This is the box that started it all. It has many flaws. The box joints were so tight I had to pound them together with a mallet. There is chip-out on on all the corners and the top half of the box doesn't fit quite right. None of that matters though because I learned so much on this project. Almost all of woodworking is just making different kinds of boxes. Because of this, building small boxes is one of the best ways of to learn woodworking. Most only take a couple days to complete and they allow you to practice all of the techniques of a large project without significant material commitment. With just a single board, or even scraps, you can build some pretty awesome boxes. This is a tea box I made almost exactly a year later. It's still not perfect but there are many improvements on this over my first one. One of things I've learned over the last year is how important proportions are in box making. My first box was made with 1/2" material. It looks a bit bulky and feels chunky. By planing the material to 1/4" the box gets a light feel but still doesn't feel fragile. I don't always know what I'm going to make when I'm out in the shop. This box was born out of a new box joint jig I had just built and a bunch of scrap mahogany I acquired from our local door and window shop. Inspiration for the box came from a cigar box. This jewelry box came from that same pile of mahogany scraps. The drawer fronts started as a single piece of very figured mahogany. It was the only piece of figured mahogany I could find in the entire pile. Light dances off drawer fronts and looks like a hologram when rotated to different angles. The drawers are lined with velvet to protect the jewelry inside. This one was just plain fun. Everything is at a 15 degree angle so the challenge was getting all the pieces to line up just right. Some people have said it looks like something out of Alice In Wonderland.
Each of these boxes taught me a new skill in woodworking, a new technique, a new way to use a tool or a new jig. The required attention to details on these small projects is multiplied because of their size. On a larger project small errors go unnoticed but on projects that can fit in your hand everything must be almost perfect. In the end these are all just boxes, but building them has been an integral part of my woodworking development.
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Aaron Whalen:A blog about woodworking in Southwest Wisconsin Previous ProjectsArchives
February 2024
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