Australian Wood Review - June 2018

http://www.woodreview.com.au 67

PROJECT

then clamp the box (photo 8). I use high quality pipe
cleaners to apply the glue and I lay down some tape on
my bench to act as a removable glue pallet. Once the glue
cured I added the pins.

The pins are 3mm diameter birch dowels. I started by
laying out some lines, then used dividers to step off the pin
locations (photo 9). Next, I drilled the 3mm holes. I went
about 25mm deep with the holes and simply used a flag of
tape as a visual depth gauge. I put a small dab of glue into
the holes then tapped the dowel home.

You should be able to tell once you’ve hit the bottom of
the hole because the hammering sound should change.
Next, I trimmed the pins so they were just a bit proud of
the surface and gave them a couple extra hits to peen them
slightly (photo 10). I do this so that the pin will fill the
hole completely. You don’t have to go overboard, just a few
light hits should do it. The final step was to pare the pins
flush with a sharp chisel.

The tray
The thickness of the tray sides is 6mm which I feel looks
great nested with the 12mm sides of the outer box. No
fancy joinery here, the parts are simply butt jointed
together with some glue. The tray gets its strength from

the 0.8mm birch plywood bottom that is surface nailed

on to it. I chose some super small nails for this job so that

I didn’t split the sides of the tray. No glue here because

I want to be able to replace the bottom if I need to.

Do your fingers a favor and use a set of forceps to hold

the nails to get them started (photo 11). While I had the

hammer and nail set out, I also sized and attached the

6mm plywood bottom into the rebates of the main box.

Again, no glue so that I can replace it if needed.

With the box and tray out of the clamps, I prepped the

outside surfaces with a smoothing plane to level the joints

(photo 12). I had to go easy with the plane on the short

sides because there is unsupported endgrain there and I

didn’t want any nasty spelching to fix. I also did the outside

surfaces of the tray to achieve a nice piston fit.

Time to top it off

The only thing left to do was to hinge the lid. I started

by simply laying the hinges on the box to see how they

looked. I experimented with their location until I found

a pleasing location. I used a marking gauge to mark from

either end of the box to be sure that the hinge locations

where symmetrical (photo 13). With those lines marked,

I laid the hinges against those lines and used a knife to

910

11 12