A simple box

A great deal of thought can go into making what might appear to be a simple wooden box. The collection of idea in the image above were gathered from my students at the beginning of my weekend class with the Woodworkers of Western Ohio, WOW. You can click on the image for a larger view.

WOW!

WOW, Woodworkers of Western Ohio will be hosting a two day box making seminar in Dayton this Saturday and Sunday, March 6&7, 2010. I will be their guest, demonstrating a wide range of box making techniques. If you are in the Dayton area and would like to attend, please email me for more information. Costs are $45.00 for members of WOW and $60.00 for non-members.
Another wow, John Gasser sent photos of boxes he had completed from my books and also photos inspired by another author. Great job on all counts.

Lucy's toolkit

Lucy's tool kit, which I made in response to the near complete absence of tools as she entered college will finally be published by agreement with Woodworker's Journal. This will be the first article I've had in Woodworker's Journal since the late 1990's, and they were the first magazine to publish my project articles. I want to welcome myself back. This is an article they published about my work in in 1996.

perfect butt hinge installation

This is a cross post from the Wisdom of the Hands, but can be used with large boxes. Butt hinges have been a craftsman's headache for years, decades, centuries. There is the hard way, using, ruler, square and marking gauge for layout, and chisels for carefully cutting the hinge mortise. It is demanding work, and each one offers innumerable opportunities to screw up. Then there is my technique that makes it easy and is featured in the April issue of Fine Woodworking that arrived in today's mail. A simple shop made jig allows you to rout hinge mortise after hinge mortise, each in perfect depth and position. I wrote the article and Matt Kenny, editor, took the photos of my process in the Taunton wood shop.

I believe my techniques for installing butt hinges are my most original contributions to the techniques used in woodworking. I use the router table and story stick on projects small enough to fit on the table, and then this simple router jig for large projects. The April issue of Fine Woodworking will be arriving in the magazine section of your favorite book store this week.

Box Maker's Bonanza

Popular Woodworking Books is selling a CD compilation, Box Making Bonanza, containing my first two books with a third by author Jim Stack for a combined price of $23.99. It's not the same as having real books, but offers the content for a lower price and also allows you to print out pages for more convenient use in the woodshop.

The image below is from my much younger days in the wood shop.

American Woodworker, Feb/March 2010

I have two articles in this month's (Feb/March 2010) American Woodworker magazine, which should be available in the book stores soon. One article is about making a box using the Gifkins jig for the dovetails and wooden hinges. The other is about making a very simple router table, which you will also see in use in making the Gifkins box. Both articles may be useful to box makers.

mounting hinges on the back of the box?

A reader wrote asking if the story stick method of cutting hinge mortises can work for hinges mounted on the back of a box. Of course. You follow the same story stick technique described in my Taunton box making books or in my articles in Woodcraft or Fine Woodworking. The only difference is that you lay the box parts with the back sides down on the router table rather than the inside edges. It is always a test of confidence to do such things. What if you have a finished inlaid box like my reader? You can get a lot more confidence about the process by using scrap pieces to test the method. I happen to be the one who figured out how to do this in the first place and it still amazes me that it works. Cut pieces of wood the same length as the box and use them to go through the motions and test your set-up before you rout the mortises in the actual box.

Another reader asked whether the application of Danish Oil could be causing a 1/16" gap to appear between the lid and base of the box. But no. Danish oil will have no impact on the fit of box parts or the mysterious appearance of gaps. My suspicion is that the top panels are being glued in place, leaving no opportunity for expansion and contraction to take place, so when the top panel dries, it shrinks, applying tension to the sides of the lid, causing it to warp away from the base at the front of the box. Any wood wider than 3 inches should never be glued down to wood going cross grain. It is an invitation to disappointment. Instead, allow wide panels the opportunity to expand and contract with changes in humidity.