In this course, Frank Strazza will show you how to put your newly-learned dovetail making skill to use in an actual project–a simple dovetailed box with a hinged lid.
Frank starts by walking you through laying out all the pieces to the box, carefully selecting for grain direction and color matching, which is an important first step for any project. Then he shows you how to lay out and cut the dovetail joints.
After carefully fitting and glueing the dovetails together you’ll move on to hand planing and shaping the bullnose edge on the top and bottom. Frank will lead you through planing, scraping and light sanding of the box to prepare it for assembly.
Finally, you’ll attach the bottom and learn how to cut the hinge mortises, which is the same technique you would use to hang a cabinet door or even a house door.
This project makes a great gift and can be made from any kind of wood you choose. After you’ve solidified your dovetail skills, you can move on to dress the box up with inlays, chip carving and more. Make a lot of these simple boxes and your dovetail joints will thank you!
Additional Resources
For additional instructions, see: Resources for the Online Dovetailed Candle Box Course.
Dovetailed Candle Box
Layout & Cut the Dovetails
[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, and welcome back. I'm going to start out by showing you the method that I use for laying out in preparation to make the candle box, here. And the first step is to lay out the material, and we're going to cut the joinery. But I just want to talk a little bit about the grain orientation.
I have-- I was able to obtain all of this stock from a single piece of wood, and you can see how the grain follows through. You've got some wider grain up here, then it kind of gets a little narrower. There's even a little bit of a light streak running all along here, this lower half is light. So, whenever possible, I think about that when I'm laying out the box. I think about the grain orientation and such.
What I don't want to do is I wouldn't want to put it like this. You can see here I've got this wide grain next to this narrow grain. Again, it's not a huge deal. Most people probably wouldn't even notice. But if I've got all of this laid out from the same board, I might as well look at the grain orientation and consider that.
So what I'm going to do here, is I'm going to put this heavier, wider grain towards the bottom. That generally gives it a little bit more weight to the bottom. We're going to stand this-- well, let's position this to where the grain will wrap around nicely, so we've got the front of the box, then the sides, and then we'll look at that. That looks nice. So we can stand this up here.
You can put these two like this. And we can put this like this here. So now you can see that that kind of wraps around like that. OK? So I've got the box here.
And now the next step is to identify the top edge and the corners. And I always, whenever I'm building a box, even a workbench like this, where I have four corners of dovetails on each corner, I will actually label it in this exact same fashion. Where I start in the front left hand corner, then I work counter clockwise around like this.
So I start right here. Work counterclockwise around. I'll start with the letter A or even a number one. I'll just use a letter here. I'm going to mark A and A in this front left hand corner.
Working around, B and B. And then C and C. D, and D. So you can see we've worked it around like that. I've also put the letters far enough away from the edge so that they will not be inadvertently cut off when I do my joinery.
One last thing is I want to define the inside corner. That is, where these two come together. So we have A coming into A like this. So A and A like that. I've got arrows I'm pointing to the inside corner.
And what this helps, is this helps define this corner and the two coming together. What I don't want to end up with, is I don't want to end up with a box that looks like this, because that doesn't work as a box. Again, C and C are still together, but the arrows are not pointing to the inside. OK?
You'd be surprised how easy it is to do that. So make sure that you do the layout correctly. The arrows are pointing to the inside. So when we fit the two together, it will join as a box like this.
One last thing I want to do here, is I want to mark the outside with just a face mark. Again, that's just a quick point of reference, because I'm going to do the layout of my dovetails on the outside face. So again, the arrows are pointing to the inside, there is my face mark there. Face mark there. Arrows are pointing to the inside.
OK. The next step now is to establish the baseline for our dovetails. And if you've watched the previous video on cutting dovetails in the previous series, we talk about putting this piece right up here. The thickness of this piece here plus just a little bit, and putting a little mark there. And using the square to define that baseline. The square and the pencil.
So we've got the square and the pencil to define the baseline. And again, we're here on C. So we'll do C here, and do the same thing. OK. So this is one way to do this, using the square and a pencil to define the baseline on the outside here, on corner C.
So you can see, there's the baseline, and there's the corner together. Now you can carry on using this exact same method throughout the entirety of the box, or you can use the method that I actually prefer to use personally when I'm cutting dovetails, and that is the use of the cutting gauge. This is different than a marking gauge, and it's very important that you use a cutting gauge. The primary difference being that the cutting gauge has a blade as opposed to the marking gauge, which has a point.
So I'm going to set this to the thickness of the stock plus just a little bit, just a hair. I say just a little bit, we're talking about maybe a couple thousandths, where the lip of the gauge comes just over the edge. The downside to using this method of the cutting gauge, is one, it will make a line then, going all the way across the entire width of the piece here.
Now this is something that you find quite common on period furniture, furniture that was made using this same technique, you'll find that line. And if the line is scribed with a knife, it's a clean line, it doesn't bother me. Especially if it's the inside of a drawer or something. If you're going to use this method for a box like this, you want to mark it lightly on the outside, you can mark it heavier on the inside, lighter on the outside, so you can plane it off if you don't want to see the line. The other downside to using this technique is that you're assuming that the end here is perfectly square. OK?
So we're assuming that this is nice and square, and that's something that I usually check before I go ahead and lay out the dovetails using this gauge. And there's different methods for squaring it up. Of course if you buy the material from us, it will be perfectly square and ready to go. If you're milling it yourself, you'll want to make sure that your saw is cutting square. And if you're cutting it by hand, you can use a shooting board to shoot the end square.
Now that this is set to the thickness of the stock, I'm going to scribe it along the edge here, and what's important is that I hold the gauge tight up against this edge right here. So I'm holding it tight up against there, marking it. That's somewhat deep. That line may not be able to be planed out, but again, it doesn't bother me too much.
On the inside, however, I can go fairly deep, because that's the inside joining corner, and you'll never see that. So we're going to mark that. Again, lightly on the outside and heavier on the inside. So you can see how quick this method is, and I'm able to use-- to be able to knife this edge. So this is really forming a knife-- a knife wall, if you will.
So we'll mark it on the outside. So I'm going to show you both methods. Both the previous method that I introduced to you in the previous videos, where we talk about cutting a single dovetail. We'll use that method. And then I'll show you this method as well.
And you can choose to do the entirety of the box using either method or a combination of the two. Now that I've got the baselines cut, it's time to mark out the dovetails. I'm going to start by laying out the tails on the long pieces. So the tails are going to be on this piece. That is the part that looks like the tail of the dove.
And we'll put this in the vise, just like this, in the face vise. And you can use a measuring tape to measure this. I'm going to start by marking the top here using a chisel. I'm going to use a 3/8 chisel, and just put a mark right up here. And then right here as well.
Again, just a little mark. Now, there's going to be two tails right here. So I've got to divide this in half. There's a couple ways to do that. We can simply measure it, or you could use a pair of dividers like this to step it off.
If I was going to measure it, I would just take the width of this board, so 3 and 1/2, divide it in half, is inch and 3/4. Put the little mark there, then take the 3/8 chisel and simply eyeball the center of that mark, and mark on either side of the chisel. On the other ones I'll show you how to use the dividers.
I'm going to use the dovetail template marker here to lay these tails out. Now that I've got the tails laid out here, I'm going to mark the waste. This is really important, because you don't want to inadvertently cut away the wrong part of the dovetail. So this part here, we're going to remove that. This part right there, then this part right there.
So now we've got the tails laid out right there. You can lay out the tails on all the pieces prior to cutting if you want. Let's just flip over to this side. And we'll go ahead and lay out 3/8 there and a little mark right there. This time I want to show you a little trick for using a pair of dividers to divide this up.
I'm going to set this to a random measurement. Set the dividers right there, and swing this across. And you can see that's close to the center, but that's not really what we want. What we want here is we want to define the width of this center-- what I call the pin, right there between the tails. So I want to define that.
So let's open this up to another random measurement. And you'll see, when we swing this across, when this outside leg hits out here, the distance from this point to this point is going to determine the width of our pin. The distance there between the tails. This method works especially well when you're laying out multiple tails.
So again, let's just go ahead. We'll start from this point here, put a poke right there. I'm going to start from this one and put a poke right there. Now we've got two defining lines there, and those defining lines define the width of our pin.
So now I've finished laying out the tails, and I'm now ready to go ahead and start cutting the tails. Let's return to corner C, which is the first method that I started with, using the square and the pencil to lay out the baseline. Put this in the vise here, and I'm going to use a dovetail saw to go ahead and cut the tails.
One thing that I like to do when I'm setting the dovetails, is I like to try to cut all of the angles going in the same direction at the same time, as opposed to cutting this one, then going back and cutting this one. So I'll cut all of the angles going in the same direction. Once your body is positioned, and your hand is positioned for that angle, it's ideal to continue in that same vein.
