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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Hobart, Tas
    Posts
    1,211

    Default A plain plane box

    I was going to post this in the box-making forum, but decided to leave that to the more refined examples, and rather post this one in the pics forum as it's a little more agricultural!

    I purchased and refurbished a Stanley # 4 1/2 plane for my brother's birthday. There were too many sharp angles to simply wrap in paper, and I couldn't find a cardboard box the correct size. Ahh I thought, I've got an afternoon spare and some left over timber from building the pergola, why not make a box to house it.

    I had the remnants of some 45x190 mm pine beams which I re-sawed down to roughly 12 mm panels on the bandsaw, then cleaned up to a finished 10 mm stock. The joints were through dovetails which I'm rather pleased with. I've not done dovetails in pine since I was learning, and found it really tricky to cut the pine cleanly with both the saw and chisels. In that time though, I've learned to sharpen and set my saw, and over time the sharpness of my chisels has improved with the addition of a final strop stage. Now the pine cuts rather than mashes under the sharp edges. Tangible progress in my woodworking journey.

    Because of the sliding lid, I needed to chamfer the lid to fit in the dado, which gave it a nice profile. It does look a little odd when closed though.

    I didn't decorate the box, hence it's a plain plane box.

    20190913_194751-1024x768.jpg 20190913_194804-1024x768.jpg 20190913_194907-1024x768.jpg 20190913_194919-1024x768.jpg 20190913_194929-1024x768.jpg 20190913_195034-1024x768.jpg


    Lessons learned?

    • Full length dados don't work with through dovetails. I'm going to have to learn to do mitred dovetails (even just mitring the end pins) to hide the end of the dado.
    • Make a fence for my old #78 plane so that I have a method of creating rebates for lids in future (or just be done with it and order that Veritas small plough plane I've been procrastinating over).
    • When using a cheap Empire combination square, a bad worker really can blame his tools. Time to get a square square.



    Lance

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  3. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Location
    Leopold, Victoria
    Age
    65
    Posts
    4,677

    Default

    Looks like you have got the chisel sharpening down pat by those dovetails. They look like they fit very nicely. There's lots of pleasure in making something with handtools and I look forward to what you produce when you get the Veritas Plough plane, certainly would have helped in making the lid. Wouldn't mind having one in my kit.
    Dallas

  4. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Hobart, Tas
    Posts
    1,211

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Treecycle View Post
    Looks like you have got the chisel sharpening down pat by those dovetails. They look like they fit very nicely. There's lots of pleasure in making something with handtools and I look forward to what you produce when you get the Veritas Plough plane, certainly would have helped in making the lid. Wouldn't mind having one in my kit.
    Thanks Dallas. The sharpening progress has been a bit like watching your own children grow, in that you don't really notice it until they borrow your shoes, and you're forced to look at them with new eyes and see that they've gotten big. I had an inkling that things were far sharper than I used to manage but it took working with pine again to see tangible evidence, which was a nice surprise.

    Kind regards,
    Lance

  5. #4
    Join Date
    May 2019
    Location
    Brisbane
    Posts
    808

    Default

    Hi, I just wanted to share that your post inpired me to do the same . A colleague asked me if I'd like to clean and tune up his Anant plane. It's not a great plane, but was fun doing it. And I thought for a good test run I will make him a box for it using only that plane. Plus off course my saw, chisel , etc.

    As wood I used some pallet wood I had lying around and some thin ply for the lid.

    For dimensioning, smoothing, slight champhering and squaring on shooting board and clean the mitres on a donkeys ear. I made all them recently and am now learning to use them.

    The only other plane I used was a #45 for the grooves and some profiling.

    The box was also a good training experience. As it is for a tool I tried to be as good as I can, but was not too hung up about the flaws. I will see how he'll like it when I return the tool to him tomorrow.

    Thanks again for the inspiration.

    Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

  6. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Hobart, Tas
    Posts
    1,211

    Default

    That's fantastic!

    The photo with the plane on its side presents it beautifully. Great job!

    Kind regards,
    Lance

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