Boxes, Lids, and More -- Oh my!

Ready for .......?

     I've mentioned that I'm gearing up for a show this September which will feature various small boxes that are currently under construction and in the design stages.  I'm playing around with several different and unique styles and hope they will appeal enough to the public so they'll vote with their wallets!  Another advantage is that these will be an easier item to ship than furniture is.
     Just because they're small really doesn't make them any easier to build, if anything, the smaller sizes add the challenge of how to hold them, especially if there's machine work involved.  I sure am fortunate to have Diane as my style guide, she has an eye for the way things go together and work out style wise.  As an example, the two toned lid in the upper left was designed to go with the box that has the extended and pegged finger joints.  She suggested that there was too much going on, either the box should be the star or else the lid should be the star.  I took that into consideration and it makes perfect sense to me but not until she pointed it out did I truly see it.  That lid will go on the box in the right of the picture which features some  curly Maple and mitered corners with Cherry splines as a contrast.  The lid that currently has the clamp on it will be for the finger jointed box.  I created a different pull for it that mimics the joinery on the box.  This box was tricky to assemble and finish:

Extended & Pegged Finger Joints

     The tricky part comes in after you figure out how to clamp and glue this box together.  You have to be careful not to get glue on the part of the joint that extends and once that's accomplished the area between the two joints (short side) is hard to get to.  Time consuming process but I'm thinking that the final design is worth it but.....is it a money maker?  Probably not but I really just need enough profit to feed my wood addiction!
     See the big, blue brush?  That's something I just purchased which seems like such a good idea but fell short.  It's made by Rockler and the bristles are silicon so glue will not stick to it.  The advantage is that you can let it go and once the glue is cured it will peel right off.  Good concept right?  However, it is so big and awkward I couldn't get it between the joints without making a mess all over the place.  I'm going to stick to the little acid brushes, they're washable and last for 4-5 projects before the bristles come out.  Check this out:

Gorilla Glue

     I had used it the night before to laminate two pieces together for a lid.  For that I prefer a polyurethane glue (Gorilla Glue) so I used this brush for it.  Large and cumbersome but did the job.  The next morning I attempted to clear away the dried glue but it hadn't cured completely which resulted in my fingers getting permanently stained!  When I use Gorilla Glue it's about the only time I ever wear gloves, you can't get the stains off of your skin easily so it's just there until a new layer grows in.  Once the glue cured completely it did pull off of the bristles with some effort.  Like I said, it's a good idea but I'm not a fan.

Another Box Design

     So this blog will be backwards!  I started it last night after figuring out how to design and make the top for what I'm calling my Elliptical Box.  Wanted to get that down on paper (so to speak) before those senior moments could erase them.  The process worked and here's the lid for the new box concept.  This is somewhat backwards too since now I'm building the box to fit the lid!

It Worked

     Now that the Slanted Dovetail box is complete and I know the basic design and construction is what I was hoping for there's another design that's been floating around in my head.  Rather than make a series of the Slanted Dovetail box (4 boxes total) I'd rather work on this new design.  I think I'll name it the Elliptical Box since the main design theme will be an ellipse of sorts.  Years ago I did an experiment where two different species of wood were cut out together and then re-joined.  If you're familiar with intarsia this is a very elementary form of it for lack of a better term.  My goal is to combine two pieces of curly Maple with a piece of Cherry, both of which have some interesting grain, for the lid to this box.

Sketching in the Arc

     The Cherry will be the center of the lid so I needed to establish an arc.  This can be done by clamping the piece to the bench with the bench dogs, they are at the same distance from the center.  The thumb of my right hand is pushing this slat towards a mark I'd made to show the top of the arc.  All that's left was to draw the line.  Here are the two pieces of Maple I want to use for the lid:

Marked for Grain Direction

     Whenever you laminate boards together you want the grain direction to be the same on all of them for when you plane the board.  This holds true whether you're using a power plane or the nice, quiet work of a hand plane.  You can see the basic design on the Cherry.  Next was joining the pieces together.

