Yet another (mostly) hand-tool box WIP

[Dr.Al]

In a bid to put off figuring out the final design for my in-progress garden table, I thought I'd make another box. This then, is yet another box WIP. It'll be what has become my usual approach: hand tools for almost everything: if all goes according to plan the only exception will be a bit of resawing on the bandsaw (as I don't really enjoy resawing by hand).

The box (which is probably going to be a pencil case) is going to be based extremely loosely on the traditional Japanese toolbox. I say loosely as those toolboxes were typically made with extremely simple construction, relying on nails to hold everything together. I'm not going to use nails: I'm going to try to do everything with hand-cut wood joints.

The wood I'm going to use for the project is probably going to be this:

The long plank is roughly 20 mm thick Ash and the short block is roughly 50 mm square Wenge. The reason I say "probably" is having planed some of the Ash I'm already getting a bit fed up of it: it smells lovely when you plane it but the grain is all over the place.

I started by chopping the Ash up into a few pieces:

I then planed two sides of the Wenge with a #4½ to get them flat and perpendicular to each other:

The Ash had previously been planed (it was an off-cut from the shelf unit I made recently), but it had moved a little since then and had a very, very slight bow, so I planed that out. After starting with the #4½ I decided to switch to the low-angle smoothing plane (with a blade with a 50° bevel giving a 62° cutting angle) as it was tearing out in a few places along the length:

Those pieces also got one edge planed square to the face and then they went over to the bandsaw to be chopped up. Before:

After:

The Wenge also got chopped up, but after each resawing cut, I took it back to the bench for a couple of passes with the #4½ to remove the saw marks before taking it back to the bandsaw for the next cut.

All that planing and bandsawing left me with a pile of wood with lots of pieces just over 10 mm thick and some thinner off-cuts:

That's it for now: I haven't got much to show so far, but one has to start somewhere!

 

[Woodbloke]

Be very careful with that Wenge stuff; it's nasty, horrible splintery stuff. I've used it once years ago and I won't touch it again - Rob

 

[Dr.Al]

Be very careful with that Wenge stuff; it's nasty, horrible splintery stuff. I've used it once years ago and I won't touch it again - Rob

Eek, thanks for the warning. What with the ash and the wenge I might be calling this the awful wood box

This is my first experience of Wenge. It planed and sawed very nicely but that's literally all I've done with it so far.

 

[DaveL]

If you get a wenge splinter make shure you get all of it out, it will turn septic very quickly if left in..

 

[AJB Temple]

Hmm. I have quite a decent stock of top quality long and wide Wenge planks. Some of them spectacularly grained and others almost black. I agree that the splinters are unpleasant, so I wear anti penetration work gloves when putting it through the PT. After that it is pretty much fine. It takes a finish extremely well and doesn't appear to fade.

 

[Dr.Al]

I haven't been getting much time in the workshop lately, but I have made a bit of progress. I started by using an interchangeable head marking gauge I've got, fitting a pencil lead in place and marking a consistent width, as big as possible but with all the bark removed:

I then sawed the bark off.

All the bits then got planed to thickness (9 mm), using my new toy for the well-behaved boards like the wenge slices...

... but resorting to a 62° cutting angle Veritas bevel-up smoothing plane for some of the ash bits. Once everything was thicknessed, I took two of the ash bits and sawed and then planed them down to 52 mm width and I also planed one of the off-cut slices of ash down to 5 mm thick: that one will form the box lid in due course:

The 52 mm wide parts, destined to be the sides of the box, got shot to the same length (a bit under 250 mm I think, but I was just aiming for them both being the same rather than going for a particular dimension):

I then ploughed a groove along the bottom edge of each side piece. I did this with my Stanley #45, using a home-made 5 mm plough plane blade. The groove is 5 mm wide, 4 mm deep and offset 4 mm from the base of the box. To plough the groove I used a "sticking board" that I made several years ago and had forgotten all about until I recently unearthed it when digging through some plywood offcuts - it worked really well:

