Trendy Boxes

For this instructable we'll be making some trendy boxes. A friend of mine wanted to do some woodworking to make a few boxes she could use as a kind of stackable bookcase. So I took a few of the nicer boards I had, took out my tools, and we got to it. You can read more about this project (and others) on my website: thelowlander.org

Unfortunately, neither I or my friend took enough photos while we were building this, so a lot of the steps are missing in pictures. It's pretty straightforward, so I'll try to explain as best as I can.

1. We started by sorting out some nice boards

2. I planed and sanded everything down. Since I only have a hand planer and not the big tools or the experience to do better with the smaller tools, all the boards were still very curved and twisted. They look straight in the photos, but they are not.

3. I made a dowel jig from a youtube video you can find here. This particular jig didn't really work well for my purposes because I made it too long, so the support was in the way for the drill and the drill bit couldn't penetrate the wood far enough. Since all boards were crooked anyway, I ended up just drilling by hand. We decided (out of necessity) to go for a bit of a messy look. I made a slightly different dowel jig that I'm using on a current project. I'll probably make an instructable for that one later.

4. I connected and glued the boards with dowels in between. I filled up the holes and nooks with a mixture of sawdust, saw chips and glue. Kinda an off way of doing it but it seemed to work okay.

5. I cut the boards in half and measured 35 cm for the final pieces, and cut again. So 2 glued boards gave me 4 pieces of 35 cm. I put these in the shape of a box, uses angle pieces to square them up, clamped it, drilled pilot holes, screwed it together and laid it on top of some scrap thin plywood.

6. I marked the bottom of the plywood minus 1 cm, then took the box and measured 2 cm up from the bottom.

7. I took my router and ran a groove along the bottom I just marked at 2 cm. The bottom would slot in there.

8. I applied glue everywhere, put everything back together, put the screws back in and clamped it down.

Then I waited a day for the glue to dry.

The next day I sanded the entire box and put a coat of linseed on it. I had done some research about mixing linseed, but it turns out linseed alone is actually better than mixing it with terpentine or any other sort of chemical because it's a natural, non toxic substance that absorbs into wood really well. No need to be careful about spills or getting it on your skin or elsewhere... it's just vegetable oil.

While the first one dried I made the second one in the same way. I did spend a lot more time sanding this one down afterwards (not visible in these photos). I obviously put the box with the linseed oil aside because there was a lot of sawdust. Make sure you wear a mask if you don't have a vacuum system for the dust! The day after that, the glue was dried and I coated the other box. I gave both boxes 2 coats in total, and then gave them to my friend for her birthday. She was very pleased with it :)