Last gasp today.
The fifth box is slightly different as it needs a central divider to make two compartments. Standard housing techniques but on a small scale for a piece of plywood. I marked out the sides with a square and a knife, then sawed the sides. There's very little room at the far end for the saw to work in - barely 6mm - so I switched to a little Japanese pull saw. I've never explored Japanese tools much but I bought this for dovetailing years ago before I knew where to get a proper old fashioned dovetail saw. It worked ok.
Then it was a bit of chiselling
and finishing off with a router.
With the box made up, I adjusted the grooves and the ply to get a positive fit that left the divider removable. The margin between too tight and too loose is tiny - the final adjustments were done by sanding.
This shot is for Mike G and shows the last box getting its outsides tidied up after the glue had set, just to prove that it is possible to plane pine, even pine with knots in. I used this nice little No 3 for all the planing on this project.
With all the boxes planed and sanded I moved outside to do the finishing. According to posts on here, spirit based sanding sealer is based on shellac and is ok to use as knotting. I reckon it's a better choice on a project like this than the very dark brown knotting which looks a bit odd under varnish - time will tell.
The sealer was followed by two coats of water based polyurethane which dried nice and quickly in the warm sunshine.
Here are the money shots of them all lined up on the bench - they are designed to fit into an awkward triangular space, hence the graduated sizes.
I've really enjoyed making these. I've been working at them pretty solidly for about ten days, which I know is absurdly slow by all normal criteria, but I've got quicker and more confident at cutting dovetails which while not prize-winning perfect are reasonably strong and straight.
I've sorted out my own preferences for marking and cutting (2H pencil, proper dovetail saw, chop out the waste, pare.)
It was satisfying that they all fitted from the saw without that horrible stage where you can't tell where the problem is and remove wood from the wrong places - maybe that is just the great virtue of soft, compressible wood. And I got my head round the odd little mitre cut to hide the groove, without cutting any of the mitres the wrong way round.
The only downside is that my right shoulder hurts a bit!
The fifth box is slightly different as it needs a central divider to make two compartments. Standard housing techniques but on a small scale for a piece of plywood. I marked out the sides with a square and a knife, then sawed the sides. There's very little room at the far end for the saw to work in - barely 6mm - so I switched to a little Japanese pull saw. I've never explored Japanese tools much but I bought this for dovetailing years ago before I knew where to get a proper old fashioned dovetail saw. It worked ok.
Then it was a bit of chiselling
and finishing off with a router.
With the box made up, I adjusted the grooves and the ply to get a positive fit that left the divider removable. The margin between too tight and too loose is tiny - the final adjustments were done by sanding.
This shot is for Mike G and shows the last box getting its outsides tidied up after the glue had set, just to prove that it is possible to plane pine, even pine with knots in. I used this nice little No 3 for all the planing on this project.
With all the boxes planed and sanded I moved outside to do the finishing. According to posts on here, spirit based sanding sealer is based on shellac and is ok to use as knotting. I reckon it's a better choice on a project like this than the very dark brown knotting which looks a bit odd under varnish - time will tell.
The sealer was followed by two coats of water based polyurethane which dried nice and quickly in the warm sunshine.
Here are the money shots of them all lined up on the bench - they are designed to fit into an awkward triangular space, hence the graduated sizes.
I've really enjoyed making these. I've been working at them pretty solidly for about ten days, which I know is absurdly slow by all normal criteria, but I've got quicker and more confident at cutting dovetails which while not prize-winning perfect are reasonably strong and straight.
I've sorted out my own preferences for marking and cutting (2H pencil, proper dovetail saw, chop out the waste, pare.)
It was satisfying that they all fitted from the saw without that horrible stage where you can't tell where the problem is and remove wood from the wrong places - maybe that is just the great virtue of soft, compressible wood. And I got my head round the odd little mitre cut to hide the groove, without cutting any of the mitres the wrong way round.
The only downside is that my right shoulder hurts a bit!
