My wife requested a storage box, and decided on a final size or roughly 9” square by 10” high. I thought this would be a good opportunity to refine my skills with (mostly) hand cut dovetails, as well as try some new wood combinations for the lid.
The box sides are curly maple about 1/2” thick. For the dovetails, after lots of trial and error, I now use a hybrid approach combining several methods. I mark and saw the tails with a magnetic dovetail guide from David Barron. Before chiseling out the waste, I mark the saw kerfs on the pin board using Rob Cosman’s method of offsetting the tail board by the width of the saw kerf (.024”) into the waste area. I milled a small block of wood with the offset which makes the setup easier. The waste on the tail board is then removed with a chisel.
The saw cuts were then made on the pin board using the dovetail guide, placing the saw in the kerfs already made in the previous step. The maple I used on this project had a nasty tendency to chip out along the base lines, even when the lines were carefully scored with a marking gauge and knife. I ended up using a technique that I saw on a video from Mike Farrington, partially removing the waste traditionally and finishing by placing the pin boards vertically in my Moxon vise and routing down to the base lines with a 1/4” pattern bit. The results were much cleaner than I got with a chisel. Perhaps I need to continue working on my chiseling technique.
I designed the box in Sketchup, which allowed me to play with different wood combinations for the lid. The final design used an inner field of Sapele, a thin strip of Wenge, a slightly wider strip of Maple, edged with Walnut. The handle on top is made from Wenge, as are the 4 square feet which are not visible in the photo. I used 3 layers of Osmo Polyx for the finish, which produces a soft, satin sheen.
It was a fun build, although time consuming for such a simple project. Thanks for looking!