I've cut those. I can go ahead and turn this around and cut the other one as well. You can kind of do this production style. The key factor here, of course, is that your saw, as we mentioned in the previous videos, is perfectly straight across the top.
You'll notice here that I'm cutting just at an angle like this and then lowering the saw into the cut like this, making sure that I cut perfectly square across the top. I can't-- I really can't stress that. It's got to be-- you've got to follow that line perfectly. The next step is to remove the actual waste, right here. Being that I'm showing you corner C, is going to be done with a little different technique than the rest of the corners.
I'm going to actually chisel away some of the waste using the knife wall method on corner C. We'll start there. We're going to go ahead and take the square and the knife, and put the knife right inside the cut, right inside the mark, rather. And slide this across just on the waste side only.
So you see what we're doing here, just marking it right on the waste side. And then we'll carry that line around to the edges like this. And then we can carry it around to the backside, here. Let's just like so. OK?
Then I can stand this upright in vise. I always like to have the outside facing me. We'll make our little knife cut right here on the top and come in with the saw and remove that material. Make our little knife wall right up at the top through the material.
So now, my next goal here is to remove this material. Again, there's different ways to do this. You can either cope out the waste with a coping saw-- I'm going to show you how I chisel it, because you can chisel it. The coping saw does require a little bit of skill, a bit of practice to get it just right. So you may want to start, if you're not comfortable with the coping saw, you may want to start by chiseling out that material.
I'm going to use my bench hook here for helping secure this piece while I chisel away the waste. I'm going to start by making a little knife wall on both sides using a 3/8 chisel. We'll come back with a knife and make that just a little bit deeper. Then we'll come in with the 3/8 chisel just like that.
So now we have an established wall. Nice, deep knife wall. Now I'm going to take the chisel an angle it slightly in and chop way the waste. Come in here, remove that waste.
Again, I'm supporting the stock with my finger-- or the chisel with my finger, because I don't want it blowing all the way through the other side. There we have it and the middle just comes right out. So there is the tails. Now for the other the other corners, I used the cutting gauge for scribing across here. So that essentially did the same thing that the knife and the square did, because I used the cutting gauge, which has a knife built into it.
So I'm going to carry on by cutting these away, and we'll introduce the coping saw as well. What I didn't do, is I didn't carry that mark across the edge here. So I'm going to use the knife and the square to just carry that across, defining that line. We'll come in here with the chisel, make a knife wall, right up like that, and cut away the waste.
You can also use the gauge. You just have to make sure that it's held tight up against the edge, and you can scribe across the edge like that. Now let's cope out the waste. And what we'll do is we'll just cut slightly above the line with the coping saw. The key here is to bring the saw into the cut and keep the saw moving before turning.
So I'm just running the saw back and forth into the cut, like this. Now I'm going to make it turn slowly while keeping it moving. But then-- I'm slightly above the line, about 1/16 or less above the line. And there we go. Now a couple things there I want to point out here with this coping saw.
So I've got the blade canted at an angle so that I can twist it around like this, and I can still make that cut across. The other thing I want to point out about this coping saw is that the blade is very thin this way. It's a fine coping saw blade, and the blade is really thin in this direction. That's important for being able to go around the corner like this.
The teeth, I have the teeth configured where they're cutting on the push stroke. Some people might like it on the pull stroke. The problem with it cutting on the pull stroke is that the teeth are going to tear the fibers out on the show side, the outside. So I like to put the teeth facing this way.
I've actually found that the best blades come from Sears. I've found fine coping saw blades, you can find them at Sears, and they're actually better than more expensive blades that you can find at high end suppliers. And the reason why I like the Sears blades is because they're narrower this way.
Some people like to use a fret saw. With a fret saw, the blade is much smaller, and you pretty much have to configure a fret saw to where it cuts on the pull stroke. The problem that I've had with a fret saw is that the blade is so thin that it tends to be difficult to follow on a straight line. It tends to wander up and down.
So I prefer to use this method, using the Sears blades. They work well. The key here, again, is a light, light stroke. Now I'm going to just a chisel the remainder of the waste right down to the baseline.
You can actually take the chisel and drag it from back here, and it will fall right into the line. You can actually hear that too, sometimes. It'll just fall right into the line. And angling the chisel in, we'll just come in straight like that. Just like this, angle it. And there we have it.
And that completes that tail using that method. I'll go ahead and cut the remainder of these using the coping saw. I'm going to use the square here to cut across this.
One thing you want to keep in mind is that the face of the board is always facing out. If you recall back to when we did the layout, we've marked an outside face mark. I always want the face facing me, so I've cut this off here.
Now, the temptation may be to just simply flip it like this, but if I did that, then I would have the inside facing me. And I want to see the outside. So I'm going to turn it like this in the vise, so now I've got the outside facing me.
Again, I'm going to come in with a coping saw here and remove this center waste. Just bring the coping saw in, run it back and forth, keep it moving, keep it moving, and slowly turn it. Again, if you're not comfortable with that method, I recommend that you use the chisel to chisel out the waste. That way, you're pretty much guaranteed to remove the waste without inadvertently accidentally going beyond the line.
That concludes the cutting of the tails for the box. Some people might like to just do one set a time. That is, cut the tail, then cut the matching pin. Usually when I'm doing a set of drawers, or a box, or a chest, I generally cut all of the tails first, then I'll mark those onto each corresponding pin and then cut the pins.
Now I'm ready to go ahead and lay out for the pins. And what I want to do is, I've got the short boards, which are-- we're going to have the pins on the short boards here. So I'm going to stand this upright in the vise.
Again, the outside is facing me. And I'm going to put the plane on edge here. Again, this is just a holder. You could use anything, a block of wood, or whatever you have handy. It's just that I have the plane handy.
I'll bring that back like this, and we'll find the match to it. Well, we're going to use D. Now what's important here is that D and D match together. The arrows are pointing to the inside, OK?
We don't want it like that. That's not going to work. You've got to have D and D like that, arrows pointing to the inside. OK ? Line it up like this, bird's eye view straight down. And we will begin to mark it as soon as I bring this up.
I've got to bring this to where the baseline comes in flush with the inside face of this piece right here. So now we'll come in and we'll mark it with the pencil, a sharp pencil. And now I've got to carry those lines straight down.
We'll turn this dovetail marker up on edge, and we'll just carry those lines straight, straight down to the baseline. And we'll mark the waste. This is the waste. That's the part we're going to remove.
Now you want to stay on the waste side of the line, that's the side you're going to remove. And if you look closely, you can see that I actually have left a little bit of the line there. So I'm right up against the line. I'm hugging the line right down to that baseline.
Light pressure. Let the saw do the work. Again, there's a couple ways to remove this material. We could remove it entirely with the chisel, I'll show you that method, or you could use the coping saw, and I'll show you that method later on.
Now this is one of the ones that I had marked earlier with the cutting gauge. So there already is an established knife line here. I can take the knife and reestablish it, making it deeper.
Take it and flip it over again. It's already been established, so I'm reestablishing it with a knife. And we'll come back, and we'll just chisel out that waste. I'll use my bench hook, which I like to use for holding this.
If I'm doing a lot of dovetails, sometimes I'll clamp it down to the bench, especially if they're larger. But for smaller dovetails like this, the bench hook works great. Again, you'll notice the technique here.
I've got my finger right up against the workpiece. That helps position and hold the chisel. I'm not holding the chisel out here, I would lose control that way and mess up my workpiece. Defining that baseline, we'll come back now with a knife and make it even greater.
A deeper cut there with the knife. And then in like this, making a good, solid knife wall. Now if you haven't watched even our first video there, the video on cutting a dado in the first video in the series on the three joints, I highly recommend that you watch that video, because we talk about the importance of the knife wall. Not only the importance, but how to actually execute the knife wall.
I'm going to come in now with the chisel, resting against that knife wall, 3/4 inch chisel, and strike in just like that. Turn it over, and we'll come back from this side as well. Now I can turn this around and go ahead and remove the waste, just like so.
Always keeping sure that your workplace is clean, especially the pine, which tends to dent easy. Scoring here. I've scored that, now I can turn this around, and I should be able to come all the way through on this next stroke. Almost.
There we go. That's almost there. Little bit down there at the base, and this one will cut right through here. There it is. Now I can just simply come along here and clean up that bottom, using the chisel.
Slicing it to the side, making sure I don't come all the way through with the chisel. I don't want to blow out the backside. So you see how I'm really pinching the chisel tight like this, and cleaning it up.
We'll proceed on to the next corner. I haven't picked any specific order in which I'm working on these. Let's do B. Again, positioning this in the vise, making this level. Coming up here like this, I've got B and B lined up. I'm going to get a bird's eye view straight down on the top, lining it up on the side, lining it up there.
