As it was raining today the gardening had to wait and I managed to cut and run to the basement. It wasn't long before Alexandra turned up wanting to get involved. She decided that she wanted to make a new jewlery box, I guess she'll be wanting some more jewlery to go in it as well . She rumaged in the wood pile and produced a length of lodgepole pine. She then set about it with a No5 and flattened one surface. I helped with the winding sticks and did a little bit of fine adjustment. Alex then squared up the edges (By the way is the use of koala bear drawings a recognised face mark?) and thicknessed the board. I helped with the laying out of the sides and ends of the box to maximise the size while avoiding the knots. The next step was sawing the lengths out. Alex did this with the trusty miter saw. I cut a dado to take the bottom of the box using a 55. It's a little unweildy for a 9 year old. Next came what I thought was going to be the difficult bit, laying out the tails. I showed her the Rob Cosman dividers techneque on one end of a board and she did the other 3 corners completely on her own. I set up a scrap board in the vise and Alex did some practice cuts to get use to using the saw. The cuts got progressively straighter as she went. Then it was onto the real joints. The first picture shows her cutting the tails. To make the waste removal easier she used a fret saw to cut out the bulk, that's in the second picture. Onwards to the chiseling, note the square to help with keeping the chisel vertical. The fourth picture shows the first finished tails and a very pleased Alex. The rest of the tails presented no problem. I help with transfering the tails to the pins by doing the line up and clampint the parts as Alex didn't have the strength to hold the tail board still enough. Cutting the pins was a repeat of the tails. Then it was time for the glue up. Due to a mistake by Dad showing how to put the glue on, and using the wrong pair of boards, the glue up was a bit of a rush. The joints were not test fitted simply knocked together in true Rob Cosman fashion. Alex then used a smoother to clean up the joints. The final picture (in a reply to this one) shows the finished result. And an excellent result it is for first ever handcut dovetails! Alex tells me she is going to make a lid for it next time she is in the shop.