Me also Rick, and getting slower as the hours fly byYet another beautiful box. Love the grain, just wow!! How I wish you lived around here so I could take lessons . I’m not a quick study though lol
Charley, if I came to see you could I sleep in your shop to cut expenses? :wink:Theo, I don't have time. I see her on Wednesday. I'll just have to make another for me using the same technique with the stain and hope for the best.
Rick and James, These boxes are easy to make if you have a good table saw, an Incra IBox jig, and a Freud SBOX8 blade set. For most plywood boxes I just glue the top and bottom on, since the plywood is so stable with humidity changes. The Titebond glues are stronger than the wood. Not this box, but I have propped another similar sized box that I made this same way up on one corner and put my full 243 pounds of body weight on the opposite corner without even a crack noise coming from the box. They are tough when made from Baltic Birch. The top and bottom are made slightly over size and then trimmed to the box sides with my router table and flush trim router bit. I trim the excess pin lengths flush the same way. After the box is completely built, I cut the lid free on the table saw. If installing piano hinges, I've been mortising both the lid and box using the same Freud saw blade set to 1/2 of the thickness of the closed hinge, moving the box sideways as the blade is cutting, until it hits positioned stops. It's fast and accurate. For a piano hinged box I will use 1/2" thickness plywood and a hinge with 1/2" tabs. This 10 mm is too thin for piano hinges. I can build a box this size and sand it in about an hour, if you don't count the glue drying and finish application and drying times.
I do teach, and demonstrate woodworking at trade shows. I would show you how to make one of these boxes FREE, in an afternoon, but I think the commute costs would be very high. It's easy, if you have the tools to do it. One of the other train drivers that works with me came over and cut out a box one afternoon 2 months ago. He took it home and assembled it.
Charley
Are the box joints cut with a router or a table saw?
I want to make a set of similar boxes and have some surplus BB to make them from.
Bit of a bummer that, but not to be avoided. However, with good fortune, and a sacrifice or two to the Woodworking Gods, perhaps your box will come out even better. One can only hope.Theo, I don't have time. I see her on Wednesday. I'll just have to make another for me using the same technique with the stain and hope for the best.
Very nice, the grain really stands out. I wonder - did you consciously select inside/outside based on the grain pattern, or was it a random selection? I ask because the inner surfaces, at least from the photos, don't seem to have the pronounced grain that the outer surfaces do.I made this box for a friend last week. She wanted it stained Zar American Walnut, and I was a bit worried because I have never had satisfactory results staining BB birch plywood and having it look good when I finished. But this one turned out much nicer than I expected it to.
Most Baltic Birch does not have interesting grain, so I was surprised when the pieces that I selected for this box turned out to be so interesting. It was sanded to 220 grit, then two coats of Zar American Walnut were wiped on, followed by 3 coats of Minwax Wiping Poly also wiped on, with a 360 grit light sanding of the second coat of poly before applying the final coat. The final coat of poly turned out perfectly smooth. I let it dry for 2 days after the final coat, then applied two coats of Johnson's Paste Wax, & now I don't want to give it away.
Charley
Don, My shop is so small and crowded that you would be bent up like a pretzel if you tried to sleep in there. It's a full 2 car sized garage shop worth of stuff, but crammed into a 14 X 26' out building. There's almost no floor space left. My Unisaw is the largest open surface, but hard as cast iron, because it is.Charley, if I came to see you could I sleep in your shop to cut expenses? :wink:
I do think your box turned out really nice. So what is your friend going to use the box for?
I have to make some recipe boxes for some of the good looking family members and you have given me some ideas. I also want to make me a box to put chisels, and block planes in.
I tried making box joints on the router table last year, with abysmal results. I cut hundreds of pieces and managed to build 2 boxes. I haven't tried making them with my new(ish) dado set. A couple of projects on the front burner first. Thanks for the advice. I like your technique for making the panel top and bottom.The Incra IBox jig can be used one either a good table saw or a router table, but they must have a 3/4 X 3/8" standard miter slot that if not exactly 3/4 X 3/8" it needs to be close. The guide bar on the IBox can be adjusted, but not very much, and it's needs to slide freely, but without any play to be able to get good box joints. The jig has a piece of 1/4" MDF to act as a backer, minimizing tear-out on the side of the piece facing the jig, and this works very well if a fresh position is used for each new setup, but you really need another sacrificial strip behind your work too, when cutting box joints on a router table. Without it, the right side of each cut will tear-out. The provided backer will prevent tear-out on the left side of each router bit cut.
I tried it on my router table once, then have used it exclusively on the table saw ever since.
The Freud SBOX8 blade is a two piece blade set. They are used together. With the printed side facing out, the resulting cut is 1/4" wide. With the printed sides facing each other, the cut is 3/8" wide. The teeth on each blade are offset and work together to do this. They are also designed to make a very flat bottomed kerf cut, which you can't do with DADO blades. I also have a Freud 1/8" kerf (actually 0.126") Flat Top Ground Ripping blade (sorry, don't remember the number) that I use when I want to make smaller box joints. For significantly larger box joints, like 3/4" I have used my stacked DADO blade set. On the larger box joints the slightly uneven bottoms of the kerfs isn't quite so obvious, so the result is satisfactory. The I-Box can be easily adjusted from about 1/8" up to slightly larger than 3/4". Other manufacturers now sell the two piece box joint blade set like the SBOX8 and I think all will work to about the same quality, but I only have hands-on experience with the Freud.
Since it's necessary to make mating pieces of a box joint corner with the pins and spaces in opposite positions on each board end, I call the front and back sides of the box the "A" sides, and the two ends of the box the "B" sides. I make both ends of each piece the same, ie. both with pins at the top end. The B pieces then begin at the top with spaces rather than pins. This minimizes confusion while cutting them. An additional advantage is that there is no inside or outside on each piece when it's cut, so you can choose the best side to face out as you begin the glue-up.
If you decide that you don't want to glue the top and bottom directly onto the sides,
Lee Valley sells some small diameter slotting bits. With one of these in a router table, you can dry fit and clamp the 4 sides of the box together, then place the box over the bit and rout the slot all the way around. The slot is cut completely into the corners, so a slight rounding of the corners of the panel and it will fit perfectly. You can do this for both the top and bottom panels, if you want and this method of cutting the slot makes doing it very easy.and it's almost impossible to make a mistake. I usually do this when building boxes with solid wood so the top and bottom panels will float.
Charley