And then we'll mark this right in there like this. Mark the waste. And now mark your mark straight down like this. So we're going to mark straight down, just like that.
Now we'll go ahead and cut this out. We're right up against that line, and then we'll cut straight down. Once I've defined that, then I can use longer strokes. Very linear stroke here. Light pressure on the saw.
Don't force the saw. Light pressure, long strokes. Right down to that baseline. Light pressure. If you find that the saw is not working right, one thing that you can actually do is lighten up your pressure.
I found that people that squeeze the saw too hard actually tend to grip the saw. It tends for the saw to bite into the material too much. The next step here is to cope out the waste. This is the method that I prefer, mainly because it's faster.
It does require a little bit more skill to be able to follow along that line and to be able to stay above the line. It's easy to go beyond the line with the coping saw, so you have to watch for that. Light pressure. Put the saw in. Back and forth. I'm above the line.
I'm even pushing the saw to the side, flexing the blade slightly. And then we'll just bring it around, staying above the line just a little bit. Long strokes, light pressure. There it is, right at the end, you can hear it and that's it, you can cut that out.
I'm actually holding the saw back as I get towards the end. So we've gotten just right there above the line. I mean, it's just-- just a little bit above it. Just enough that we can take the chisel, and the chisel will fall right into that line. Making sure that it falls right in that line. We'll come in like this.
Notice where my pinkie is. My pinkie is supported. It's supported right there to keep that chisel from going all the way through. And that's it. I'll come in here and just clean this up using the chisel, and just clean up those corners, just down there where the saw didn't-- the saw and the chisel didn't quite meet.
Making sure that those corners are good and crisp. I want to make sure that that comes together just perfectly crisp, right there. I'm going to go on to corner C. Again, this is the same thing here. Just set the plane, put this back.
If you'll remember, corner C is the one that we started by using the pencil and the square, and you'll see the method that I'll use for actually transferring the line around. Because what I have on corner C is I just have a pencil line. I didn't use the cutting gauge for that corner.
So again, the same technique here. We've laid this out, looking straight down on top, I'm going to go ahead and mark it. Hopefully my pencil is still sharp. Then we'll mark it right here.
Mark the waste. Mark a pencil line going straight down, like this. Cut on the waste side of the line. Now, I don't want to use the coping saw, I want to define the actual baseline using the square and the knife. Because if you remember, this was corner C, I actually marked this with a pencil first. So I don't have any knife line here on this baseline.
We'll put the knife right in like this, slide the square up to it, and just define, just in the waste area. Again, this part here is the waste area. Now, how do I get that line established on the back side? Because I don't want to drag the line all the way across.
Well, what I can do is I can just put that knife right there in the corner, and carry that line around by just putting a knife in the corner, corner, and then just carry it right around, just like so. So there we have it. We have marked that on the back side.
You can either cope out the waste, you can chisel out the waste, whatever method you prefer. I'm going to cope it out. Again, I've got the outside facing me, and we'll just stay above the line, and chisel it out. I'm going to go ahead and cut the last pin here, making sure that the letters line up.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Fitting & Gluing the Joints
I've cut all the joints here, and now I want to fit them. Some might like to fit each joint individually-- which I'll do-- and some may like to fit it as they cut them. But I've got them all cut, and we're ready to fit. Let's pick a corner.
Well, we can start with A. I've got A right here, I've positioned it in the vise, and we'll-- we've got A right there-- and now we'll fit them down, just like so. And one of things to keep in mind is it is tight initially-- it should be tight-- but there's a fine line between being tight and too tight. We don't want to split out the piece. So I'm going to tap this in, and I can feel it. If it's really tight then it's just not going to go. So you can see-- work that down. That's good and tight. There, that's just what we want, right there. I also want to check-- it's tight right there, but I also want to make sure that it's tight along this baseline, and it is.
Now as we fit these, one thing you want to keep in mind is I don't want to fit D next because then we wouldn't be able to fit C and B-- you'd have to spread it apart like that. So the next one to fit is B. So we're going to fit that in like this. And you can even position this in the vise like this. One thing you can do as well is you can knock A apart and then fit B. But we'll just fit it in like this. So again, just put it in. This is a little on the looser side, but I think it's still going to work. Yeah. No gaps, which is what we want.
Now you can see we've got a little gap right there, and that could be due to the fact that just needs to be hit with a bigger hammer-- which it did close up. So if you do have a gap along this baseline right here-- if you do have a gap along this baseline-- you can fix that. If you've got a gap right in here, chances are you can't fix that.
But this can be fixed. Let me explain that-- let me go ahead and knock this apart so we can talk about that. And you should notice how I've knocked it apart-- I haven't taken it in my hand, and I haven't taken it like this and tried to pull it apart because every time I wiggle this-- like this-- it's going to compress the fibers and make the joint looser. So you'll notice I put it like this, and then I just take my hammer and knock it down this way.
So if there was a gap along this baseline, one thing you can do is you can take your square and you can test it with the square on the inside. So I take my square-- I put it on the inside like this-- and I bring it down, and I look to see if there's a gap right there. Now if there's a gap, if there was-- there's not on this one-- but if there was a gap there, it would be one of two things-- it would either be that the middle is high-- that there's some junk there in the middle and it's high-- or that this back edge here is high.
So again, if there was a gap right there between the blade of the square and this outside edge, then that would mean that the back would be high or there would be some junk. The junk in the middle, I can look at visually and see. You could even turn it around like this, and if the square hit, then you would know that it was high right back there. If it didn't hit, then you would know that it'd be hitting on some junk in the middle.
So at any rate, you want to lower-- if there was a gap right here on this outer part, you'd want to lower this part right here. And I can do that simply by taking my square and my knife-- again, I'm not going to do it on this because it's tight-- but I can take my knife in my square, and just take it, and just take a little bit off on that inside edge-- thus lowering that. Use the knife in the square, then come back with your chisel, and just chisel that, lowering this. And that would allow you to be able to bring this down and it would be tight on the outside. So that's one way to resolve a gap along the baseline.
Let's go back into fitting here. So we know that this one here is B, and it goes on like this. If you're going to hit this, just be careful right there.
Now another common problem that I see when fitting a dovetail is I see both gaps along the baseline, but then gaps in the actual tails. And one thing that you want to be cautious of is you want to make sure that this cut is perfectly straight right there, because if this cut is off at an angle-- so suppose that this cut right up here was wider right down here at the base. When I marked this, and I cut it, it would be tight right initially as soon as it went in. But then as I knocked it in, this being smaller right here at the top would cause a gap. That's why it's absolutely essential that this cut is perfectly straight right there.
This is going in nicely. If I want to take this off, I can just put my thumbs right there and pull back with my fingers. I'm going to test this joint because this joint seems to be a little bit on the tight side. I'd rather it be a little bit tight than loose, but I don't want it too tight. Now that seems a little tight. Let's see where the problem can be. What could be hitting?
Well, I can see-- let's take it off-- I can see there's some junk right down inside there, and I think that may be one thing that's holding this up. Let's look at this other-- Let's look at this other corner. And you can see there might be something in here. Let's turn this around. I might trim just a little bit right in this area. So I'm going to trim right in there, and just a little bit right there, and I'm going to look maybe and trim just a little bit right there, and a little bit right there as well.
So let's go to the trimming on this. I like to trim this working straight down on top. So I'm just going to come in just like this. And I'm just cleaning up that corner, getting all the junk out of that corner, and then maybe just a little bit right there. Let's put this upright in the vise and trim this-- again, slicing it. You see how I'm slicing this to the side? So my hand is braced up against the edge and I'm slicing this against the side, just like this. There we go. Now let's test it again and see how close we're looking.
One common mistake is for people to think that the joint is too tight and then start paring it away. I really don't like to pare-- you've got to be really careful when you're paring because you can actually make the joint too loose. This pine actually compresses some, so there is a little bit of a fudge factor, if you will, in the pine.
This feels like it's going to go in nicely just by removing that little bit. Let's get both of these in together. That's going to work nicely. Again, one thing I want to be cautious of is that I don't get it too tight and it splits right there. If it does, it's not a big problem-- that's what a little bit of glue and sawdust was made for. So nice and tight there, goes together-- and there we have it.
Now that I've got the box dry-fit together-- you always want to dry-fit your projects prior to gluing up-- now that I've got it dry-fit together, I'm going to take it back apart and talk about some of the different techniques for preparing the inside prior to gluing up, and then we'll go ahead and glue it up.
So when we take this box apart, you want to be careful. I've got my thumbs right here, pulling straight up on it. Again, right there. This is a little tighter, so I may need to use my mallet. And you can even use a piece of scrap wood here, and just work it straight down like this. And you can see we've got that coming up. And this one is tight but we got it. So we've got that.
