Looking for ideas

[Rich Engelhardt]

(I'm thinking micro pin = 23 ga.)

Anyhow - I got it about the lock miter and not wanting to change dimensions.

I did a little looking about prefinished plywood and it looks like it can be painted, just so long as it gets scuff sanded first.
If it can be painted, then it can be glued.

I kept looking and it looks like some people have had success using Roo Glue.

[Jim Becker]

What’s a micro pin?

23 gage pin nailer

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Pre-finished ply often has a factory applied polyester finish on it so PVA type glues are not going to work at all without removal or "substantial" abrasion. You might get away with polyurethane glue or epoxy, but abrasion will still be a good idea, if not actually required.

[Bob Jones 5443]

Fire up that router your sticks are sitting on. On the box end pieces, make two quick passes to create very shallow rabbets for the long box sides to fit into. Get out the glue, and glue them up.

Then - shave off a bit of of the 1 x 4 standards with a hand plane to accommodate the rabbet loss in 3-1/2" dimension.

Kent, that did it. I routed off about 0.015" deep along the ends of the narrow end parts. The 1/2" ply is about 0.475", so that's how wide the rabbets are. The tiny shelf actually helps register the wide side parts and prevents them from slipping inward during glue-up. They's so shallow that I wonder if I'll even need to plane off the 1x4s.

Genius.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Bob - cool beans. Glad you have a repeatable solution that you're comfortable with. I was wondering if that would provide a lip/shelf to help in alignment. That's pretty neat for your project

Nothing genius about it - I have spent 3+ decades overcoming mistakes. In fact, I don't do too much design on pieces anymore - I just tee it up, and mistake my way to a finished product.

I'm hoping to see a finished product - there's something going in those "H-stands" and its driving me nuts wondering what. Unless it's political adverts, in which case I'm full up.

[Steve Demuth]

Since you've got something from Kent that works for you, this answer is redundant, but my solution would have been to make or buy a bunch of 3/16" dowel stock, set the boxes up on a jig in the drill press and drill for the dowels straight through the end pieces into the side pieces, then glue and hammer in the dowels. Three dowels per joint would be about right. I've used this technique on drawer sides before. You basically get a poor man's box joint using common tools and manageable effort that's plenty strong for most ordinary purposes.

[George Yetka]

Lock miter 2 sizes of ply strips you can make this 4' long or whatever you feel comfortable with working. Then glue and pin nail then chop to your length. The box will be plenty strong. Then screw from the bottom of your floor piece into the box.

[Bob Jones 5443]

George, ganging them as you suggest is a very good idea. Wish I’d thought of that before I cut all the individual parts!

Notably, I did gang two other small parts for this grand design:

1) 1/4 x 1/4 x 3/8 buttons glued to an 1/8” thick 1/4 x 1” base. I needed 16 of these little guys, so I made one long strip and crosscut them 1/4” wide.

2) a 3” long (wide, really) maple hook made of a 3/8” bar glued to the 3/8 x 3/4” hook piece. Again, I glued two 14” long strips and crosscut them into eight 3” parts.

Now Kent is really curious!

[Bob Jones 5443]

Since you've got something from Kent that works for you, this answer is redundant, but my solution would have been to make or buy a bunch of 3/16" dowel stock, set the boxes up on a jig in the drill press and drill for the dowels straight through the end pieces into the side pieces, then glue and hammer in the dowels. Three dowels per joint would be about right. I've used this technique on drawer sides before. You basically get a poor man's box joint using common tools and manageable effort that's plenty strong for most ordinary purposes.

Steve, I’m not sure I would have been able to hold the mating parts together firmly enough to drill through them, but if I could have worked that out, it would be a good method.

[Bob Jones 5443]

Bob - cool beans. Glad you have a repeatable solution that you're comfortable with. I was wondering if that would provide a lip/shelf to help in alignment. That's pretty neat for your project

Nothing genius about it - I have spent 3+ decades overcoming mistakes. In fact, I don't do too much design on pieces anymore - I just tee it up, and mistake my way to a finished product.

I'm hoping to see a finished product - there's something going in those "H-stands" and it’s driving me nuts wondering what. Unless it's political adverts, in which case I'm full up.

Non-political, I promise.

I’ll keep you guessing until I can post a photo of the finished item.