To cut the rebates in the base piece, I decided to use my #10 rebate plane. This doesn't have an integrated fence, so I clamped a lump of ash on top of the base piece and registered the side of the rebate plane on the edge of the clamping piece. For the first rebate, I did this with the board clamped on the edge of the bench (so I was planing right-handed but with the grain):

With hindsight it might have been easier to do it with the board hanging off the edge of the bench and planing left-handed, but it worked just fine like that. To plane the other rebate I had the board hanging off the edge of the bench (which was much easier for checking progress), but this made clamping a bit awkward:

I bought two of those iron holdfasts a year or two ago when someone was selling them off fairly cheaply. I've used them a few times but they're a lot more limited than the ratcheting sort that you can see holding the left-hand end of the board. I imagine that when I eventually upgrade to a bigger workshop and can have free space under a bench then the holdfasts will work really well, but at the moment I'm limited to a very small subset of the bench holes and many of them even need adjustments (for example in this case I had to completely remove one of the drawers to give the leg of the holdfast somewhere to go). The big advantage of the holdfasts over the ratcheting ones is that they have a much longer reach, which was needed in this case as I didn't have any conveniently located dog holes.

The advantage of having the base piece hanging off the end of the bench while cutting the rebate is that I could very easily check progress and get a really good fit (note that this test fit was done with the side piece upside down, but that shouldn't affect the result if I've done it right!):

I could then test fit the three pieces together. This was the point that I realised it would have been sensible to shoot the base piece to length at the same time as shooting the sides:

Now that the rebate has been cut, shooting the ends will inevitably mean an unsupported exit point for the shooting plane (unless I made an over-complicated custom fence!). To avoid break-out, I used a knife to mark the intended length of the base piece and then used the same knife to cut a chamfer leading up to that length mark:

That chamfer gave the edge a bit of protection and I could safely shoot the base to length:

Apart from a quick test fit, that's as far as I've got to date:

The next job will be to start working on the end pieces (which will be made out of Wenge). They're going to be housed into the three pieces you see in the above photo, but I'm also going to have some tenons going through the side pieces so that the end of the Wenge pieces will be visible on the long side face. I've never tried to cut a through-mortice-and-tenon without having a wedge to take up any gaps so this could be an interesting challenge!

 

[Dr.Al]

I had 45 minutes free before an appointment this evening, so I thought I'd have a go at cutting the housing joints. I shot the ends of the wenge pieces square, then cut and shot them down to be 6 mm wider than the box. I then used my edge distance gauge thing to mark 10 mm in from each end of each of the sides (which had previously been shot to the same length):

That mark was then squared across the inside face...

... and the wenge pieces could then be used to make another knife line the right distance away:

I then assembled the three ash box pieces with some clamps to hold them in place and transferred the knife marks on the sides onto the base:

It was then just a case of taking the waste out with the router plane (down to a depth of 2 mm), reinforcing the knife lines every now and then:

With that, the four box parts could be test fitted:

It should be obvious from the photo that, while the wenge pieces fit into the housings, the sides don't go fit with the base. That's because the wenge pieces have been cut to be 6 mm longer than the total width of the base as I'm planning to make some mortice-and-tenon joints (with the tenons sticking 3 mm out of the side of the box). That's the next job (and is a little daunting!)

 

[Mike G]

I've made that type of joint a few times Al, and let me tell you about the problem you are about to encounter. You are going to find it extremely awkward to get marks down into the bottom of the groove to define the mortice, and then transfer them accurately to the other side. Or vice versa. The last time I did it was for a bookcase, so the scale was a lot bigger......but it was a tusk tenon, not a wedged tenon, so had to be spot-on. They weren't all perfect.

Mike, typing with one hand only, as the other had a little encounter with a spinning planer blade today.....

 

[Dr.Al]

I've made that type of joint a few times Al, and let me tell you about the problem you are about to encounter. You are going to find it extremely awkward to get marks down into the bottom of the groove to define the mortice, and then transfer them accurately to the other side. Or vice versa.