You'll also notice that I've cleared the bench off, and this is something that's quite important to do prior to gluing up. The last thing you want to do when you're gluing up is looking for a tool, or looking for moving a tool out of the way, or tripping over the top of a tool.
What I'm going to do before I glue up here is I want to prepare the inside surface. There's a couple ways you can do that. I actually pre-prepared some of this stock by hand planing it prior to doing any joinery, and that's something that's optional. You can do that if you want.
In this case, if I was to hand plane this surface, I would want to make sure that I'm comfortable with the plane-- the plane's not set too deep. It's easy to mess up the joinery with the plane.
Let's go over to the tail vise, and we'll just do a little short demo on planing the inside. Again I'm not really worried about the outside at this point. We'll do the outside after the glue has dried.
This is a number 4 and 1/2 plane, and we'll talk about setting and using the plane in our other video series. When I'm using the plane, what I'm doing here is I'm working just from this point and stopping right here. I don't want to work over the top of the dovetail. So I can even start like this and work it along-- the plane is set very, very shallow, so we're just working it. And you'll see, I'll start here and then lift up before going off the edge. So there we go. And again, if you're not comfortable with the plane, you can simply take a piece of sandpaper-- I've got a piece of 220 sandpaper here-- wrap it around a piece of wood like this, and sand with the grain.
Again, remember this is the inside of the box. Don't fret about the inside of the box. Not very many people are going to be concerned with the inside, so you can just even sand the surfaces like this.
This is especially difficult here where it's shorter. Again, very important-- don't go over the top of the dovetails. You'll round it over-- especially with sandpaper, you'll round that over. So I'm keeping for certain that I am in between the dovetails there just cleaning that up. Same way here. And then I'll go ahead and sand this.
Oftentimes when I'm building a piece, even though I have used the hand plane-- maybe a scraper, any sort of cutting tool-- I want to bring a consistent scratch pattern to all of the surfaces, and that's why I like to use the 220 sandpaper. It's about the coarsest I'll go to bring an even scratch pattern-- a consistent scratch pattern-- to all of the surfaces.
So we've done this just on the inside. The outside we'll do after the glue is dry and the box is ready to prepare the outside. Let's go ahead and start gluing this thing up. I'm going to remove the dust and we'll lay all this out.
In order to glue, we're going to need a few things. Obviously some glue is helpful. I like just a Titebond Original yellow glue-- works great. Some cauls-- what is a caul? A caul actually helps distribute the clamping pressure-- and you'll see its use here in a moment-- but it is cut to the height of the box and that will help distribute the clamping pressure. We need four cauls-- and they're just cut out of scrap pieces of wood-- and a couple clamps. Here, we've got a couple of these bar clamps. Our assembly hammer, and last-- but not least-- a good old Popsicle stick makes for spreading the glue nicely. You can pick up a thousand of those fairly cheaply, and that'll last a lifetime.
OK, so now we are ready to glue this. Let's just position these. I've got A, B, C, and D. Make sure the bench is clean. We've got A, B, and C, and D, just like that. Again, I'm going to start with corner A, then I'm going to go to corner B. And we'll glue A, B, and then we'll glue C and D on like this.
I like to put the glue on the pins here-- it's easier to get it in there. We'll just put the glue down in the bottom of the pins, just like this. Using the Popsicle stick, you can drag it up from the bottom-- up on the sides-- just like this. And all of the surfaces that are going to touch, we want to coat those surfaces.
If you work quickly, you don't have to put glue on both surfaces. If you're working a little slower, you may have put glue on both surfaces, but I usually just do it on one surface. Now we're knocking that together. It's also important that you work quickly because the glue will swell the wood, which might be to your advantage.
Oh, good. Now we're just going to take this and spread the glue right there, and then put this on. Flip this over. I've got a little glue--I tend to get a little glue crazy and put too much glue on there, but I'd rather too much than too little.
There we go. Making sure that the letters line up-- oh, let's put it like this, so you can see that. There we go. We got to turn this around and put this on.
If you need a little bit more open time, you can try using white glue. It works great and gives you a little more open time than the yellow glue.
Make sure that these are nice and tight all the way down. You'll notice what I'm doing here is I'm hitting right over the top of the joint using the softer mallet here-- right over the top, right there-- bringing that together nice and tight.
So now what we'll do is we'll take the cauls and position them right back here behind the joint. The reason why I'm behind the joint is because this joint is sticking through just slightly. If I put it over the top, I'm not going to have that clamping action. So we've got it right behind the joint.
Now we're going to come in. As I mentioned, that caul helps distribute the clamping pressure. So you can see we'll just bring this back like this, and bring it up as close as you can behind that joint. And you'll notice that I have the clamp in the center right here, and we'll just squeeze that together-- not too tight. Bring this around. Again, the clamp is in the center here, not up here at the top-- not up here, but down in the center. That also helps distribute that clamping pressure.
OK, generally I like to position the clamps going in the same direction. It's just less cumbersome. There we go. And then I oftentimes will check to see if it's square. If I did the joiner correctly, it should be square, although sometimes the clamps can tend to pull it out of square, and a little trick for that is just measuring from corner to corner. So you can just take your tape measure, and measure from this corner, and I get 12 and 1/2, and then this corner is 12 and 1/2.
Now suppose that one was longer-- say, it was longer in this direction-- I would have to just take hand pressure and push in that direction. That shortens that measurement and lengthens that measurement. Of course, we want the measurements to be the same.
Let's do a final inspection on the box. You'll notice that what I have not done is taken any of the glue off on the inside. I don't mind even taking my finger and wiping it the outside, but if I start smearing the glue on the inside, it's going to be difficult to take that off. Well, I could use maybe a wet rag and wipe it off-- the problem with introducing moisture here is that will make the glue thinner, and it's going to tend to soak into the fibers, and if you were to stain the inside of the box, it would show up.
So what I recommend you do-- if you can, wait about an hour or so, let the glue get a little rubbery, and then you can take a sharp chisel and peel the glue away. If you can't wait an hour-- if you are leaving this overnight, and you come back the next morning and the glue is hard-- you can still come back carefully with a chisel and cut away the glue.
So one final inspection-- I see here on the corner D that there's a little bit of a gap, and I can pull that this way with a clamp. So let's do that. Let's just put a clamp this way pulling that together, and we should be able to pull just that little gap out of there. I'm going to just take this-- I don't need a caul, necessarily, because I'm working just in one small area, and I'm just trying to pull that together just in that area. So we're just going to pull that, and I can see that the gap has just about disappeared.
OK. Well, we'll let this dry while we move on to shaping the top and the bottom with a hand plane.
Shaping the Top & Bottom
Welcome back. In this video, I'm going to go over how to hand plane the bullnose edge on the top and bottom of the box. I want to briefly go over hand planes. You can find more information about hand planes-- more in-depth information-- on some of our videos that we focus more on just planes and how they're used and the different parts of them, how they're set up, and such.
My go-to plane is a Stanley model number 4.5. I like the plane because it's a smoothing plane. It's used for smoothing your stock. It's comfortable to hold. It's a nice size. It's also a little wider than, say, a number 4. A number 4 is a little narrower. However, it's difficult to find a good Stanley number 4.5. I got this one on the used market, and I was lucky to find this one. And you can find them, but oftentimes they need a fair amount of work.
Lee Nielsen is one maker of a Stanley-style 4.5 plane. And I find it to be a wonderful plane. I think what makes a good tool is the sum of all of its parts, and the Lee Nielsen has machined this plane to perfection. So if you're going to invest in one plane, I highly recommend this one.
Of course, Stanley came up with a variety of planes, starting from a number one and going all the way through to a number seven. Here's a number five. And as you can see, the numbers really denote just the difference in the size. Of course the number 6 a little bigger, number 7, number 8. You start getting smaller-- number 3, number 2, number 1.
And a lot of these planes were used for preparing your stock-- that is surfacing the stock, removing a lot of material, even jointing, and edge jointing. And in some of our other videos, we go over that whole aspect of how to edge-joint your material and such using longer planes.
So for now, I'm just going to use my 4.5. Again, this is my go-to plane. I use this for most all of my work. So I've sharpened it up. I have a little bit of a convex shape-- a very slight convex shape to the blade. And we'll start planing.
So the first step here that I want to do with this top and bottom is just to lightly smooth the surface-- and I say lightly. That's important here. If we take off too much material, we're going to misshape the wood.
So I'm going to start by feeling the blade. And I'm feeling it with my thumb or my finger going across this way. And I just want to make sure that we have the right amount sticking out-- that it's not sticking out too far and that it's also even on both sides. Again, we go into this more in depth on some of our other videos.
