Small box making - methods & tools.

[Eshmiel]

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.

 

[Eshmiel]

Refining edges with a shooting board/plane.

Although the table saw gives geometrically correct edges they often have saw marks. A shooting plane and board can take off the saw marks and any other raggy bits to make perfect glue-able edges. A shooting board is most often used to make square and 45 degree mitred edges perfect. Longer 45 degree mitres need a donkey's ear instead of a flat board with a 45 degree fence. The three modes are shown here: short mitred; square; long mitred.

I keep my shooting board locked in a twin screw vise on the benchtop, with two hold-downs making sure the donkey's ear can't slip. The runway and workpiece supports are made of thin iroko sheet - hard, evenly thick and waxed to be very slippery. Various parts keep everything locked in the right place but have small adjustments possible to get perfect angles. The core fence part is a Veritas item that can be set and locked at various angles.

The plane can be set to take very thin shavings indeed - just enough to remove the saw marks without reducing the size of the workpiece by any significant amount. The following pics show the shavings and a mitred end that's been mostly smoothed but on which I've left the last remnant of the TS saw blade marks, as a comparison of the before & after condition of the edges. The smoothed edges make a very fine joint line indeed.

 

[Jacob]

Interesting.
Making boxes with mitred joints is the most difficult way, and not a strong joint as it relies entirely on the glue.
I used to make a lot for jackinaboxes. 6" cube with 6mm thick sides, beech or sycamore, 4mm top and bottom of contrasting dark wood - oak etc to whatever was to hand. 10 to 20 at a time.
The sides were joined with a tongue and groove, both cut on a home made mini circular saw - 6" dia blade on a "Picador" spindle, mounted on an ammo box and powered with a washing machine motor.
Tops/bottoms planted on. The longer sides with the slots, and the top/bottom were slightly over sized so that they could be planed back for a very neat join when the cube finished, with a No 3 or 4.
Last step was to saw off the top, about 10mm, and to sand the sawn faces of the open box and lid sides.
No clamps needed - the slots were tight enough to hold and the top/bottom were held by putting weight on top, and stacking them up. No special planes, no shooting boards etc
Later on did the same but with freehand dovetailed sides, otherwise much the same process. DTs all slightly over length to be planed back for neat finish.

 

[Eshmiel]

Interesting.
Making boxes with mitred joints is the most difficult way, and not a strong joint as it relies entirely on the glue.

Whilst its true that mitre joints, being rather end-grainish, can end up weak if the glue fails to do its thing, that failure is generally due to factors that can be overcome: not enough glue (the end grain can soak up a lot); ill-fitting surface; a timber that doesn't easily accept glue (which does include that old-growth pitch pine with its crystallised resin/tar).

First fix - make those mitred surfaces very close fitting with the shooting board/plane. Second fix - apply plenty of glue. Third fix - reinforce the join; I'll be using small splines glued into grooves made across the corners, using contrasting wood to make them decorative. I'll also be gluing a plywood bottom on to the carcass, which keeps the mitres together at the bottom of the carcass. The plywood edges will be hidden by small pitch pine footings glued all around the carcass & ply bottom edges.

Here's an example:

I used to make a lot for jackinaboxes. 6" cube with 6mm thick sides, beech or sycamore, 4mm top and bottom of contrasting dark wood - oak etc to whatever was to hand. 10 to 20 at a time.
The sides were joined with a tongue and groove, both cut on a home made mini circular saw - 6" did blade on a "Picador" spindle, mounted on an ammo box and powered with a washing machine motor.

I've used many joint-types to attach the corners of boxes and carcasses. The traditional dovetails (full and half-blind) and the finger joint - strong because of a large long-grain to long grain glue surface; and the DTs also have a mechanical clasp together. I've used splines to strengthen plain mitre joints too, as well as biscuits in thicker-sided carcases. Even a lock-mitre joint made with a router table has been employed. I once made a large maple plan chest for an artist friend using a geet big lock mitre bit to make the main carcass mitre joints. That went to New Zealnd and back and survived the shipping process, despite the drops and clashes!

I like plain-looking mitre joints for certain timbers, including that quarter-sawn pitch pine. It makes the lines look almost continuous around the corners. In fact, if one has a long plank of such stuff, the continuous-plank wrapped around the rectangle of the carcass can be even more effective with the right grain.

Tops/bottoms planted on. The longer sides with the slots, and the top/bottom were slightly over sized so that they could be planed back for a very neat join when the cube finished, with a No 3 or 4.

I too like to make some parts a tidge over-size then gradually pare them back to an exact fit. A plane, sometimes used on a shooting board can do a bit of that, as with perfecting those mitred surfaces. I'll be using small planes to perfect the edges and other parts as this pitch pine box progresses.

The table saw too can be used for sneaking up an a perfect fit by tenths of a millimetre per cut. Many refuse to accept that a table saw can take off only 0.1mm at a time but I do it with just about every project, using the micrometre adjusters on the Scheppach TS2500 rip or cross-cut fences. The next post will show an example when making housing joints to construct a 6-space divided to go in the pitch pine box with an interference fit. Pieces and joints cut to within 2mm oversize then reduced with ever-decreasing increments to a hairline fit.

Here's an example of such an insert on another box. The advantage of such an interference fit is that the dividers can be removed and replaced by a different arrangement, or nothing at all.

Last step was to saw off the top, about 10mm, and to sand the sawn faces of the open box and lid sides.
No clamps needed - the slots were tight enough to hold and the top/bottom were held by putting weight on top, and stacking them up. No special planes, no shooting boards etc
Later on did the same but with freehand dovetailed sides, otherwise much the same process. DTs all slightly over length to be planed back for neat finish.

I hope to make and picture another box, in due course, using finger joints for the corners. Rather than plane oversized fingers flush to the carcass, I'll instead leave them sticking out but chamfer them to make "cogs". Cogged carcasses using sticky-out fingers or dove tails & pins can be quite gothic, especially if one sticks on those rough-looking black iron hinges, clasps, handles and the like. I'll use this box to store the finger bones of my enemies.