Project Information
I keep building boxes mostly because I enjoy them and their neat to give away, but because I don't have a dedicated workbench (or really an open table to work on other than my table saw) to work on and it limits me because my shop is so unorganized right now and I need to build my workbench. So instead of doing all that, I build boxes 
. This box was made of salvaged pallet wood, my guess is poplar, but no clue.
I actually screwed up a few times on this one, but was able to fix it so it would work. The first screw up was I mortised the hinges into the box first and not the top making it very difficult to set the hinges in the top, so I cut the top of the box off (hence why there's one less pin then there was originally. Then because the hinges at lowes are so thin and you have to mortise on a angle, I mortised too deep on the one side and box was binding and wouldn't close all the way. So I planed the back of the lid top down with the smoothing plane on a slight angle, reattached the top, and voila. Then, this was the first attempt at shellac and the first 2 coats were applied with a 2" Nylox brush from Lowes which gave me a lot of runs, so I sanded them down as best I could, then went and bought a gold taklon brush from the art store. Much easier and smoother, but still showing a few runs from the first 2 coats.
The other thing on this was everything but the original jointing and dimensioning was done by hand including the roundovers. As I progress, I've been adding one more element to each box to make it a little more complicated. After I build my bench and get my shop completely organized, I'll start with some small furniture and cabinets and what not. So the morals of my long winded story with this box is:
1)Use quality hardware if you can (makes it so much easier to set correctly.)
2)Use the right finishing supplies
3) Always mortise the hinges in the smaller piece first
. This box was made of salvaged pallet wood, my guess is poplar, but no clue.I actually screwed up a few times on this one, but was able to fix it so it would work. The first screw up was I mortised the hinges into the box first and not the top making it very difficult to set the hinges in the top, so I cut the top of the box off (hence why there's one less pin then there was originally. Then because the hinges at lowes are so thin and you have to mortise on a angle, I mortised too deep on the one side and box was binding and wouldn't close all the way. So I planed the back of the lid top down with the smoothing plane on a slight angle, reattached the top, and voila. Then, this was the first attempt at shellac and the first 2 coats were applied with a 2" Nylox brush from Lowes which gave me a lot of runs, so I sanded them down as best I could, then went and bought a gold taklon brush from the art store. Much easier and smoother, but still showing a few runs from the first 2 coats.
The other thing on this was everything but the original jointing and dimensioning was done by hand including the roundovers. As I progress, I've been adding one more element to each box to make it a little more complicated. After I build my bench and get my shop completely organized, I'll start with some small furniture and cabinets and what not. So the morals of my long winded story with this box is:
1)Use quality hardware if you can (makes it so much easier to set correctly.)
2)Use the right finishing supplies
3) Always mortise the hinges in the smaller piece first