But if you see here, we can adjust the lateral adjustment. So if I'm getting a deeper cut on one side, I'm going to push the lateral adjustment towards that side. So let's try it.
Now, I can feel that it's taking off a little bit more than what I want to at the moment. So I'm just going back the blade off-- that is counterclockwise. Back it off. And my goal here is-- as I've said, this is a smoothing plane. So my goal here is to smooth the material. I'll lower the bench down over there. My goal is to smooth the material. So I'm not trying to take off a big shaving, but I am trying to take off a very light shaving and just smooth the material.
Another thing that I'm looking at here when I'm planing the surface of this is I'm looking at the grain orientation. Let's get a pencil. If you follow the grainline here, you can see this grainline line is working all the way up like this. So I want to plane in this direction. If I plane against the grain, we're going to lift the fibers and it's not going to work. It'll tear out and such.
The other thing is when I hold the plane, I've got one finger out like this. I put pressure on the front of the plane. And as I go over this, I put pressure over the whole of the plane. And as I exit, the pressure is on the back of the plane.
So you can see here I work it across, like this. Occasionally what's interesting is you'll find the grainlines will follow in one direction, but sometimes you'll find a little bit of tear-out. I've got a little bit of tear-out there. And I may even have to turn the board around. Sometimes those grainlines can be a little bit deceiving.
So you just turn this around, and sure enough, it's smoother in that direction. So initially there was a little bit of tear-out, but I turned it around and it's nice and smooth. You can see the shimmer there as it just glistens.
Again, because the surface is planed, there's no scratches in it. In fact, a lot of people think of woodworking and they often think of sanding their stock-- sanding your material. But if you use a sharp plane and sharpen chisels and such, you can actually eliminate the need for sandpaper-- maybe not necessarily eliminate it, but reduce it greatly, maybe even reduce it up to 80%. Because instead of scratching the surface, we're cutting the surface.
You'll also hear when I'm smoothing this it's not making a continuous sound as it goes over that. And that's because what we're doing is we're actually just smoothing the surface. So if I work this along, you'll hear it sometimes. It'll make kind of a skipping sound. And then when I continue, it will make a continuous sound all the way across that surface.
So I think we're ready to go on to the shaping aspect of this. And what I want to do is I want to show you how we actually create a bullnose edge on this piece. We're going to do the top. On the top, we're going to do it on three sides, and then on the bottom, we'll do it on four sides.
So I like to put a couple little layout lines on this. And you can do this with a pencil-- just taking the pencil, pressing it between your middle finger And using your middle fingers a guide right here. And we can divide the top of this board into thirds.
So I've got this. We'll just divide it right into thirds, like this. And we can carry that line down, like this. And again, using my finger there as a guide, the finger is running up against the board. And we'll just mark it. And again, this is just a rough guideline-- just a means to help guide you when you're planing this.
So I can also take that same setting, if you will, with my finger and my pencil, and just run it also along the face. And what this is doing is it's preparing us to start by putting that bullnose edge on here.
Now, it might be helpful for me to draw a little illustration to help show you exactly what our goal is and some of the different steps that we'll be taking to reach that goal. So right now we have our board that looks like this. It's square. And our first step is to just take and chamfer the edges. And that's what I've done, is I've drawn the marks. I've divided the top of the board into thirds, and we're going to just chamfer the edge down.
After we've chamfered the edge-- when I say chamfer, I mean cut the corner off at 45 degrees. So after we've cut it off at 45 degrees, then we can come in here and just take the edges right here off. That is 22 and 1/2 degrees. Now you can start seeing a bullnose starting to take shape there. And we'll do that by lessening the cut on the plane. We don't want to bring this over too far, because this round-over can interfere with the actual sides of the box if we bring this over too far.
So let's begin by doing that here in the vice. Now if you'll notice, I have this positioned here in the vice with the end-grain facing up. The reason why I've got that is because you have to think of wood as a series of all these fibers. I even think of it even as straws coming up like this. And it's helpful to work the end-grain first because if we accidentally split out the side right there by working our plane across, we can clean it up by going with the grain.
Now, one thing we have to keep in mind, though, is as I cut this chamfer, I don't want to go straight like this. Because if I go straight like this, I could blow this part out right there. What I want to do is I actually want to shear the fibers, like this. And this might be best illustrated using a chisel.
If I take a chisel here, and I take this chisel across the grain like this, and I keep it going-- this is a nice sharp chisel, but if you'll notice, if I come right out there, it's going to break out the edge. Now, if I simply take the chisel and take it down like this and work it across, we're sheering the cut and we can work off the edge without breaking it off. So you'll notice, again, I'm still going at 45 degrees, but I'm working it like this, shearing it as we go across as opposed to going straight like in like this.
Another thing that I want you to keep in mind here is, again-- here we have all these straws going up like this. If I go against the grain, like this, what's going to happen is you can see it just doesn't want to cut because we're going against those fibers. You see how they're all kind of chipping out like this? I'm going to end up ruining my top here, but I want you to understand this.
In the exact same way, you don't want to do that with the plane. You don't want to go back like this. A plane is essentially a holder for a chisel. So the same technique applies with the plane. So I've got to work up like this. Again, 45 degrees, lower the plane like this. And don't go in the direction of the plane, but actually shear across the grain like this. So we're shearing across the grain.
Now sometimes initially here you may have to set the plane a little deeper. There's no sense in it being set shallow if you're trying to take off a lot of material. As I get closer to the line here, what I'm going to do is actually back the blade off because if the blade is set deep, you're going to take off a heavy cut, which you don't want to do. So we're going to back the blade off and take off a lighter cut as we work this along.
And you can see we've got a nice chamfer there,a nice 45 degrees on both sides right here. And we're right to our line-- we're right to our line there. Now what I'm going to do is-- there's a couple of things I could do. I could actually go back and do a 45 on all of the edges and then come back and do my 22.5-degree angle.
But what I'm going to do here is I'm just going back the blade off. So I'm just turning the adjustment screw counterclockwise. And we're going to work the top right here, shearing it, then the bottom right here-- just a little bit. Don't take off too much here, just a little.
Now we're going to come in here. And you'll notice, too, a very loose grip on the plane-- shearing it across, shearing it all the way, shearing it like this. And then down here, shearing this, as well.
And there we have it. Now you can see just by backing the blade off-- again, counterclockwise, pulling the blade back, you can see we are taking a very light shaving. And now we've got our round-over right there. We'll do the same thing over here on this other end. Again, doing the ends first, just in case we do have a little breakage there on the side. So that can be taken up later.
So I'm going to advance the blade 45 degrees, shearing it across just like this-- shearing it right across, creating that 45-degree angle. Then we'll come back this way. You can turn the board around or you can just come around on the backside like this, shearing it across. You can hear it as it just goes across, just like that.
Now I'm going to back the blade off, just back it off slightly, and work the top of it. Even more-- let's back it off just a little bit more. And then we're going to pull this down just a little bit there. And then we'll take this top off, here. And then lower this down right here like this.
There we have it. Now let's work on the long grain. So you can see we've got a nice bullnosed edge there. Now we'll work on this long grain, right here. And again, that's done pretty much the same way. However, with this, I don't have to shear it because I'm not working across that end grain. Here I'm working with the grain. And this is a technique that you can use on all types of applications-- if you're trying to chamfer the edge of a board, if you're trying to put a bullnose on an edge of a staircase. I mean, there's so many different applications for this right here.
So 45 degrees, like this. I can even come back here-- 45 degrees, like this. There we go. Then we'll back the blade off, just like this, and take the top corner there off. 22.5 degrees. Bring it down here. 22.5. And then up here like this. And then just bring it down like this.
OK. I'm going to back the blade off even more. So you can hear the plane is just barely rubbing on the surface. And that's how I can take off a much finer shaving and be able to really refine this bullnose. There we go.
You can actually come back and clean this up with a little bit of sandpaper. I've got a little 220 grit sandpaper here. And if you wrap it around like this, it'll form around that curve and it'll even out any of the undulations and the facets that are left from the hand plane and give it a nice, smooth, rounded appearance, here. There we go. And you can do the same on all the edges here.
Now, what I've done here is I've shape the top, which the top only has the bullnose on three sides. The bottom will have the bullnose on four sides. So now I've completed the top and I'm going to go ahead and do the exact same thing on the bottom, with the only difference being that I will bullnose four edges here.
I'm just doing the final sanding on the bottom here. I've rounded all four sides, and now I believe we're ready to go. We've got the bottom here, which is rounded on all four sides, and the top, which is only rounded on three sides. You'll also notice that the top is a little bit narrower, and you can find all the measurements for this in the plans and cut list down below on the Resources Tab.
Preparing for Assembly
I've let the glue dry on this box for about 10 hours or so. It didn't have to dry that long. You can leave it clamped for as short as three or four hours.
