Forest. River. Rocks. - Forest. River. Rocks.

Small Display Box

Here’s a small project designed to hold a utility knife, presented as a going-away gift for a work colleague. It’s the smallest box I’ve ever made and was an interesting challenge.

Here’s the documentation:

I started with some ¼ inch walnut I had leftover from other projects. I used my combination plane to rabbit an edge, which will hold the base and the lid.

I cut the pieces to size with my carcass saw and then squared up the cut edges.

The dimensioning was all done by sight, using the knife case as a guide.

While I used the combo plane where I could, I still ended up doing a lot of fine chiseling, especially on the crossgrain little pieces.

Using the combo plane on such a small piece was a real challenge for figuring out how to hold the work. Here, I use the birds mouth and holdfasts.

Here are all the sides of the box. I didn’t do any fancy joinery, just rabbets and grooves.

The sliding lid of the box has an inset NOAA pin, where we work. This is a lapel pin, so I snipped off the back and removed the frog.

Creating the inset hole for the pin was a slow process, using carving tools and a ¼ chisel. I used a similar process to create a small thumb-sized divet on the other side of the box lid.

The glue up. Again, this is just grooves and rabbets. I figured it was a display box and wouldn’t be subjected to a lot of stress, so the glue would be adequate.

Here is the final box. The lid slides out. I tried to keep it a bit tight on the lid so there was a bit of tension, and then waxed the inside grooves. The walnut box is finished off with Osmo. Some of the edges are a bit rough, but I thought that was OK as it matches the rustic or rugged feel of a box that holds a utility knife.

→ 7:09 PM, Jun 5

Serving Tray

I made a small serving tray to hold my teapot and cup. The design is from Fine Woodworking, which I adapted to use only hand tools. I also made a few other minor design choices that altered from the plan.

The completed tray.

Here's an overview of the build process:

The frame of the tray is simple, as you can see here. The colored dots are used to keep track of what goes where.

Another view of the rough cut. The plans call for an 18 or 20 inch long tray, but I reduced the size to 16 inches so it is a perfect fit for my teapot and cup.

Here is a detail of the cuts. Once the lines are sawed, I use a chisel to pare down to the lines and square off.

In order to clear out the joint, I sawed a bunch of lines so it’s easy to chisel out the waste.

And this is the rough fit for the top cross pieces.

I used my combination plane to cut 1/8 inch grooves in each side, which is where the panels will fit. The grooves are cut quite deep so that the panels have room to shrink and expand freely.

Each side is angled from top to bottom, which gives an elegant look. I did this with a jack plane.

To cut out the handles on each side, I used a dovetail saw to make a series of cuts and then chiseled them out.

A detail showing the chisel work.

Here are the completed handles.

Each handle is wrapped with blue waxed cord I got from the Maine Thread Company. I’ve only recently discovered how easy it is to wrap cord and I’ve been wrapping things all over the house!

Then I fit the panels. The ends of the ¼ inch panels are rabbeted to fit in the side grooves and shiplapped for the inside edges so no gaps will show with expansion or contraction.

Here’s the dry fit. The plan called for grooves on each end board, as well, for the panels to fit into. I didn’t do that. My panels just butt up against the ends, which I think will work just fine for my needs. This alleviated the need to do a really tiny 1/8 inch stopped groove in each end.

And the glue up.

Now for the scary part: for strength and appearance, small brass pins (1/8 inch diameter and ¾ inch long) are set into each corner of the tray. Here, I’m preparing to drill. It was tricky to figure out how to hold the tray firm.

And then I drilled 16 holes to fit the pins: 8 on the top and 8 on the bottom.

Here is the detail showing the pins in place. I applied three coats of Osmo satin clear TopOil.

And it’s done!

→ 6:44 PM, Jun 5

Where the Gunpowder tailwater begins — at Prettyboy Reservoir in Baltimore County, Maryland — it’s ranked in the top 100 trout streams in the nation by Trout Unlimited and is a joy to fish (on weekdays when not crowded). Visited the reservoir dam today and it was just beautiful. The swallows own this place.

→ 7:11 PM, May 31

The mountain laurel is blooming in Gambrill State Park near Frederick, Maryland. And this is my first post on micro.blog after migrating my website.

→ 7:07 AM, May 29

Shaving Horse Build
The completed shaving horse. I had a large black walnut fall in my yard, so I wanted to create some spoons from the Greenwood. I needed a shaving horse to hold the limbs for the carving work, hence this project. In a nutshell, you site on one side and push against the bottom bar to hold the work piece. The top where the work piece goes has a sheet of leather to keep the wood from moving around.
Here's the complete project.
Holes are drilled to fit the adjustable arms.
A view of the base in assembly.
The block is used as a wedge.
Each leg has a recessed mortise to fit the cross bar.
Here's what the underside of a leg looks like, attached.
A finished leg.
The mortise set-up.
Each leg, assembled.
Cutting the cheeks.
The hardest part was probably getting the feet angle correct.
Planing with the #7.
Preparing the stock.
A lot of sawing...
The start point.
→ 8:23 PM, May 6