Eshmiel
Established Member
In other threads the matter of box making tools and techniques often comes up. Perhaps a thread for posters to both offer their own methods but also to ask for advice might be useful? We could try it and see.
Some like to use machines and others like to do it all by hand. I like a mixture myself, being too lazy to resaw large pieces into smaller pieces by hand or to plane stuff flat & square with only a scribe and a hand plane. I prefer to keep the hand tools and jigs for the refinement stages.
I have a friend who recently learnt how to make basic carcasses in me shed. He made two pitch pine shoe racks from some old-growth pitch pine and some 3/4" plywood. The pitch pine was got free (it came out of a demolished old factory) and there was some left. I've cut the leftovers to make a dozen or more quarter-sawn small planks 13mm thick to make small boxes - another learning experience for the shoe rack maker. I'm making an example to show him the stages and techniques.
The small planks were created with a table saw and a planer-thicknesser. The planks have been sized for the box sides with the table saw, including the mitre cuts on their ends as the box corners will be mitred then splined. First pics are of the final sizing step. Next pics will show refinement of the mitres and the edges of the box sides using planes and a shooting board with a donkey's ear mounted on it. The box carcass has the classic 1:1.6 ratio of short to long sides. Many options for lid, footings and inserts are possible, as are various functional parts such as the knob and hinges. I'll encourage the shoe rack maker to try the making of a wooden knob and also wooden hinges.
The table saw is a Sheppach TS 2500 with a sliding carriage and a 40 tooth combination blade. An 80 tooth blade can do better, in terms of making glue-ready edges but I wanted to refine these box parts with planes and the shooting board so the 40 toother will do. The saw nevertheless makes perfect 45 degree mitres without any problem. The planes will just smooth out the saw marks and ensure there's no raggy ends.
The clamps that're used are those corner clamps made by Veritas. I have three sets of them, cutting some of the long threaded bars included to make more bars of variable shorter lengths to suit different sizes of box. They're very effective in that it's easy to shuffle the four box sides about to get perfect alignment before the clamps are fully tightened.
Some like to use machines and others like to do it all by hand. I like a mixture myself, being too lazy to resaw large pieces into smaller pieces by hand or to plane stuff flat & square with only a scribe and a hand plane. I prefer to keep the hand tools and jigs for the refinement stages.
I have a friend who recently learnt how to make basic carcasses in me shed. He made two pitch pine shoe racks from some old-growth pitch pine and some 3/4" plywood. The pitch pine was got free (it came out of a demolished old factory) and there was some left. I've cut the leftovers to make a dozen or more quarter-sawn small planks 13mm thick to make small boxes - another learning experience for the shoe rack maker. I'm making an example to show him the stages and techniques.
The small planks were created with a table saw and a planer-thicknesser. The planks have been sized for the box sides with the table saw, including the mitre cuts on their ends as the box corners will be mitred then splined. First pics are of the final sizing step. Next pics will show refinement of the mitres and the edges of the box sides using planes and a shooting board with a donkey's ear mounted on it. The box carcass has the classic 1:1.6 ratio of short to long sides. Many options for lid, footings and inserts are possible, as are various functional parts such as the knob and hinges. I'll encourage the shoe rack maker to try the making of a wooden knob and also wooden hinges.
The table saw is a Sheppach TS 2500 with a sliding carriage and a 40 tooth combination blade. An 80 tooth blade can do better, in terms of making glue-ready edges but I wanted to refine these box parts with planes and the shooting board so the 40 toother will do. The saw nevertheless makes perfect 45 degree mitres without any problem. The planes will just smooth out the saw marks and ensure there's no raggy ends.
The clamps that're used are those corner clamps made by Veritas. I have three sets of them, cutting some of the long threaded bars included to make more bars of variable shorter lengths to suit different sizes of box. They're very effective in that it's easy to shuffle the four box sides about to get perfect alignment before the clamps are fully tightened.