Glue dries fairly fast. I prefer to leave it overnight if I can. And you can see it's good, and dry, and strong.
So we'll begin by planing off the dovetails. One thing I want to keep in mind here when I'm cleaning up this box is these cross-grain fibres. Again, I like to think of the wood as a series of straws coming up like this.
And if I was to plane-- we've got this long grain. And when we've got the short grain coming up like this, if I was to plane across the top of this right here, I'm going to break these fibers out right over there. So I'm going to break these fibers, these fibers, and these fibers. Same way if I came across this way. I would break this fiber, these fibers, and these fibers.
So I've got to somehow think about this when I am planing the top of the box. In other words, I don't want to start at this end and work off the end of the box like this. I actually want to start in here coming in and stopping before I go off the end of the box. The reason why I'm going to come in like this is because the fibers are supported coming this way, but they're not coming this way. And we could really do a lot of damage quickly by planing off the end of the box and breaking this part out here. Again, it's just right there and right there.
So let's go ahead and put it in the vise. I'm going to put it here in the vise as low as I can. If I put it up here like this, it doesn't have much support, and it could rack, and I could break it apart. So I'm going to put it as low as I can in the vise so there's plenty of support down low. And we'll go ahead and start planing it.
Now you need to make sure that your plane is set lightly. And refer back to our video on setting up a plane and adjusting it, because it's very important that the plane is set not too deep. You don't want have the plane set too deep. It's got to be set very lightly.
And I'll oftentimes just test it, even on a piece of scrap wood, to make sure that it's set shallow. Over time, you can get to where you can feel it with your fingertips, which I usually just do. But you can test it on a piece of scrap wood and just see how much material is coming off. I can feel it. Just a slight bit is coming off.
So let's begin by putting pressure on the front of the plane and working in. You can even, with this end grain, you can shear the plane like this. Now one thing I want you to keep in mind, as I'm planing this, I'm stopping the plane. I'm not working all the way off the end. We talked about that.
Another thing I'm doing, if you'll notice, look I've got a little bit of a shaving there attached. And that's because if I just plane straight like that and stop, if I come in like that, the shaving is still attached right there. So how do we get rid of that.?
Well, one way you can do that is you just come in like this, and as you're planing, you lift up slightly on the back of the plane. And that severs the fiber, makes a nice clean break. Kind of a motion here that I'm going to work in-- coming in like this. And you'll notice, if you see, I'm lifting up on the back of the plane before I stop the cut. So it's coming in like this, planing, and then lifting up in the motion, and that severs the fibers.
OK, let's turn this around, because I want to come back, back this way. And again, see how I'm lifting up. I'll do it slow so you can see it. Just in the motion and then lift it up like that. And there we go.
I've turned the box over, and now I'm doing the exact same thing on the other side of the box. Again, shearing it. The reason why I shear is because it works better to shear it on these end grain pieces here. So I'm shearing it like this.
Now how do I know that I've gone enough? My goal here is to bring these down level with this, but then also to smooth any mill marks that I might have in this. A lot of times you'll find there'll be a little bit of grime on there just from handling, pencil marks. And then also, sometimes you'll see some mill marks. That is planer marks from when it was run through the power planer. So I want to try to just smooth all that.
Again, my goal here isn't to take off a lot of material. I don't want to thin this out. I just want to smooth the surface. So if you find some slight variation in undulation in the surface, don't worry about this. We're not trying to go for a Formica-smooth finish. If you look at most period furniture, furniture that was made using tools like this, you'll find that the surface has a little bit of undulation and texture to it.
If you do want a perfectly smooth surface, you can simply take a little bit of sandpaper, and just run it back and forth there with the grain. And that'll give it more of a satiny smooth surface, which I tend to do anyway to just bring a uniform texture to the surface. Of course, I'm probably doing this a little too prematurely, because we still have to do the ends right here.
To help illustrate my point here in regards to the grain and breaking out the grain, I borrowed some of my children's straws so that you can see this. Now if we take this here, and we plane across the grain like this-- here's the straws. Here's the fibers. The grain is like these series of straws coming up like this.
If I take this and I plane across the grain like this, you can see what's going to happen. The grain is going to break out just like that. But if we plane in, like this, those straws, those fibers, are supported, so they're not going to break out. And that's really key here because this grain right here on these tails are end grain. So I've got to make sure I can really ruin the box fast if I'm not aware of this.
When we did the long grain like this, we had the same issue. But we were able to stop the plane before going off the end. Here it's difficult to stop the plane, so we've got to come up with another solution. And what I usually do is, I usually just put another piece of wood, just a scrap piece of wood, that will act as a sacrificial piece of wood to catch any of that grain breakage.
So what's going to happen is when I plane, I'm going to plane all the way across here. The grain is going to break out on the scrap piece of wood. It's not going to break out on our box. Of course, if you were working on a bigger box or a chest, or something like that, you wouldn't have to worry about that because you would use the same technique that I used here on this long one. You'd come in and stop, and then come back this way.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this in the vise. Now, again, we want to keep this low in the vise, so I'm going to put it actually down in the vise like this, as low as I can. If I put it up here and squeeze it, I could squeeze the box and maybe break it, especially with a vise as strong as this. So let's lower it as best we can, as low as we can here.
And I'm going to make sure that the sacrificial piece is fairly even with the edge right there. And now we can plane it all the way across. Again, the plane is set shallow. And I'll even sometimes start back here, because what happens is this part is actually raised a little bit. And if I come in, I could actually hit that what the front of the plane and damage that.
So sometimes I'll even start here and work that down. Again, you'll notice that I'm skewing it slightly. That shears that end grain. And we'll just work it across like this.
There we have it. And again, the goal here is to just bring this down level with this and then clean that surface up. And that's nice and clean. We'll do the exact same thing on the other side.
Now that I've completed planing all four sides of the box, you could come back and just clean it up with a little bit the sandpaper. One thing that I want to be conscious of here is that I sand with the grain, just like this. And I don't even mind rounding over slightly this edge right in here. You can just take and round that over.
What I don't want to do, though, is round over this edge, because that's where the lid is going to hit, or the bottom of the box. You can ease the edge of the dovetails right there. Occasionally, one might find that you have gaps in your dovetails, and there's different ways to deal with that.
I've found that you can-- on the smaller gaps, you can use a little bit of glue. Put a little bit of white glue in there and sand over the top of it. And the dust from the sanding will fill and mix with the glue, and fill the small gaps.
Now if you have a large gap, you may want to cut a little shim, a little wedge, and fit in there. And you'd be surprised how much of a gap you can actually fill using the shims to fill it. Again, keep your bench nice and clean, because you don't want this damage the box. If it sets on top of a little piece of wood on the bench, you can end up putting a ding or a nick into the box.
Now that it's sanded, I want to work on this top rim and make it level. There's a slight undulation here, and actually one of these is raised up just slightly, just a few thousandths there. I want to bring that all nice, and level, and even the same way here. This is where the lid is going to come down, and we want the lid to sit down flat right there.
The bottom is going to be glued on. And it needs to be a very nice, tight fit, so we'll want to make sure that it is planed perfectly. Start by putting it in the vise like, this setting the plane as fine as I can. We'll just plain this right here, very carefully. And I'm just taking this off like that.
Now you'll notice, again, I've got to think about this issue here with the straws. If I come straight-- if I come straight across like this, we could still break those fibers out like that. So I've got to be careful. And I'm actually going to come in and sheer the plane to the side. Back the plane off just a little bit. It's set just a little bit deep.
OK, so we've got that nice and level there. I'll bring this down there. Now what I like to do is set the plane as shallow as I can, and we'll work this around. Now if I just run this along the side here, I could lean it to one side or the other.
However, if I put this off and have the back of the plane resting on this part of the box, then it's supported. And you can take this around like this, and then simply run it around the corner-- important that we run it around the corner like this. Take it around like this. Then take it like this, all the way around.
And then take it like this. Take it around like that, and just like so. So that's one way to clean up this side of the box.
Now I like to test this. This is going to be the bottom. The letters there are where we're going to put our top. But the bottom-- it's got to be perfect. So I'm just going to take the bottom, and we're going to put it on here. And take a look at it and make sure that there's no gaps there.
So it's nice and tight all along there. As long as I can pull it down with my hand pressure, that's all I need. It's just enough to be able to pull it down. Check all around. Make sure that it seals up nice and tight all the way around. So that's good.
Now we'll go on to the top. Before I do that, though, I want to mark the bottom. And there's a nice little way you can mark the bottom by just putting a pencil line, just a small pencil line, on the inside. So I'm centering the bottom on here, making sure it's the same distance from side to side, front to back, making sure it's just right.
