The Small Box

I was bored, and decided I wanted to do something with some of the nice wood I had in my collection. I also wanted to do something with box joints. I had seen some videos showing how to make box joints with a router, and it looked like something I wanted to try. The advantage of a box joint is that it is very strong, because there are many different contact points for glue to hold. It is also quite attractive.

Box Joint

One video in particular worked well for me. The Make Something YouTube channel has instructions on how to make a jig for the router. What I needed next was something to build. Sitting at the kitchen table with my wife, we decide that a new box for our pens and paper that we keep at the table would be a good project for this. I told my wife what wood we had to work with, and she drew a sketch of what she wanted.

My wife's request. A sliding lid was not going to happen.

He idea was padauk (the red coloured wood) and the dark brown walnut. The lid would be padauk, as would the other long sides. Before making the box, I needed to make the jig.

The jig design isn't complicated. It's simply a sliding attachment that goes over my router table. The key to the design is the router bit. The design uses a fixed router bit size, and once it's setup for that size, you cannot change it later. I had an appropriate bit, so I then cut a piece of hard padauk that was the same size as the bit. From there, the rest was simple.

The simple sliding base of the jig

This shows the slot that the router bit made in the jig, and the pieces of padauk that match the thickness. 

The smaller pine block was positioned on the jig and that allowed the stepped alignment for wood to be cut. Cut with the router, step the wood over the small padauk piece, and cut again. This shows my test example.

Once the router jig was tested, I decided it was time to work on building the box. I planned out my cuts for my wood, and proceeded to cut them wrong. I guess that isn't quite what happened. I cut the padauk in the sizes that I wanted the walnut - and didn't have enough padauk to start over. So the colours would all be reversed. Brown lid, bottom and long sides, with reddish boards for the ends. Oh well.

After cutting the wood to the wrong dimensions. This is what I had available for the box.

How it will line-up once assembled...sort of.

I ran the boards through my planer a bunch of times to get everything down to 1/2". It was then that I realized that my boards weren't perfectly flat. When wobbly boards go through a planer, they come out as thinner wobbly boards. I hadn't realized they weren't perfectly flat before putting them through and had removed a bunch of their thickness, and a planner won't fix that unless you use a planner sled. I didn't feel like setting that up, so I decided to use my router sled. This would allow my router to slide above the board and give one side a perfectly flat surface. I then flipped it and did the same thing on the other side. Done. All my pieces were the same thickness and perfectly flat. Each board got a good sanding to remove the scratch marks left in the surface by the router bit.

The next part was my favourite. The box joint jig was actually fun to use and the result was amazing. Line up the edge of your board against the small starting bit, then slide it over the router. Hop the wood over the starting bit and cut the next notch. Complete the full board, then move on the other matching board. Use an offset for the start of the next board (as explained in the video I linked above) and continue. The pieces were a little too tight on my first pass - they wouldn't slide into each other initially. I ran them all over the router a second time, which seemed to remove a hair width of wood on this second pass. This was enough for the pieces to fit well.

First project piece using the box joint jig

They fit so well! The extra bit that extends beyond the join is intentional, and gets sanded off.

The 4 sides were all run over the jig twice and were assembled. A dry fit (putting the pieces together without glue) is essential to ensure that it will all work well when the glue is present. 

The beautiful mess left over from the test pieces, and the ones for the box

Time to assemble all four sides!

Here is where I got distracted. I was paying very close attention to getting the pieces fit tight on all four corners. What I forgot to check was that my corners were 90° angles. The result was a bit of a rhombus. It isn't apparent from all angles, but I know that this flaw is there. It's a learning experience and I'll remember for the next project!

Once the glue dried, I used a flush-cut router bit to nip off the bits that were extending out the sides. One issue I had with this was that some of my wood was prone to chipping. This happened in many places and would need to be corrected. Fortunately, I kept some sawdust from my sanding, with the dust segregated between the two woods. I was able to make a walnut wood-glue slurry that I could fill the chip-out gaps with. After that dried, it was sanded and matched the walnut perfectly.

Walnut sawdust

So the corners were sanded smooth. The next task was to glue the bottom to the frame. 

I need more clamps. This was all the small clamps I had! I need more clamps.

Base glued on. I see some dried glue that will need to be sanded in a difficult place!

When the base dried, the flush-cut router bit was used to trim the base to the exact size of the frame. I couldn't have done this accurately any other way because my frame wasn't perfectly square. It worked out well though, with patience and many light passes over the router. After the base was trimmed to fit, I decided to add a chamfered edge (45° angle) to all the corners. To do that, I would need the top to be in place first. I would have the same challenge as the bottom - it wouldn't match perfectly unless I attached it and used a flush-cut router bit. My wife informed me that she hates hinges on boxes, so I would need to use a lid that simply fit on top, slightly recessed. So, a hot glue gun was used to affix the lid to the box. Once the hit glue dried, I ran the box with lid over the router and the lid was trimmed to match the box. I then swapped bits and added a chamfered edge to all the corners.

Peeling the hot glue off the edge of the box. This is ideal, because the glue comes off with a fingernail, and leaves no stain in the wood. It's perfectly temporary.

Chamfered edge and the chamfer bit

Starting to look pretty good. All sharp corners had chamfered edges.

Next stage was the rabbet that would need to be added. Rabbets are channels that are cut at the edge of a board. I would be adding rabbets to the underside of the lid, so it would sit on and slightly in the frame. The router was used and my router fence was aligned so that approximately 1/2" of wood would be removed from the edge, about a 1/8" deep.

The lid with the box, after cutting the rabbets under the lid.

The lid fits the box perfectly

The box was all sanded smooth with 220 grit sandpaper. The glue that was seen on the inside corners was really tough to sand (because of the placement and the tight corner). I couldn't get all of the glue removed, so my wife used her pencil crayons and coloured over the lightly coloured glue. The pencil crayons matched the wood perfectly and hid the glue. The next step for the box would be clear coat of Varathane, which would seal in the pencil crayon!

The top of the box was smooth and bare. My wife decided to add a design to it with her woodburning tools. I gave her free reign on the design.

B for Bouchard!

Looks nice! Will look nicer with a finishing top coat.

I had one more thing to add before the top coat. My brand!

I like that branding iron.

I used the same clear varathane that was used on the Plant stand. It looked great there, so I figured it would work here also.

Adding finishing top coat

This project took 1 week to complete, after work hours and during lunch breaks. I used only leftover woods that I already had, and ended up with a great jig and a really nice box.

My wife takes better pictures of my projects than I do !