On some particularly hot and humid days recently, I needed a small project to enjoy the comfort of the shop in-between doing other things out in the heat. There was this small, leftover piece of cherry crotch staring at me from the front of my lumber storage rack that basically said, "Use me! Use me!!". There was also a need to better organize our daughter's incoming mail...she's traveling for awhile and using our address. So a small, open box became the projects and I said "yes" to the "Use me! Use me!", too. And, of course, this little box will be usable for other things in the future, too.

The decision was made to use the approximate centerline of the crotch as the point of reference. There was enough material (after resawing) to provide two nice long faces about 125mm tall as well as less exciting material for the bottom. The short sides will come from some other cherry off-cuts I have in the bin. The initial processing of the larger piece was to get a parallel cut to the reference line and then rip to width, followed by resawing to half the thickness. My band wandered a little bit, so final thickness was 6mm which is appropriate for this kind of small box.

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I'm doing simple here, so the corners were mitered on the slider which also allowed for consistent lengths with the stops on the fence. Grooves for the bottom were also cut on the saw...a little trial and error to work up to just the right groove width. I did a dry fit while the glue dried for the bottom blank

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