And we'll just take the pencil here and mark right there on the back. This is the back of the box right here, and I just put little pencil mark right inside there. And that denotes the back, the bottom, and we're all set. Just a tiny pencil line there.
Now I'm going to flatten the top rim of the box using the exact same technique. We'll just come in with the plane, set it as shallow as I can. This side's a little high, so we're going to take that down first. We'll just come and take that down, making sure that it's nice all the way. And then just work this around like this, all the way around.
My goal here is to get rid of the pencil marks, so we'll work this down, and the mill marks. Now this top has a couple little knots right there. I'm going to put that down to the inside. And we'll just take a look at this.
Of course, this isn't going to be glued on, so it doesn't have to be as tight a fit, because it's just going to be hinged. And oftentimes, it will even be raised up a little bit in the back. But you can see, that fits nicely there.
Attaching the Hinges & Bottom
[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello and welcome back. In this video, I'm going to go over how to actually hinge the lid for our box. We've got the bottom, which we'll glue on after we hinge the lid. It's just easier to hold the box in a clamp prior to the bottom being glued on. That's why I prefer to hinge it first.
So you don't need very many tools for this. Again, a lot of times these tools are some of the same tools that you've used all along. The only exception is you'll need two marking gauges because we're actually going to set one marking gauge to one setting and another marking gauge to another setting. So I say two marking gauges. I actually have a marking gauge and a cutting gauge which works just fine. Square, one inch chisel is about all you need, a knife, and we'll need some hinges.
So I've got these hinges which if you buy the package from us-- again, you can find that in the Resources tab below-- if you buy the complete package, your kit will come with the hinges supplied. There's several different hinges on the market. These are solid brass but there are more expensive hinges as well. You can buy some from some other suppliers like Brusso and such, which are a thicker brass and they have stops on them and such.
This is a nice little hinge and it's fairly inexpensive as well. You can find hinges similar to this at your local home center. You could try a place like Home Depot, Lowe's, or Ace Hardware or something. Even wood craft stores sells hinges similar to this.
I'm going to start by laying out the hinge position on the actual box here. And I know that this is the back here because that's where I put my little mark. And I know that this is the back on the inside because I've got my little knots right there, but maybe we could put a little mark in here just to help us. We could even put a little arrow pointing to the inside there. And something like that just to tell me this is where we're going to put-- at a glance-- I can see this is where we're going to put our hinges.
I'm going to start by measuring over an inch and a half from the end. And again, that measurement is somewhat random. I wouldn't say necessarily random but if you want to go an inch and a quarter, it's not going to be a problem. An inch and a half looks decent. So an inch and a half and then we're going to put the hinge over on this size. So I put a little x right there and a little x right there. So the hinge is going to fall between these two points.
The way I like to do this is just take the hinge, lay it over like this, and using a sharp pencil will mark either side of the hinge. So I've got it marked there as well as on this side. So I'm marking, essentially, just marking the width of the hinge. The first step is to set the gauge to two different settings. One is, I want to set it to the actual leaf width. That is from this point to this point here and I'm going to set this gauge right here to that setting.
Now it's not super important that this setting is exactly right. In other words, if you get this off a little bit, it's not a huge problem. The most important thing, though, is that you're consistent, that you don't move this setting. In other words, if I was to mark this, I want to mark both the box and the lid with this same setting.
Now that we've got the actual width of the leaf set, I'm going to set the depth. Now this setting is very critical. If I set this setting too deep, then the lid won't close all the way. It'll actually stay open like this. It won't allow itself to be able to close all the way. If I set it too shallow, it'll be lifted up in the back and you'll have a gap back here, which a little bit of a gap is not a problem. I don't mind what we call a reveal in the back right there.
So what I'm going to do is bring this all the way up to where I'm taking half of the width of the barrel. So here's the barrel of the hinge and we're going to take half the width of the barrel, less just a little bit. So we're going to take half the width of the barrel, less just a little bit and we'll lock this down. Again, we're going to check it again and then we could even micro adjust it by tapping it on the edge of the bench. And now I've got it just a little bit less than half the width of the barrel.
Now if you were to get a more expensive hinge, like one from Brusso-- at brusso.com they sell a nice little box hinge-- their hinges are actually much thicker than these and they actually come together in a nice fold. And in that case, you would set it to the thickness of one leaf and the main differentiation between those hinges and these hinges, well, you can see how this hinge kind of comes together like this, where it folds together like that. Whereas, the Brusso hinges are going to come together and the two halves are going to sit flat like this. In this style hinge, we're going to set this setting, the depth setting, to half the width of the barrel.
This whole method that I'm showing you here for setting hinges is the exact same method that I use for setting cabinet door hinges. Even hinges for an entryway door, you can use the same exact technique. I used to, years ago, set my hinges using a router but you can just imagine trying to balance a router on the edge of a little box like this and one little slip and you've ruined hours worth of work. So I highly recommend this method and it works very well.
So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to use the gauge, the first gauge, which denotes the width of the leaf. I'm going to use that to strike a line, a cut line, a marked line, between these two pencil lines. So the pencil lines give us this defined width and then the gauge gives us a defined line going this way. So we'll just come in here and again, you can take your gauge, put a point there and slide it to where it stops right into point. Same way there. We'll put a point there. And then slide it right into this. Again, remember don't move this setting. This is the setting you're going to use on the lid when we get to that point.
The next step is to carry these lines down. I'm just going to do that by eye here with a pencil. I'm carrying those lines around like that. Because now we're going to mark the depth, that is how deep this hinge is going to go into the wood. And that's with our depth setting here. Again, put a point there and then slide to it.
For more in depth information on using this tool, you can go to our video on [? cutting ?] [? and ?] [? data ?] where we talk about making this little indention and then sliding up to it. So there we have it. Now we have got this layout. One thing that I do like to do at this point is I like to actually come back with the hinge, placing the hinge on there, and using a knife to define the outer perimeter on either side of the hinge. So I'm just going to come in here, take a knife, poke it right there, and poke it right there. We'll do the same thing on this side. Pole it right there and poke it right there. Then I can come in with a square and slide it right up there and cut right up to that line.
Now the next step is removing the waste. So now what I'm going to do here is go ahead and chisel out the material. I've got a one inch chisel which may seem a little bit large for this but I like to have it just because of the actual width. What we're going to do is we're actually going to mortise this out. And the technique for mortising is much the same as what you may have seen in our mortising video. So you'll want to watch that because I talk about the correct angle and such.
Of course, our goal here is not to go super deep so we've got to watch that. The hold is pretty much the same. I've got my thumb on the back, my fingers on the bevel side there, chisel's leaning away from me. I'm going to start a little bit away from the line there. You can see and we're going to strike it straight down like this. Let's just firm this up a little bit more in the vice. We'll strike it straight down like this and then angle it and advance forward about an eighth of an inch with each stroke.
So you'll see what we're doing. We're just coming in, making little cuts like this, down to our baseline right there on the bottom. Now when I get close here, I'm just going to take my finger and move the material away like that and then gradually work up to the defining lines on either side. We're going to come in there and then come over here on either side here. We've got that done.
Now, I can come back in with a chisel and work it in like this. Again, I'm supporting the chisel with my finger is right here, against the side of the box, pinching the chisel down like this and working it in like this. And then I want to be careful here. If I come straight in like this, what could happen is this part could blow out right there.
So there's a couple ways to do it. You can work it very carefully up to that line. Again, very light pressure, taking off very small bites. You could even come back with a knife as well. The advantage here to the chisel is that it's going to help us keep that wall nice and straight. Now I'm right up against that knife line. I don't want to go a smidge past that knife line. I want to go right up to it and then stop.
Again, I'm going to make sure that that chisel is right into that bottom depth line and you see how I'm wiggling it back and forth like this, working it in, just like so. Then we'll come in like this and clean up that side as well as that side there. Now you can see I've got a little bit of material I've got to take away right there and I'm just going to come back with the chisel and come straight down on top of this. And there we have it. I'll do the same thing on this side as well.
Now I'm ready to attach the hinges to the box. There's a couple things to keep in mind here. I'm using brass screws and I am working in pine. Now, if I was working in any other wood other than pine, I would want to pre-drill the hole and I'd want to chase the threads first with a steel screw of the same diameter as the brass screw. This is extremely important. In fact, if you buy the Brusso hinges, they come with brass screws but they also come with one steel screw for chasing those threads first. Very important. The brass is much softer than the steel. So you want to run the steel screw in there and then back it out.
Being that this is pine, there's really no need for me to do that. It's soft enough that it's not going to break. I've never had the brass screw break in the pine. What I like to do instead of pre-drilling in the pine, I'll actually use an awl. This is actually a little different awl. It's configured a little differently than your typical awl that might just be a round wedge shape like this. You can see this one is actually round all the way.