Thanks Mike; yes the thought had occurred to me that it might be difficult. I've had an idea of how to do it, but we'll see whether it works! Gulp!

The last time I did it was for a bookcase, so the scale was a lot bigger......but it was a tusk tenon, not a wedged tenon, so had to be spot-on. They weren't all perfect.

I'd be very surprised if these are spot on! It'll be my first time doing a through tenon without wedges.

Mike, typing with one hand only, as the other had a little encounter with a spinning planer blade today.....

Eeek. Hope the damage isn't too bad and heals quickly. A good advert for hand tools!

 

[Cabinetman]

Hope it was only a very little encounter Mike, those things can give very bad wounds.
Can’t say I’ve ever done the contentious tenons from a housing joint, presumably forewarned you need to do the small square mortices and tenons first and then cut the housings? But that’s probably not easy to get perfect either.
In this case when the strength of the added MTs isn’t needed really the tenon stubs could be faked and added to the outside afterwards, or maybe that isn’t Cricket?

 

[Dr.Al]

Can’t say I’ve ever done the contentious tenons from a housing joint, presumably forewarned you need to do the small square mortices and tenons first and then cut the housings? But that’s probably not easy to get perfect either.

Too late: I've already cut the housings. I didn't realise they were contentious. Why cut the M&T first? It felt to me like it would be easier to do that second. I'll obviously need to be careful chopping through to avoid break-out because of the back being unsupported, but I thought that having the housing there should help with aligning the mortices.

In this case when the strength of the added MTs isn’t needed really the tenon stubs could be faked and added to the outside afterwards, or maybe that isn’t Cricket?

I don't think I could quite bring myself to do that

 

[Woodbloke]

I've made that type of joint a few times Al, and let me tell you about the problem you are about to encounter. You are going to find it extremely awkward to get marks down into the bottom of the groove to define the mortice, and then transfer them accurately to the other side. Or vice versa. The last time I did it was for a bookcase, so the scale was a lot bigger......but it was a tusk tenon, not a wedged tenon, so had to be spot-on. They weren't all perfect.

Mike, typing with one hand only, as the other had a little encounter with a spinning planer blade today.....

Mike's bang on the money with this one Dr.Al. What you're attempting to do with a combination of housing and through stub tenons is 'ard, made even more so because the box is small. As you've probably no doubt found out, the smaller the project the more difficult it sometimes is to make. I've made plenty of wedged stub tenons before and even on a large frame they're difficult and require very accurate marking out and cutting. Were it my little box, I'd do either housings (as you've done) or stub tenons, but not a combination of the two. 'Over egging the pudding' is possibly a phrase that springs to mind, but more power to your elbow if you can do both - Rob

 

[Dr.Al]

Ah well, we'll see how it turns out! Thanks for all the warnings.

As you probably know by now, I often choose projects not because of wanting to achieve a particular end result but because I want to challenge myself and learn how to do some of this complicated joinery. If it doesn't work out well then hopefully I'll learn something along the way (and, being a little box, it doesn't waste much wood!)

I still haven't worked out how I'm going to join the lid pieces together, but I think I'll worry about that one when I've found out whether the tenons are going in the bin or not!

 

[Dr.Al]

The next job was to get on with the mortice and tenons. To simplify marking up, I decided to start by clamping the test assembly in the vice (adjusted such that the bottom of the sides were in line with the base with the ends pushed into the housings in the base). I could then plane the tops of the wenge end pieces to be flush with the top of the sides. That would allow me to reference that edge when marking the cut lines. This photo was taken after flushing the right-hand end piece and before doing the left-hand one:

For the sides of the mortices, I used some knife "nicks" to transfer the housing positions around the bottom of the sides (sorry for the blurry photo):

I then transferred those marks up the outside faces using a light touch with a pencil:

My mortice gauge was set up to have the wheels set apart by roughly the thickness of the wenge end pieces. I'm aiming for a roughly square mortice, but it's not critical (and the two wenge pieces are ever so slightly different in thickness so I just went for an approximate average). I then moved the two cutters (now clamped together) out such that the one nearest the fence was 14 mm away from the fence and then I could reference off the top edge of the side piece and mark the first two tenon walls (and reinforce those marks with a pencil to make them a bit easier to see):

I could then do the same thing for the inside face...