Temporarily Hot Glued Together

     In the picture you can see how I laid this out, marks were made on the Maple pieces that corresponded with the end of the design on the Cherry.  Using a hot glue gun, they were temporarily held together and then cut out on the bandsaw.  Once they were pried apart with a dull screwdriver and a mallet they separated without any problem for reassembly.  What you see on top below the clamp is a piece of 1/4" thick polyethylene.  I use these whenever I glue up because nothing sticks to them and there is no possibility of the clamp bar reacting to the glue and causing stains.

Together Again!

     Now it's just a waiting game to see how they will turn out.  For laminating panels together I prefer to use Gorilla Glue because it has never failed me and is easy to clean up.  It was a little tricky aligning the three pieces and I guess we'll see once it's dry how well things went.  Another new thing I'm using is the glue brush, the large black and blue thing next to the glue.  It's made from silicon and glue will not stick to it, at least that's the claim!  This brush is available from Rockler Hardware and after using it a few times my only complaint is that it's rather large but glue does peel right off of the bristles as advertised!

P.S.  The brush isn't quite what I expected.  It is extremely large and with the polyurethane glue it still hasn't fully cured in between the silicon bristles.  Matter of fact, my fingers are now permenantly stained!  Gorilla glue is about the only thing I used disposable gloves for because of that.  Anyway, not a fan of the brush; I'll probably stick with the little acid brushes. 

Dowels with a Lie-Nielsen Dowel Plate

End of the Day

     I've done a blog before on making dowels with the dowel plate sold by Lie-Nielsen but thought it was worth repeating now that I think I have my system down.  When I taught the class on plane making my students weren't all that enamored about forming their own dowels.  It's a process and from everything I've read, you can't expect to get perfectly smooth and round dowels but you will get accurately sized ones out of pretty much any species of wood you want.  In this picture is everything I used to make them other than the planer to get the wood down in size, in this instance 3/16".  I plan to use them to peg large finger joints for the box series I'm currently working on.
     When researching on the web much of what I found indicated that riving your wood and finding straight grained pieces was the way to go.  Riving is similar to how you would split firewood.  Well, I tried that but not too successfully -- ended up with quite a lot of wildly splintered pieces of wood!  Since I don't have an unlimited supply of material I chose to make squared pieces with the planer instead.  In the photo you can see that Cherry, Walnut, White Oak, and Purple Heart are the species used.
     The dowel sled is made from some MDF and has a V-groove running down the center.  With the stop on the bottom it functions just like a bench hook.  As you start to take the four sided blank and make it an octagon it wants to start moving all over the place.  The first edge is easy enough but as you take the corners off of the blank it gets a bit squirrely!  You have to keep in mind that you're not going to end up with a perfectly shaped dowel like you'd be able to buy.  Here's what I did; first of all I would place the blank in the V-groove:

Beginning of the Cut

     You hold the front of the blank in the groove while you start to skew the block plane towards the front.  It takes a bit of practice but you can get a rhythm going where the hand in the front slides forward while you move the plane to cut.  Then the trick is to move your hand to the back of the blank and plane until you reach the end.

Shifting Hand Position

     You can actually develop a rhythm to this, I found that 6 passes on each squared corner seemed to get me a good size.  Once the blank looks pretty decent the next thing I did was to use an old pencil sharpener:

Tapering the End

     This made it much easier to get it started in the dowel plate which is the next step.  I cut the blanks to roughly 5" or so and found that some would drive fine while others shattered.  Surprisingly, the White Oak was the easiest to drive through the plate, probably because it's a hard wood to begin with.

Driving them Through

     Through experience I've learned that a finish hammer works better than a rubber mallet.  When you have driven the dowel almost through the plate you use the next one to drive the first one out.  If you're interested in seeing how I made the holder for the dowel plate here's a link to that blog.  It's my second version and I'm pleased with how well it works.

