Nickbee

For the heck of it I mock up the rails / stiles to see how everything fits:





So far so good. I take the bottom rails and with a few passes of the slot cutter the grove for the box floor is cut:



Next I finish sand the inside edges of the rails / stiles with 220 paper. I also remove the fuzz from the tenons. The top rails will be glued 1st. I do another dry mock up to make sure everything aligns well. I then mark each corner so I can glue up the box exactly as its mocked up:



Time to break out the glue!

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Nickbee

The glue up begins! I emailed Joe from veneersupplies.com to find out if his dark cold press glue would be ok to use for the joints. His reply (within an hour) was that it will work great for general joinery. BTW he’s following the thread and wanted me to mention that he’s available anytime to answer questions. I can’t say enough about his great customer service!

Back to the glue up. The long working time of the cold press glue made working with it a pleasure. I was even able to take one glued up panel apart after clamping (it was not sitting just right).

1st two opposite panels get glued to the stiles and top rails:





The bottom rails are fitted dry for alignment purposes. All 4 bottom rails will get glued up at the same time with the box floor as the final step.

Next one more panel and top rail gets glued up connecting the two panels I glued so far:



Everything is falling together nicely but a few squares guarantee that my box will be square and not a trapezoid or parallelogram (and I wondered when I would use 4th grade geometry!).

With the slow setting time of this glue I leave everything clamped up overnight. Luckily I’m not in a rush to get this thing done…

nzgeordie

Luckily I’m not in a rush to get this thing done…[/quote]

Fascinating to follow this thread Nick, the best things take time

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Pete
I've cut it twice and it's still too short! But only at one end.

Nickbee

Finally I glue up the last side panel:



Next it’s time to prep the floor before gluing up the bottom rails. A flaw (um I mean feature) of this design is that a notch has to be cut from each corner of the bottom so that the bottom rails will slide into position. Here you see the bit that gets in the way:



After notching out the floor corners I dry fit it with the bottom rails. This is the 1st time I get to check out the book match in it’s final place:



Everything looks good so I break out the glue and clamps:



Next comes sanding and finishing.

Nickbee

For sanding I break out my aluminum sanding bars left over from my RC airplane days. Because the bars span both rails / stiles it ensures that everything should remain flat:



I start with 150 girt and finish up with 220. The joints blend together nicely after just a little sanding. Then I wipe everything down with some mineral sprits to check for any rough spots or residual glue marks:








This is my favorite part of a project as I finally get a glimpse of what the final piece will look like!

Next comes finishing. I’m going to keep it simple and natural with a few coats of Watco Danish Oil…

Nickbee

OK! After experimenting on some scrap I saw that bleed back was not going to be an issue with this wood. So I followed Doug Hick’s scedual for Danish oil. The last coat gets “wet sanded” with 400 grit paper. The results are a nice natural low sheen (no sheen) finish that works well with the open grain of the walnut and burls. BTW the 5 buck download from the seminar is well worth it. He breaks down many hand applied finishing schedules step by step.

Here are the results:











Thanks again to all that chimed in on this project. It was fun, but I’m glad it’s over. I know that veneers are something I will continue to work with. Next I plan to use the scraps from this project with some maple burl I picked up for a small parquetry wall hanging…

curiousgeorge

Great job, Nickbee! That's a fine looking box and thank you for the pictorial essay. It was very interesting and educational.

(edited): Keep this up and you just might win the HarrySin award for pictorial excellence.

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George
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karateed

Awesome job Nickbee....you've got the patience of Job.

Thank you for the pics, I know it's not easy to organize and display exactly what is needed to tell the story.

Ed......:-)

fdcox

Very nice box Nickbee, & the tutorial is great