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Little Boxes by the Dozen

11/24/02

While vacationing this fall I happened to run accross a little wooden box in a gift shop in Red River NM. It tuly was a cute little thing. About two by three inches
and about a half inch tall and made out of some light brown wood which I couldn't identify. The inside of the box had been routed out and it had been cut to accomodate a dovetail sliding lid. The lid itself had been inlaid with a commercial type of inlay. Like I say, it was a cute little box, and I was impressed.

I've thought about that little box several times since then and decided I could make them easy enough. Sure enough, this weekend I made up a couple dozen for this years stocking stuffers..

They are quite simple to make and of course it would be extremely wasteful to make just one. I found a couple of two inch strips in my scrap box about 40 inches long and planed them to 5/8". Next I cut a template to route and clean out the inside..

Here are the routed boxes - 12 in each strip.

The next step is to clean out the waste between the boxes and cut the box to accept the dovetail lid. Using a 14 degree ,1/2" dovetail bit in the router table set at 3/16", a few passes and it's done.

Cut some lid material and we're getting close. Again, out of the scrap box I selected a few pieces of Lacewood, Zebra wood, and Walnut and resawed them on the tablesaw to 3/16" thick. Then setting my TS blade to 14 degrees, I cut the lid material to fit.

Cutting to fit is sort of tricky because you want the lids to be tight but not too tight The difference between too tight and too loose is a matter of a couple of thousandths of an inch. I chose to slip up on the cut and intentionally left them on the too tight side. A little sandpaper after cutting to length and routing a profile gets the lid just right.

The next step is to cut the boxes to length. ( I made mine three inches long), and route a profile. I experimented a bit with rounding all edges, using different.
bits, etc. until I got a profile that I was happy with which in this case was a 3/16 roundover on each corner and the top four edges.

Last step is to apply finish of choice. Oil is nice in that there is no build up of finish to affect the fit of the lid.

The end

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