... and the end of the wenge end piece (with hindsight, it would have been better to cover the end in masking tape first to make these lines more visible):

I then made a very light mark with one of the wheels of the mortice gauge but this time with it referenced off the bottom edge of a side piece. I could then use that mark as the basis for extending the pair of wheels out such that I could mark that same point but referencing off the top again:

That got repeated on all mortices (inside and out) and all tenons. That gave me the limits of the mortice so I could go over the pencil lines with a knife in the relevant areas:

Now that I had the squares defined, I decided to drill the bulk of the waste out. To make that easier, I used the corners of the squares as reference points and knifed a small cross in the middle of each box:

After pushing an awl into the middle of each cross, I drilled them out 7 mm (the squares are about 9 mm on each side, so that gave 1 mm all around as a safety margin):

For each mortice, I started with a 6 mm chisel to get close to (but not up to) the lines, then switched to an 8 mm chisel for the final cuts. This photo shows one completed mortice and one that's only had the 6 mm chisel stage:

For the tenons, I considered sawing directly to the lines (which is what I now do with dovetail joints). However, the ends of these tenons are going to protrude through the sides and I figured that a chisel cut would look better than a saw cut, so I sawed a little way away from the lines:

For the cross-cuts I just sawed to the line: the shoulder line will be hidden within the housing so it's not the end of the world if it isn't perfect.

That left the middle section...

... which I chopped out with a 3 mm chisel:

I then used a bigger chisel (18 mm I think, but maybe 16 mm) to cut to the lines:

With that done, I could do a test fit of my first ever protruding tenon:

The corners of the protruding bits will get chamfered at some point, but apart from that the joint is done. I was really pleased with that for a first attempt.

I then finished off all the others and could dry assemble the box base:

This was the worst one of the four joints - I think there's a bit of a gap underneath the bottom tenon, but it's very hard to see (it might be clearer in daylight, but worst case I can probably put a small off-cut of ash in the gap):

This was probably the best:

Overall, I was really pleased with how that went and it all seemed very straightforward. The joints went together with a bit of light tapping which felt about right for a strong joint.

The next thing to do is to start to think about how the top pieces are going to be held together. More on that soon...

 

[AndyT]

Looking good. That's a style of joint I've still never attempted, but I like the way you're going about it.

 

[AJB Temple]

Very nice. Accurate work to be proud of and the wenge looks great.

Mike - hope your hand is OK. Was a bit shocked to hear of that encounter.

 

[Mike G]

Well done Al. Good joints. Now that you've done yours, I'll tell you of the method I settled on after doing a few on the bookcase I mentioned. Having already housed out for the grooves I couldn't do mortice-tenon-housing in that order, which would probably be the best answer. What I did was cut the tenons, and with my reference edges perfectly square, and my tenons perfectly straight, I used the tenon board, aligned with the reference edge on the mortice board, to make a knife mark on both sides for the mortices. In much the same way as one uses a tail board to mark out for cutting a pin board when dovetailing. Then drill out the bulk of the waste and then work in half way from both sides with a chisel.

On the housed-out side I stood the board end-on in the groove, and used a square to align the edges.

 

[Mike G]

Mike - hope your hand is OK. Was a bit shocked to hear of that encounter.

Sore as hell, Adrian, and preventing me from doing pretty much anything at all. It could have been worse.......I've taken 3 or 4mm off the tip of my ring finger, left hand.

You aren't as shocked as I was! Thanks for the good wishes.