Dovetails with a Slant

     In previous posts I've mentioned a plan to create a line of boxes to hone my skills and to market as well.  You know, have to make some money to feed my wood addiction.  In any case, here is an almost completed box I've been working on the past couple of days:

Design by:  Seat of the Pants!

     It still needs a handle of some sort, a sliding tray for the inside, and final planing, sanding, and finish.  I've been intrigued by cutting dovetails and then putting them into a piece that has some angles to it.  The dovetails themselves are in line with the side piece but by placing them in an angled block they appear to be slanted -- interesting optical illusion.
     The size of the box was determined by what I had laying around the shop:

Material Used & Practice Piece

     I had a small amount of Spalted Maple left from a stand up desk I built years ago which is what's used for the sides.  The Walnut is some of the scrap from the elliptical shelf project last month.  For starters, the 8/4 piece of Walnut was cut at a 15 degree angle with the panel raising jig.  I didn't realize it at the time but it's important to keep the off cut from that process, it's behind the practice piece.  The box is approximately 3" tall and 6" x 12".  The first step is to cut the tails for the dovetail joints.
     There is a technique called the 140 trick.  It's named that because a Stanley #140 skewed rabbet plane was used to cut a slight shoulder on the inside of the piece.  Not having one of those or the funds to purchase a pair of them from Lie-Nielsen I use this technique which I'm sure isn't OSHA approved:

Pay Attention = Very Doable

     I set the height of the blade on the tablesaw to the length of the dovetail.  Usually that's less than 1/2" or so and then it doesn't look quite as scary.  Because of this design the tails needed to be an inch and a half long.  This is cut on the inside of the board.  It'll help when you transfer the markings to the tail board and also hides any discrepancy you may have cutting them out.  My preference is to cut both sides at the same time:

Cutting Tails

 
     Even here you can see how the shoulder you created with the 140 trick gives you a definite stopping point.  Once the saw cuts were made it was on to the chisel work.

Removing Waste Between the Tails

  
     I was really surprised to find how hard the Spalted Maple is!  I figured that since the word spalt means diseased it would be fairly easy to chisel but not so!  Actually created a burr on the back of this chisel that needed to be honed away.  Once the tails were cut on all the sides it was time to transfer them to the sides and lay out the pins.

Transferring Tails

     Here's where keeping the off cut is important.  Since the piece now has one side flat and the other comes to a point you won't be able to secure it in the vise.  I've put chalk on the off cut piece to illustrate why it's important to keep.  Same goes for when you chop out the wood, that cut off piece is crucial for securing it to the bench while you work the chisels.
     Another thing I found to be helpful is to make a series of cuts in the waste part between the pins:

Extra Cuts Between Pins

     This made it a bit easier to remove the Walnut.  That's a lot of end grain to chop away!  Once the dovetails fit a groove was made in the sides to hold the plywood bottom and the box was assembled with Liquid Hide Glue.  The top is fairly complicated with several different levels rabbeted out.  So far, so good.  I used to always tell my students that you learn from your mistakes and I'm a bit smarter now!  The next one should go easier.  Here's another photo of this box with the lid removed so you can see all of the rabbeting required.  They were roughed out with a dado head then fine tuned with a block plane.

Parting Shot

The Last Jig

Panel Raising Jig

     Well, here it is; the last of the jigs I need to make.  This is the panel raising jig that's set at the angle of 15 degrees.  Nothing overly complicated so fairly straight forward to build.  I suppose it could have been adjustable to set the bevel for any angle but I really didn't want to get into that much detail.  Fifteen degrees seem to be the acceptable angle for raising panels.  If I ever need a lesser angle I could tilt the blade to change that pre-set 15 degrees.  For box lid that needs a small angle I'd just as soon use a block plane to do that.
     With every solution there comes another problem -- where the heck will I store all of these jigs I finished making?

There's an App, er; JIG for that!

Getting' Jiggy With It!

