Thread: Huon Pine and Qld Walnut needle box

Hello all, this is the box that did not want to be built. It fought me all the way over the past 9 months, so much so that I had enough timber rejects to build my wife a box, as seen here.

It is a 2nd knitting needle box for my sister in Sydney. She still will not tell me just how many needles she has, but I know there are a lot of knitting wool balls throughout the house.

The box and lid frame, and tray, are made of her favourite birds-eye huon pine timber, and made to specific dimensions for the tray partitions, which then sets the size of the box. It was my idea to have the overhanging lid and base

Doing the dovetails on the Gifkins jig was great. I did quite a few practice cuts on radiata pine, to get the process right for making a wider pin and tail on the cut line. On the first pass with the huon pine, the dovetails became higher and higher. Turns out the dovetail bit in the router table was rising from the collett because of dust in the collett reducer preventing the reducer from gripping the router bit properly. So new sides had to be cut More timber for the spare box!

After gluing the box sides together, the pins protruded through by about 1.0 mm. I made a jig to use a trimming router to slice these pins off at surface level, to avoid the use of a block plane or sanding on a flat surface. This was quite successful until the very last of the 8 corner surfaces where I lost concentration and gouged a nice round 8mm diam hole in the side next to a dovetail

I had four small sheets of quarter cut Qld Maple veneer which I thought would look good for a lid panel, but found these sheets needed to be edge joined to cover the area required. Never having done this before, I watched an online video which showed the veneer being cut with a knife and then immediately butted together and glued using veneer tape and painters tape to hold it together. That was not very successful, you could see the joint if you looked in the right light, so I found another video which shows that the edges should be planed or shot before butting together. I made a jig to hold the cut edges together and ran it over a jointer. When butted and glued together you could not see the joint on this combined sheet. I then glued both sheets to a 6 mm marine plywood substrate in a small vacuum press. Advice received on this Forum not long after doing this recommends using water resistant MDF as a substrate, as the glued layers of ply could possibly separate over time.

The panel was then glued in to a huon pine frame, rebated to accept the panel so that it was flush with the top frame surface. Each mitre joint of the frame was reinforced with a small Domino floating tenon.

The overall box dimensions, including lid and base, are 305W x 255D x 140H. The box wall thickness is 12mm and uses a couple of SmartHinges; the dovetails were cut with a Gifkins jig, with the tail and pins on the cut line being made extra wide. I also made a point of putting the triangular pins at the front for appearance. The lid and base overhang by just 12mm all the way around.

The box was eventually finished with three coats of Livos Kunos #244 oil, once the rain and humidity eased up. That lost me 6 weeks, as I was going on holidays too. The interior base is pigskin split glued to 600gsm cardboard from Officeworks

Polished brass handles from Goods & Chattels in Brisbane were then added, as this box will be moved around a bit and may carry a bit of weight. That brought me to a grinding halt too, as the remaining two handles I had were mismatching, and last Monday being Labor Day in Qld meant no shops open to get any more handles. They finally arrived today, lunchtime, in time to fit the handles, fit the hinges, wrap the box, and pack the carton with polystyrene before getting to the Post Office by the 4 pm deadline.

And this damn thing still fought me. In the middle of packing the box into the carton I got an urgent phone call at 3.05 pm to drop everything and pick up the grandkids from school. Just made it to the Post Office with one minute to spare. It was on its way, at long last, or so I thought.

The box only weighed 4.5kg all up, but because of the carton dimensions they charged me for an equivalent 13kg or $65 to ship Townsville - Sydney. That brought me up with a start. If I had a hammer with me right then, I swear that box would have been history Glad to get rid of the evil thing ! I am wondering if it will arrive safely, despite being registered and insured. Probably not.







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Result of dovetail bit rising from collett during operation


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Clamping dovetail joints with protruding pins and tails



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Jig for leveling protruding pins and tails



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FINISHED PRODUCT



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