 

[Dr.Al]

The next things I need to think about are the top pieces. These sit on top of the sides and ends. Traditionally they would be held in place with glue and nails. While I'm going to use glue, I'd like to replace the nails with some form of joinery. This is the best idea I've come up with so far, but I'm certainly open to ideas:

That CAD model only considers the join between the sides of the box and the components that are attached to the sides. There's also the lid, which is (unsurprisingly) a separate assembly:

The lid is made up of four pieces: a the main lid "sheet" and three blocks that have the grain at 90° to the base. The joint between the wenge and ash cross-pieces on the right-hand side will just be glue (the wenge piece is just decorative - I could have just made the lid out of three bits of ash). Another view of the lid:

At the moment I'm not sure what to do about joining the cross pieces to the lid "sheet". Again, traditionally this would have been done with nails but I'm not going to do that. The only thought I've had so far is to put a couple of (wenge?) dowels through each cross piece. If I do that, it might look better to also have similar dowels going through the ones attached to the body (possibly just dowels into blind holes so they're purely aesthetic).

I'd welcome any ideas.

 

[Mike G]

I worry about the dovetails holding the end-pieces onto the top of the box. They will leave the grain of the side pieces very vulnerable at the ends of the box......particularly as when you bash the wedge in the forces go into trying to push those top pieces off the box. I think this needs a re-think.

 

[Dr.Al]

I worry about the dovetails holding the end-pieces onto the top of the box. They will leave the grain of the side pieces very vulnerable at the ends of the box......particularly as when you bash the wedge in the forces go into trying to push those top pieces off the box. I think this needs a re-think.

Thanks Mike. I think I agree with you. Any suggestions for good alternatives?

 

[Mike G]

Trenails, perhaps. They're really just through-dowels.

 

[Cabinetman]

Yes that’s what I came up with drill the holes glue and hammer Wenge “nails” down and trim off.
It’s going to be an attractive little box Al.

 

[Woodbloke]

... the dovetails holding the end-pieces onto the top of the box.

In a traditional Japanese tool box they would've been nailed on as you rightly mention in the OP. I'd consider using dowels - Rob

 

[AndyP]

Wenge dowels would look good.

 

[Dr.Al]

This is what the CAD model would look like with the butterfly joins removed and all the cross-pieces held in place with wenge dowels.

I think I like the look of this, so I'm going to go with that design. It doesn't do quite as good a job of meeting my design criteria of being joinery that's new to me and challenging, but it's going to require some quite precise drilling as the dowels (currently drawn as 4 mm diameter) have to go into the 9 mm thick wenge ends without breaking out:

 

[Mike G]

I can see why you'd dowel down into the end-pieces, but it would, I think, be stronger if you attached to the sides instead. Either way it's certainly a stronger version than your dovetail design.

 

[Dr.Al]

I can see why yould dowel down into the end-pieces, but it would, I think, be stronger if you attached to the sides instead. Either way it's certainly a stronger version than your dovetail design.

Thanks Mike. I'm not really sure what difference it will make to the strength though - is that just because it's nearer the ends of the cross pieces? Either way I think I'll stick with it as is for aesthetic reasons but I'm curious to understand why you think it'll make a difference.

 

[Mike G]

If you attach it to the side pieces the side pieces would take the load along their length, which is always a good thing. The end piece, by contrast, is A/ in a joint, and B/ would take the load (ie the force from the wedges) across the grain, tending to bend (deflect) it. If you abuse that box for years, the end piece would be at risk, and any shortcomings in the joint would be revealed.

It's fine as is, though. The forces are likely to be trivial, so long as you don't bash the wedge too much.

 

[Dr.Al]

If you attach it to the side pieces the side pieces would take the load along their length, which is always a good thing. The end piece, by contrast, is A/ in a joint, and B/ would take the load (ie the force from the wedges) across the grain, tending to bend (deflect) it. If you abuse that box for years, the end piece would be at risk, and any shortcomings in the joint would be revealed.

It's fine as is, though. The forces are likely to be trivial, so long as you don't bash the wedge too much.

