Pieces and parts box for Leigh jigs

I’ve owned the Leigh dovetail jig and the Leigh Mortise and Tenon jig for a few years now. There are lots of pieces and parts, as well as extremely helpful, well written user’s manuals that come along with these top quality jigs.

Until now, everything has been unceremoniously dumped in a couple of drawers here and there which makes finding the necessary parts a bit like a scavenger hunt. A storage box for the parts has been on the to do list for quite some time.

Technical Details:
7/8” QSWO box sides and lid, 18-1/2” x 14” x 9”, half blind dovetails, stained with dark walnut
5/8” red elm – box bottom
1/2” maple insert, 4-1/2” tall
1/2” maple tray (~12” x 16”)
walnut base trim and edge banding
1/2” x 5” katalox lid pull
handles are pinned with cherry Miller dowels
Rockler piano hinge with a lid support arm
Mosaic/inlay – 3/8”, mesquite, citrus, lacewood, maple, chakte viga, redheart, bloodwood, katalox, granadillo, wenge, black palm, chestnut, walnut.

Finish – polyurethane, sanded between coats (600 grit), final sanded to 2000 grit and waxed with Behlens Deluxing Compound

Build
What would accommodate all of the bits and pieces? The router base for the M&T jig is a large piece of aluminum with a couple of indexing pins on the bottom side. A tray would provide a flat surface to store it. Holes were needed for the pins and finger holes to remove the tray.

The M&T templates were 4-1/2” tall which meant the insert needed to be that tall so the tray would be flush with the top of the insert. Similarly, storing router bits vertically would eliminate riffling through a cluttered heap of plastic tubes with bits in them to find a bit.

I also wanted a place to keep the user’s manuals where they would be readily accessible without getting in the way.

I made a crude mock up:

After discussing the ideas with fellow LJ’s (Spring Swap forum folks) and tweaking things a bit the final layout came together.

The box sides and lid sides were not made from a single piece. After making the 1/2 blind dovetails for the sides I changed my mind about the lid and decided to make a dome type lid rather than a basic flat lid. That made matching the dovetails a bit tricky as well as getting the lid and sides to line up cleanly.

Rather than just using a square piece of wood as a handle, I routered a rounded indentation in the side of the box and also made a hidden recess in the handle for a better hold and also to keep the handles from protruding further from the sides.

The box glue-up:

After building the box and lid, all that was left was the inlaid lid. A Google search of “Craftsman stained glass” provided plenty of ideas.

Here’s an overview of the bench while making the inlay:

Almost done with glue-up:

After everything was glued together, the inlay was run through the planer. I was terrified that the planer blades would destroy the piece due to all of the different grain orientations, small pieces, and different wood densities. With the DW-735 setting on “finishing” (2x cpi) everything went well. There was some very minor shredding on the walnut around the edges since the grain was parallel to the blades.

After planing, the top was glued to a 1/8” piece of plywood. A 1/2 rabbet was cut into the lid side pieces for the top. Another slot (1/8”) was made for the plywood that would make the pocket to store the manuals. All told, the lid is 1-7/8” tall, with a 1/2” pocket for the manuals. It’s a bit too tight for both manuals.

Idea for Improvements:
After putting a few of the spiral bits in the foam (and cutting my finger) I decided to leave them in the plastic tubes. Rather than the foam insert, I will make a wood insert with holes large enough to accommodate the plastic tubes. Round ones for the spiral bits protectors and square ones for the dovetail bit boxes.

I still need to come up with a good design for multi-purpose storage boxes for the main jigs.

Update:

I replaced the foam inserts with wood inserts so the bits can be left in their protective plastic sleeves and I won’t cut my fingers more.

3/4” forstener bit for the straight bits, and 3/4” openings with 3/8” spacers for the dovetail bit sleeves

This thing weighs a ton. Maybe I should have used 3/4” rather than 7/8”. At least it’s solid.

-- Earl "I'm a pessamist - generally that increases the chance that things will turn out better than expected"