold them would be a good idea.
First the length of the longest files were determined followed by figuring out how wide and tall the box would need to be. My usual design is to make a note of the inside dimensions. A hunt around the shop of all the scraps to see what was available turned up a piece of poplar big enough to do the job. The piece was re-sawn on the bandsaw to the desired thickness before planing.
This was convenient since it is easier to get all the plowed slots holding the bottoms to meet if they are done on a single piece instead of a lot of small pieces:
#1 Grooving the Stock.jpg
It was a bit of a hunt to find longer rods to fit on my #50. Turns out my #46 rods fit well. That is why it is on the bench. The rods on various Stanley combination planes are somewhat standard but the fence mounting holes and rods do vary slightly.
The plan was to make the box with two chambers, thus the two slots.
In another thread someone suggested this would be a great way to make two drawers.
When making multiple square cuts it is easy to set up a miter box:
a Does it Miter?.jpg
When making a dovetailed box having the work square is imperative. The shooting board was set up at the other end of the bench:
a Oh Shoot!.jpg
Shooting the stock on a dovetailed box is helpful. Starting with pieces matched for length and truly square helps to keep the finished box square:
a The Size of Things.jpg
Some of my time in the shop before this was spent in determining the layout for the dovetails and cutting practice dovetails. My attempt at making a story stick for the layout didn’t work as well as hoped. This led me to a different approach. The tail board was lain out starting from the center as this is how the center slot was positioned about a quarter inch above center.
a1 Tails of Layout.jpg
From this the position of the tail from the slot was marked. It was duplicated for the other slot. Then the position of the tail below the slot was set. This was duplicated at the top of the box. The spaces created between the top and bottom tail edges was then divided. At the division point a divider was set to a little more than half the width of a 1/4” chisel. This was used to mark the space between two tails on the top and two on the bottom.
The pieces were gang cut. After using a fret saw to cut out the waste the idea came to me to flip the pieces end for end and mark the tails from the first ones cut:
a2 Marking the Other End.jpg
For cutting tails first a knife line is often used. For me a pencil line also works well.
For clearing the waste enhancing the gauged base line is helpful:
a3 Enhancing Gauge Marks.jpg
This is only done where waste is to be removed. Another aid is to chamfer the waste if the fret saw line is above the base line:
a4 Chamfering the Waste.jpg
It seems to be easier to set the paring chisel on to a chamfer then a flat edge.
Eight images is the limit for a post.
To be continued.
jtk
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