Thanks Mike, that explanation was really helpful

 

[GaryR]

I'll add that the wedge may not be necessary. Just drop the lid on and slide it in place in one direction and then back a bit in the other direction. Gravity and a bit of friction does the rest.

The box for my Makita groover is made this way:

 

[Dr.Al]

I'll add that the wedge may not be necessary. Just drop the lid on and slide it in place in one direction and then back a bit in the other direction. Gravity and a bit of friction does the rest.

Thanks Gary - I can see what you mean: the wedge is probably overkill (especially for a pencil case ). I'm still going to add one though as I think it'll look cool!

 

[Cabinetman]

Will the wedge be a little bit Dovetaily as well?
Bit late, would it be possible to hold the wedge in place with expansion style slots/screws so it won’t come off?

 

[Dr.Al]

Will the wedge be a little bit Dovetaily as well?

If you mean will it be tapered (narrower at the top than the bottom), then yes. The two bits either side of the wedge have a slight taper on their edge so the wedge pushes the lid to the right (in the CAD model orientation) but can't pop out because of the slight taper.

Bit late, would it be possible to hold the wedge in place with expansion style slots/screws so it won’t come off?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. The wedge will be held in by the fact it's a wedge. It's intended to be removed to open the box.

 

[Cabinetman]

But would it be possible to have the wedge trapped so that it slides back enough for the lid to slide to open?
Thinking of a way that the wedge doesn’t get lost?

 

[Dr.Al]

But would it be possible to have the wedge trapped so that it slides back enough for the lid to slide to open?
Thinking of a way that the wedge doesn’t get lost?

Ah, I get what you mean now. Hmmm...

 

[Mike G]

The neatest way I can come up with to contain the wedge as per Ian's suggestion is to have two battens across the lid rather than one, with the wedge between them. The outer-end batten would be held by slots and screws, so it can be pushed sideways by the wedge. The wedge would also have a slot and a screw, to prevent it's removal from between the battens. The wedge and the inner faces of the battens would be slightly dovetailed.

 

[Dr.Al]

I think I'm going to just stick with a loose wedge for now. It feels like it's going to be complicated enough as it is!

 

[Dr.Al]

To affix the cross-pieces with wenge dowels I obviously need some wenge dowels. To make these, I started by splitting one of the slices of wenge along the grain by tapping a chisel into the top and then pushing a bit harder:

That gave me a little pile of wenge bits:

My first attempt to dowel-ify them was to run them over an inverted plane (held in the vice) until they were somewhere near octagonal with a slight taper and then to whack them through my dowel plate, working down 0.5 mm at a time:

That really didn't work. I think they were just too big to start with and the repeated bashing through the dowel plate was too much for them. I only tried a couple but they came out really wonky and one broke well before getting down to 4 mm.

At this point I decided it was time to give up any pretence of this being a "mostly hand tool" project and get the home-made lathe out. I was already thinking I'd probably drill the dowel holes on the pillar drill (for accuracy reasons) so I might as well embrace the power!

I mounted the split pieces in the lathe chuck with about 25 mm protruding and used a skew chisel to make them round and then reduce the diameter to a bit over 4 mm.

In each case I tried (and mostly succeeded) to get the end nearest the chuck down to a fraction under 4 mm (3.8 to 3.9 mm) and most of the length between 4 and 5 mm. After sawing off the would-be dowels I could then pass them through the 4.5 mm and 4 mm holes of the dowel plate:

After a little bit of "rinse and repeat" I had 10 dowels. I only need 8, but I figured it was best to make a couple of spares so that I can choose the best ones when fitting them.

 

[Woodbloke]

I think I'm going to just stick with a loose wedge for now. It feels like it's going to be complicated enough as it is!

Definitely! Simple is best and usually works best as well. No need to over engineer the thing

Wacking dowels through 0.5mm at a time will never work, 'specially with a hard timber like Wenge. I've made dowels in hard stuff but I shoved them through a dowel plate with 0.1mm increments and that was fine, if long winded - Rob