Thread: Fiddlin' box

Thought I'd have a fiddle around with a few ideas while making a mucky box for my router plane.

It's rough as guts and I didn't put a heck of a lot of care (or measurement) into it because I knew it was going to be a bit of a mongrel by the time I finished with it...although it doesn't look as haphazard as I thought it would.

It's done out of poplar (from my first ever milling effort) and some redgum I had lying around.


rpBoxInside.jpg
A two layer floor in the main body to hold the plane in place.
A nut has been embedded in the lid so the fence can be screwed down. The depth stop foot just clamps onto a dowel.


rpBoxFront.jpg
The front of the box has some shallow decorative dowel corners...


rpBoxLeft.jpg
...and a mitred fill line (with dowel ends) that goes around the left side. I had about 10mm of excess poking out on the line which actually looked pretty neat. If it was a hinged box it may have made an interesting lid handle if it was cut out of a solid piece so the mitre didn't stick out like dogs'.

The middle piece in the corner is a triangle. I cut off a shallow bit of the box corner with a few passes in a spline jig on the table saw, glued the piece in and planed it to shape.

Originally I was going to make it with a lipped lid so I could just drop it on, but when I cut it free I'd forgotten where I'd left the kerf on the inside and ended up taking too much off. Not wanting to buy hardware for it I came up with the handle things on the sides (both bevelled differently as part of the experimenting) and a little rotating key that slides in behind them. It's not great but it keeps the thing together.



rpBoxSideL.jpg
This corner is pretty yucky. I balanced the box at 45 deg on the drill press and drilled straight into the corner for some more dowel that got planed flat. It didn't turn out the way I hoped.


rpBoxSideR.jpg
The right hand corner in this pic is just the corner cut out and a square strip of redgum glued back in. The left hand side is simply a filled in kerf.


rpBoxUnder.jpg
Underneath I fiddled with the placement of yet more dowel as feet or places to stick rubber feet. The left side had the bit centered in the corner of the lip while the right side started back into the walls a bit.


rpBoxTop.jpg
Topped it off with a few more shallow dowels in the corners of the lid.

And all finished off with some Danish oil.

This wasn't bad fun and I've got a few other things I'd like to try with another box but they'll need the router table set up to be able to do them and I couldn't be bothered for this one.