Another Little Box

My 13 year old is taking woods at school and has shown a renewed interest in the shop. We have had a couple of snow days this weekend so I coerced him and manipulated him into asked me to go down to the shop and make something. It was all his idea!

We cut a couple small pieces, one walnut and one maple, from some old S2S that has been laying around for 10 years. It was 5/4 so we resawd both pieces and ran them through the drum sander. (I’m omitting the first reminder lesson of the day about putting small pieces in my planer, also known as Destoryer or Wood Canon)

I told him he could use joinery of his choice and after he came to the conclusion that butt joints and pin nails was a terrible idea (he came to that conclusion on his own too…sort of) we, er….he decided on box joints.

We have an old original incra router fence hanging on the wall and after a few minutes of puzzlement (imagine your dad setting the clock on the VCR) we dimensioned the pieces and chucked up a 3/8 bit setting about trying to figure out this little jig.

It turns out I wasnt even a little prepared to use it and had to make a mounting board that would give us room on the router table and sneak behind the miter saw. Anyway we got it all sorted out.

The jig isn’t entirely idiot proof I quickly found out as the original jig isn’t as forgiving as the LS positioner when making joints. It worked out fine though.

All in all it was a fun project with the boy. He seemed happy, left his phone upstairs, didn’t cut himself and didn’t roll his eyes at me … to my face.

Thanks for looking. It doesn’t have a lid as it’s a junk box for his locker at school.

Cheers!

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)