     Well, there it is; a workbench with some of the jigs I've spent the past couple of day's making.  Once when Adam and I were working in the shop and we needed sandpaper I pulled out my handy dandy sandpaper sizing jig.  Adam chuckled and said: "you've got a jig for everything!".  And you know, when you've been working with wood as long as I have it's pretty much true.  There's no sense in making a jig for something you do once or twice but if you plan on doing it more often a jig or fixture is the way to go.  That sandpaper jig?, you'd be surprised at how many students had detention with me at school and sized hundreds of sheets of that sandpaper!
     I've mentioned that the prospect of marketing my pistol cases is pretty good, I'll make the final determination when I go to the gun show this weekend.  In the process of doing that I decided to work on box making techniques and make some smaller, easier to sell projects.  Since the parts you work with making boxes are fairly small in size it's important to have ways to handle them in a safe manner.  As a prototype project I'm making a box that's about 4" x 6" and under 3" tall.  Trying to safely work pieces that small around a 10" tablesaw is not the way to go!
     What you see in the picture above, from left to right are:

1. Slot Miter Jig --- used to cut a slot in the corner of a mitered box
2. Large Bench Hook --- used to hold small pieces of material for planing
3. Shooting Board --- used to trim and square small pieces of wood, also made a 45 degree holder for truing up miters
4. Bench Hook --- an old standby that's definitely over built with dovetails!
5. Small Router Table --- clamps into the end vise, uses my small trim router

     I have one more jig in the plans, one to cut a raised panel or lid in this case.  Rather than tilt the blade on the tablesaw it's safer to make a jig that rides on the rip fence and angles the work instead.  That way you don't have to mess around with tilting and and re-adjusting the blade angle.
   
     The first step in the process was to cut the pieces at a 45 degree angle.  This was done with a miter saw, then the pieces were trued up on the shooting board:

Shooting Board -- Truing the Edge

     By setting up the stop block each piece is guaranteed to be the same width. I'm using some quarter sawn White Oak for this prototype.  Not shown is the fixture which holds the material at a 45 degree angle, that cleans up any tear out the miter saw may have left.  After this step, a groove was cut into the inside bottom of each piece on the new router table.  I didn't take a picture of that but I was able to clamp the crevice tool of the shopvac to it and capture most of the sawdust.
     A technique I've always wanted to try is where you use tape to assemble and hold mitered joints tight.  Clamping can be tricky with a small project like this.  The first step was to lay them face down and apply a piece of tape to the backs:

Packaging Tape aka Clamps!

     Next, the whole assembly is flipped over, glue is applied to the inside of the miters, and bottom is inserted into the groove and you simply align and tape it all up.  Know what?  it works!  After time for drying the tape was removed and, voila; you have an assembled box!

Removing Tape from Assembled Box

     As a decorative item the edges will have a slot cut into them.  Then a piece of contrasting wood, Walnut in this case, will be glued into that slot.  This serves as a decorative element and also reinforces the corner.  Miter joints are not the strongest since you're gluing end grain but they rarely fail.  There is a series of picture frames I used to do for Diane's water colors where I used this technique with Maple frames.  These were only an inch thick or so and required just a small fixture to hold them while cutting the slot.
   

Miter Slot Jig

The boxes are bigger than a picture frame so that calls for yet another jig.  If you can picture it, this sled rides on a couple of pieces of Poplar that are cut at a 45 degree angle.  Attached to them are two pieces of 3/4" MDF that forms a trough for the box to sit in.  By setting the rip fence at 3" (just a random number) and using a blade with a flat bottomed cut, as the sled is passed over the blade a nice slot is cut.  The piece of Walnut and the clamp is a simple stop to ensure the same location on all sides.  See the slots already cut on the top of the box?


     Once the slots were completed it was finally time to get back to that wonderfully quiet world of hand tools.  A piece of Walnut was selected that just need a bit of planing to be the correct thickness to fill the slot, it's about an eighth of an inch thick.  That's were the large bench hook and block plane came into play:

Sizing the Miter Keys

     This bench hook has a very thin stop at the end of it which holds the piece while taking a light cut.  I found that it was just as easy to hold the plane and basically pull the piece under it.  Once the thickness was correct each slot was cut at 45 degrees with the other bench hook and a Japanese style saw.  This bench hook has one side with a 45 degree guide (shown) and the opposite side is 90 degrees.  At this point, the splines are in the slots waiting for me to cut and plane them even with the box sides.  That's for tomorrow.




