Don's Fine Art in Wood

Tools and Techniques

2/19/2023 “Making a decorative box with hand tools”

In today’s blog, I’ll discuss how I go about building a box without the use of power tools. It’s a process that’s slower than using power tools, but no less accurate and much more satisfying. This particular box was made for a friend using a piece of ponderosa pine that he had gifted me. It features a figured walnut veneered top, ponderosa pine sides and ziracote trim.

The finished box

The first step (after thinking through rough box dimensions) is to resaw the pine into slightly over 1/2 inch thick pieces for the box carcass. Here, I’m doing this work using a Japanese pull style saw. It’s a little physically demanding, but I need the exercise! With the pull style saw, I get a thin kerf, but I could have done the job faster with a western style rip saw with 4 1/2 or 5 tpi.

Given that I resawed the pieces a bit thicker than needed, my next step is to rapidly remove the bulk of the excess material using a scrub plane set for an aggressive cut.

Next I’ll use my veritas low angle jack plane to bring the pieces to final thickness (note that I have a similar box in progress in the background).

Great. We have the pieces to exactly 1/2 in thick

The next step is to cut the 4 box carcass pieces to exact width and length. Here I’ve cut them to rough length and then am trimming them square and to exact length with a shooting board and shooting plane.

Since we don’t need bullet proof joinery for this box, I’m just going to cut rabbets in the ends of both sides. To do this accurately with hand tools, I clamp a guide to the piece at the precise location of the cut. This will help position the back saw and keep it square to the cut.

After cutting the rabbets, I establish an exact and uniform depth in each piece with my veritas router plane. Then I can dry clamp them to the front and back pieces and check for square. (Note that I only cut the rabbets 1/2 the thickness of the front and back pieces. This leaves me a 1/4″ x 1/4″ slot on the outside of each corner that I will later fill with ziracote trim for appearance and strength).

Here, I’ve selected veneers for the lid. Figured Walnut for the top and Maple for the bottom of the lid. I then spread titebond glue on both sides of the plywood substrate, apply the veneers and then clamp the assembly in a makeshift press overnight.

After drying overnight, here we see the veneered panel ready for trimming.

The final joinery needed prior to gluing up the carcass is to cut rabbets the length of all four pieces that will accommodate the top and bottom of the box. I’ll use the same hand sawing techniques as previously demonstrated.
Then I fine tune the rabbets to get a nice square groove to a precise depth using a small shoulder plane.

After gluing up the carcass and trimming the top and bottom to size, I glue and clamp those pieces in place. Note that I made the top and bottom thicker than the rabbets so that they are proud of the sides allowing for the later addition of trim pieces.

Now that the top and bottom pieces have been glued in place, I can start adding the ziracote trim pieces. I have rough cut strips and squared them up with a hand plane. I’ll start with the side pieces. Applying glue to each corner here.

Here I have added the trim pieces to the corners and after trimming them flush with a block plane and a hand scraper, I proceed with adding the mitered trim to the top and bottom edges.
Trim pieces all in place and now it’s time to separate the lid from the base. I do that with a fine toothed rip backsaw and a wooden saw guide attached with double sided tape. I then sand the saw marks out by hand rubbing the rough surfaces against a 20″ sanding disc clamped to my bench.
I’ve added the brass hinges. Here I cheated a little and used a small router to cut the mortise slots. The brass side rail hinges are a nice touch. I then add a ziracote handle to the lid.
Now I cut a piece of poster board about 1/16″ smaller than the inside dimensions of the box. I wrap fabric (in this case black felt material) around the poster board and insert it into the box.
The finished box after sanding to 320 grit, applying shellac as a sealer and then two coats of “Tried And True”, a completely non-toxic mixture of linseed oil and beeswax. Voilà!