About a month ago, my wife's friend came to visit us and our new (well, 8 month old!) baby.
She had two daughters, 9 and 13, both of whom were really intelligent and curious and spoke good English (having gone to an international school).
They loved playing with our baby! And, they also really enjoyed playing with my woodworking tools!
I let them use Japanese and Western planes and saws a bit, which they really enjoyed.
Anyway, we're going over to their house to visit them this time, and my wife suggested maybe I can make some small boxes as presents for the two daughters.
I recently found some videos by a Sashimono-shi in Japan who specializes in making high-end boxes, and have been wanting to give this a try, so I figured I would try making a simplified version.
I wanted to make this out of Paulownia, which I don't have on hand, and it would take to long to special order online, so I went down to the local 100-yen shop and found some thin, flat-sawn Paulownia cutting boards to turn into gifts!
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These were split in half along the grain with a cutting gauge. One of those halves was then crosscut into two pieces to make the top and bottom of the box. The other half was split again along the grain, and then crosscut into four pieces to make the sides. The boxes will be square, with all sides being equal length.
They were then all trimmed to the exact same size on the shooting board. The sashimono-shi that I watched used two jigs besides the shooting board that I wasn't familiar with, and are pictured here:
1) A "bench hook" without the "cleat for the bench" (just one cleat on top), which is clamped onto the shooting board with a brass hatagane (clamp) to act as a stop to achieve a specific length or width when shooting.
2) A very simple, perfectly square... square of wood with a hole in the center for your finger. This will be used when gluing the box together to check that the inside of the box is perfectly square on all sides, so that the lid will fit snugly in any orientation. I haven't finished cutting the joinery yet, so this has yet to be used.
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The joints will be simple box joints (dovetails without the angle), which are glued with rice-glue and then nailed using tapered bamboo nails / pegs. I've tested this joint already with just the bamboo nails and no glue, and it was much stronger than I would have thought it would be.
I'm in the process of cutting the joints. Alas, I cut one a bit loose. It seems like I always do this when cutting dovetails or any such joint for the first time in a while. Then the rest turn out good. I should get in the habit of cutting a quick "rehersal" board each time to get the bad one out of the way... Oh well. Gluing a shaving on the loose bit.
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Sorry for the really bad picture quality. It's night time and my phone doesn't do well in low-light environments...
The grain is supposed to be oriented such that it matches (the growth rings going from large to small) as much as possible. I'm not sure that I entirely understand the guidelines for how this is done, but I'm doing as best I can with the material I have (the cutting boards being laminated edge to edge, so in a few pieces the grain changes... though, for the most part, I was able to avoid lamination "lines" in most of the pieces). Really though, I'm not making the really high end boxes with hefty price tags here, so this is not something to fret over too much.
To be continued!
P.S. My bamboo nails also came from the 100-yen shop. I'm using bamboo skewers!
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