 

Finger Joint Jig -- Final Version?

     I've spent the last two days working on making a permanent, easy to adjust and set up, finger joint jig.  This will used on the tablesaw with an 8" Freud box joint cutter set.  Usually, if you just have one project to do it's no problem screwing a temporary fence to your miter gauge, banging it with a hammer to get the right fit, and cut the joints.  That's always worked in the past but I'm about 75% committed to making a small run of pistol cases and renting a table at a gun show coming to Las Vegas in September.  

      Not sure if I've ever talked about the pistol cases on the blog so here's a link to the website:    http://www.contemporarypistolcases.com/

    These cases will be assembled with box joints or finger joints.  The name of the joint is pretty much interchangeable since the corners have the appearance of interlaced fingers.  This design exposes a lot of face grain for gluing and is incredibly strong.  The trick is to consistently cut them and maintain the spacing.  A thirty-second of an inch one way or the other can make them too tight or too loose.  Before buying the Freud set I would use the dado blades but the width of the cut was apt to change each time depending on the positioning of the blades.  Hopefully, with the Freud cutter set, they will always be either 1/4" or 3/8" without any variation every time it's set up.  Time will tell on that one!
     Here's a shot of the jig I've spent careful time on:

Finger or Box Joint Jig for Tablesaw

     As you can tell, it rides in both miter gauge slots which will keep the cuts square and consistent.  The piece in the front is referred to as the carriage and it "carries" the material being cut.  The piece of MDF directly in line with the blade is a sacrificial piece to prevent blow out on the back side of the piece being cut. The MDF to the right of it is a mistake on my part!  Since the Freud set only cuts 1/4" and 3/8" wide joints I needed to make a carriage for each size.  The 3/8" one is off to the left side.
     The plans for this jig came from ShopNotes Tablesaw issue that I believe, was published in 2007.  The original plan called for using 3/4" plywood as runners in the miter slots with a platform between them that held the carriage.  This worked but I found that the plywood changed in thickness due to weather conditions and one time it would slide freely and the next it would bind.  I chose to re-engineer their design and use the ultra high molecular weight  polyethylene available from suppliers like Lee Valley.  I've used this for many sleds, fixtures, and jigs and love it!  It can be drilled and tapped and is stable and slick.  For this application it was tapped for 1/4" x 20 tpi machine screws.  Here's a better picture of the jig:

Side View of Jig

     The carriage is attached to the sled portion through slotted holes which allow me to adjust it to get the proper fit.  There are a two knobs and fender washers on the backside which tighten the carriage bolts used to keep it all together.  That's some 5/16" thick Walnut I used for the test set-up.
     As far as the pistol cases go, I was commissioned to make six of them a year or so ago for a neighbor.  He is an avid gun collector and used the cases for presentation, storage, and transportation.  Since the case will be built for a specific pistol it's important that I can accomplish that -- obviously!  I had a friend of mine make a tracing of one of his pistols and made this mock up for it:

Alder Pistol Panel

     For the final fitting all that's required is for the pistol owner to first place the pistol in the leather covered, foam recess.  You would then put the strap onto the snap, put a slight bit of pressure down on the pistol and mark the other end of the strap.  Once a pilot hole is drilled at the location the strap can be secured.  Repeat the process for the other strap and you know have an attractive and secure way to transport your pistol.  In time, the foam will conform to the ins and outs of the gun for a perfect, custom fit.
     Next weekend there will be a gun show at the South Point Casino here in Las Vegas and I plan to go and see what it's like.  I've visited a few other gun shows, scouting expeditions if you will, and think there is a market for the serious gun collector for pistol cases like mine.  I'll keep you posted -- wish me luck!