If I was to press this into the wood, it's just going to push the fibers out. Whereas, with this one, it's sharpened to four sides, so when I push that into the wood, I actually twist it as I'm going into the wood. By pushing it in and twisting at it, it's actually cutting the fibers as opposed to just spreading the fibers apart. So I know that's a long dissertation on a simple little tool but it does make a big difference. You can just take a simple round awl and sharpen it to four sides like that and it makes a nice marking and cutting tool.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the awl in here. Now, if I put this a little off center, when I put the screw in there, it could actually pull the hinge away from this back wall. And it's extremely important that that hinge is pressed tight against that back wall. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put it in there, eyeball the center, and if I'm going to error in any way, I'm going to error towards the wall so that it pulls the hinge tight up against the wall.
Ideally we'd want it perfectly in the center but again, if we're going to error in any way, it's tighter this way towards that wall. You can see I'm just putting it in and twisting it as I go all the way in like that. And that really forms a nice little pilot hole for the screw to be able to follow through. We'll do the same thing on this side.
One other thing that I like to do regardless of the material that I'm using is I'm a big fan of this paste finishing wax by Minwax. You can get this stuff at your home center like Home Depot or something. But this is great stuff. And what I'll do is I'll actually put this on the screw. It's hard enough wax that you can just put it, but soft enough still that you can put it on the screw and it just lubricates the screw as it goes into the fibers. Works extremely well. I actually use this same wax to coat the bottom sole of my planes and even the sides my saws. It both protects it and helps the tools glide through the material much faster.
I'm now going to mark the hinge location onto the lid. So I've got this positioned in the vice like this. The box is in the vice and I've got the lid laying here on the bench and I can move it to the side to position it from side to side. I want to make it equidistant which you can do initially by feeling it with your fingertips and if you want, you can measure it as well. Should be about 3/8 of an inch on either side. So let's see, I've 7/16 on that side and 3/8 on this side, so we'll move it over to 32nd in this direction. That's good.
Now, it's very important that I get this hinge location marked precisely. However, I do not want to mark the hinge all the way up to the top here because this is actually going to be, when it's all said and done, this is actually going to be out here like this. So what I'm doing is I'm putting it up here just for the sake of marking it initially. You'll see what I mean here in just a second.
So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put a little dimple there with my knife right there on either side, marking the actual width of the hinge. So just a little dimple right there and right there. Now we can move this away and I can come back with my square and my pencil. Because again, this pencil line is going to give me a guideline. Once I mark it with a knife, I'm committed. At least with a pencil, I can erase a pencil mark. It's harder to erase the knife mark. Now I've defined the actual width and placement of the hinge.
Now we can come back with the same exact settings that we used earlier and we can mark in the same fashion. First of all, marking the width of the hinge in this direction on the actual face of the top. We'll just mark it again, putting our little point right there and then sliding this to where it stops into it. Same way here, slide it to where it stops into it. I can also carry these lines down like this and then take my depth gauge to mark the actual depth. There we have it.
You remember I just marked the knife points and I'm going to carry these across, defining that knife line now because I have a point that I can stop. That's where it's terminating right there and then bringing it down like this. Same thing over here. So we're defining the width in this direction. Right there. And right there.
This is the actual part that we're going to remove right there. Now we'll go and we'll mortise it in exactly the same fashion. I am going to position it onto the vice just like this. If I had it in the front vice, there'd be nothing supporting it underneath. So I'm going to put it right on the bench like this so that there's plenty of support underneath it and I don't inadvertently blow out the back side.
Again, the technique is exactly the same. I'm going to come in like this, angling the chisel, light cut, making just that depth cut like this, making a series of cuts. Course, I'm chopping over the top of a knot here which is a little bit difficult but not a problem. Flick that away while we're in the same motion. We might as well just do this one. And we'll just come along.
Course, I'm not hitting it very hard. I'm just making a series of these stop cuts, little stop cuts, here and then we're going to come back and clean it up like this. Same technique, chisel falls on the line, wiggle it back and forth, work it in just like so. Work up to that point. Again, come in here with the chisel and the mallet, work it in like this. We can come back here like this. Chop that away. That concludes mortising the lid hinge position.
I'm going to go ahead and screw the hinges onto the lid and we'll use the same exact technique as I showed you earlier, marking the holes with the awl. One thing you want to do is make sure that you don't over tighten the screws because if you do, you can strip it out or break the head off. Again, these are brass screws and they are soft.
On a fine box, you may prefer to use a slotted screw. I actually prefer if I'm going to spend a little bit more money on the hinge and get a nice hinge and if I'm using nice figured woods or something, I do prefer to use a slotted screw. Let's test it. You can see there's a slight gap in the back, which is what I want. That's called a reveal and that's right there on the back. That keeps the lid from being hinge bound. Have a little bit of a reveal right there.
We're now ready to attach the box to the bottom. I've got here some yellow glue, a couple clamps, and some cauls to help distribute the clamping pressure as well as to protect the wood from the actual clamps. One thing I'd like to talk about here is this method of attaching the bottom. As I've talked about a lot, wood is like a series of straws.
What happens is when wood expands and contracts, it expands and contracts with the fibers so wood is literally like these series of straws. And as the wood takes on more moisture, it's going to want to swell. As it dries out, it's going to want to shrink. Wood typically does not expand and contract along its length. So what we've done here is by gluing the box-- we're fixing to do, we're fixing to glue the box on to this-- we're constricting the wood movement. So you see here, we've got this long grain right here, running like this and we've got this grain. So as soon as I glue across the grain like that, I've constricted the wood movement so it can no longer expand and contract with seasonal change.
Now the reason why I can get away with it on this box is one, because this narrow. This is only 5 and 3/4 of an inch. It's narrow enough. Also, this is quarter sawn wood and quarter sawn wood is much more stable than plain sawn wood. So it's going to be less likely to expand or contract. However, if you were going to make a large chest or a large box, you would want to attach the bottom differently.
You wouldn't necessarily want to glue the bottom on. You'd want to run a groove on the inside prior to assembly. You'd run a groove in there and you would put the bottom inside that groove and not glue it. That way it can expand and contract within that groove. And we'll cover that in our other videos where we talk about building a blanket chest and things like that.
Again, this is perfectly fine for a box of this size. I've never had a bottom come off of a box and never had any problems with it. So let's glue the bottom on. First of all, I'm going to make sure that the mark is that we put in there earlier is positioned correctly. I've got the bottom there. The mark line's up and I'm going to flip this over like this and put some glue along this rim right here.
Before I do this, I want to actually clamp this in my vice. I just found that this is a convenient way to clamp it. Keeps of the box from slipping around when I'm trying to hold it. So I'm just going to position it to make sure that the vice is close to the size that I need it to be. Make sure there's no debris in there that's going to dent the top or the bottom.
Let's glue this. We're going to put a little glue along that rim. Just a little bit. If you put too much, you're going to have to deal with squeeze out and that can always be a challenge. You can also cup your finger when you're spreading the glue so that it forces the glue more in the center and less on the side. So you see, I've got a little bit of open area right there and then there's more glue just in the center. I've got a little too much there. And I'll take it off right there.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to position this on here and eyeball it, center it this way as well as this way. So you can position in place and even put pressure down initially. So the glue makes contact on to the other board. Now if I put this immediately in the clamps, what could happen is you can have what we call glue creep where it's going to tend to move or slip while the glue is still slippery and such. So this can actually move around. So I like the glue to kind of tack up for just maybe a couple, a few seconds here. Just maybe, I don't know, maybe half a minute. Just let that glue get a little bit stiffer.
Again, I want to make sure that there's contact, that both surfaces are contacting. You can even put pressure on it like this. Put your elbows on it like this. This way I can eyeball it, make sure that it's not slipping. I've even had it slip in this position. By putting your elbows, if you put pressure too much on one side, the box can actually slide. to one way. But this is actually sealing down nicely. It looks like we've got the nice even reveal all the way around. And it's been here for maybe 30 seconds or so so, probably a little longer.
Now we can go ahead and put it in the vice. I'm holding it like this. We'll put it in the vice and we'll go ahead and clamp this just like so. Now I want to go ahead and put some clamps right along here. Now if I put the claim directly on there, this part of the clamp could damage the wood so we'll go ahead and use some cauls to help both distribute the clamping pressure as well as protect the surface of the material.
One thing I like to do is always like to try to make sure that the clamping pressure is directly over the joint. So where we are we gluing? We're gluing right along this edge right here so I don't want to put the clamp down here because that's not directly over the joint. I want to put the clamp up higher, right over the top of that joint. I'll let that dry for a couple hours and it'll all be all set. That concludes the making of the box other than maybe a little clean up and a little finish.
