rubber bands, hinges and clamps...

I have an article in this month's Fine Woodworking on selection of hinges. It's issue 259 February 2017. The article begins on p. 50 and can also be found online at Finewoodworking.com/259. In addition, on page 17 of the same issue I offer simple shop made corner clamps.

A reader asked about the large rubber bands that I use to assemble boxes in my books and DVD on box making. At one time, I simply went into our local office supply store and bought the largest sizes they had in one pound boxes, without paying much attention to the numeric size. But our office supply store closed last year, and ordering online requires precise information.

Here is what I recommend. Go to Amazon.com and order rubber bands in sizes 105, 107 and 109.These may be a bit large for some of the smallest boxes you would make, but those can be assembled using more common off the shelf rubber bands that would find in your desk drawer.

a simple lesson in design.

The boxes here present a simple design lesson and were made by one of my students, Dan Burke, at Marc Adams School of Woodworking. The lesson is this. Use what you know how to do to share elements of significance from your own life.

As good as your craftsmanship might be, if you are not telling something of your own story, your work might be missing something.

Dan and his wife had acquired the tiles embedded in the lids of these boxes at the Indigenous People's Museum in Quito, Equador. So the tiles became the focal point of the work, in more ways than one. They had the experience of enjoying another craftsman's work enough to buy it and bring it home. The other craftsman's work is made even more beautiful and useful through Dan's application of skill.

You can practice the principles and elements of design, and learn the useful relationship between all the colors in the world, but work is made more lovely still, when it reflects in full measure, the human being that made it.

The excellently crafted boxes are the frame surrounding the experience.