Box Building Techniques - Wood Hinge Business Card Box

hi i'm rob cos and welcome to my shop in this video we are going to do some box making and i'm going to show you how to make a wood hinge business card box now this makes a great gift perfect way to hold on to your business cards has a wooden hinge as i mentioned very simple joinery easy to do get your pen and paper and let's get busy i'm rob cosman and welcome to my shop we make it our job to help take your woodworking to the next level if you're new and you haven't subscribed please do so hit the notification bell so you'll receive alerts when we release a new video and anytime we use a special tool we always leave a description down below all right let's get to work i was first introduced to the concept of the wood hinge uh from dale nish back in the early 80s when i attended brigham and university in fact i was thrilled with it um took it a long way made i think it's close to 2 000 of these and in our lean years of going to university i could turn scraps that would normally be tossed into the garbage if you were to actually look at the size of the pieces yet i could turn into a box that we would sell through galleries that actually kept us alive for a number of years this is a business card box this is one we're going to focus on today and i'm not going to go through all of the processes in detail but i am going to cover it so that you'll see it from start to finish and you'll be able to hopefully be able to duplicate it we are going to go into the specifics of various procedures in future videos but i've got a simplified joint i'm going to show you you're going to see us do the wood hinge and the total construction all the details including the measurements so if you want to make something like this for christmas you'll be able to here's a great example of how nicely you can hide that hinge if you choose your woods properly just a really cool way of doing this anyway i'm going to talk about which woods we're going to use i'm going to give you some dimensions so you're going to want to write this stuff down if you plan to do it let's get going first decision we have to make is what woods are we going to use and i would vote for using contrasting woods the reason is it makes the joint stand out and it's catchy this is a piece of bird's eye and gaboon ebony this one is a piece of mexican rosewood and ebb and the bird's eye this is tulip wood and bird's eye it's a piece of australian lacewood and bird's eye it's a piece of macassar ebony and bird's eye this is macassar ebony as well and quilted maple and that one is bird's eye and gaboon ebony now i'll just give you my reasoning for this sometimes the exotics don't glue very well and you want a really good glue joint between the paces of the dowel and the back and the lid so that's the reason why i typically use maple on those three pieces and i three pieces actually talking more than that but the dowel is made out of the same wood as the back and the lid so my suggestion would be keep this woods that will actually perform well in terms of gluing now what i chose to use on this one for the front and back i'm going to use bird's eye and on the ends i'm going to use a piece of quilted or not quilted but fiddle back walnut i think it'll really turn out nice you can use anything you want here i would suggest if maybe in your first box or two use something simple just to get the hang of it and figure out the actual specifics of it when you start making these you realize how precise you have to be and sometimes you got to dial your joinery in a little bit by the way these make great gifts and you can also sell them you could call it for safety reasons i also consider it for convenience purposes i keep the pieces thick what i mean is instead of trying to mill down and work with small pieces like this if you work with something a little more substantial do all the joinery do everything you need to and then the last thing you do is rip that on the bandsaw to bring it down to that small finished piece i think it's a lot makes a lot more sense so take our business card and measure it first and i believe these are three and a half by two yeah so the inside has to be at least three and a half by two however there's something i'm going to tell you about that you're going to want to consider i like to have the ends thicker than the sides and the reason is it elongates that what i would call the tail and just makes it look a little more like a dovetail instead of a vegetable box where typically box joints or finger joints are each one each piece is the exact same size so if you're allowed to do that then this is the option so i'm going to keep my outside piece 3 8 of an inch in thickness and i'm going to make these pieces a quarter of an inch now for our length that means we're going to have if we take it right straight from the card instead of working off the box so three and a half and if we have a 3 8 inch piece and a 3 8 inch piece that would put us at four and a quarter i'm gonna suggest we go let's go four and three eighths to be safe so four and three eighths is going to be our length now i determined this 7 8 from the way i used to make it and it's not the same method anymore but i'm going to stick with it because personally i like the proportions so this front and back are going to be 7 8 of an inch and the finished piece is going to be a quarter so i'm going to suggest you want to make them about three-quarter and that will give you enough material to hold on to so these are we'll call these front and back now the ends if we take it off of this dimension we're going to have two inches our sides or our front and back are going to be a quarter that would give us up but it's up to two and a half however the way i'm cutting this now on the table saw we only have one setting on the height and that's a little bit difficult difficult to explain right now you'll see it when we actually do it but what i have to realize is that this depth that i cut here i'm going to cut the same depth on this one obviously the ends of these pins are going to stick out beyond but we have to take that into account in order to maintain the distance we have in here so if we're going to make this cut 3 8 meaning this depth is going to be cut 3 8 then i've got to do the same thing here so what i'm going to have to do is take the dimension of our card i guess we measure right off here which is 2 inches and add 3 8 on either side we're going to trim some off afterwards but we have to factor that in now so two and three quarter i'm going to suggest that we go two and seven eighths for the length of our two ends and our height we want the the top lid needs to be somewhere around a quarter of an inch so that would give us about an inch and a 16. so i'm going to say we're going to go start with about an inch and an eighth and then our thickness on this one is going to be three eighths of an inch so in order to get a piece that's going to be thick enough for us to split and have three eighths of an inch two three seven inches pieces i'm going to suggest we're going to want to probably have at least 7 8 7 8 to 1 inch we'll say 7 8 cut them on the band side will be okay all right a lot easier to work this piece in the full size so first thing i'm going to do is clean up this and check and make sure it's square that looks good i want that to be perfectly smooth where's my headgear as long as your plane is set with a light pass a light cut and a really sharp blade you should be able to get a perfect finish even though that's figured wood all right check that one more time okay that looks good so now i can go and rip that that's going to be ripped four and three eighths by seven eighths by three quarter now this piece go over to the chop saw and we need two and 7 8 on it okay this piece is going to be 2 and seven eighths by inch and an eighth by seven eighths and take that so i can see it [Music] [Music] now this piece is going to be two and seven eighths long by inch and an eighth [Music] by inching an eight [Music] wow one more figure down on that end [Laughter] i'll leave that a little heavy so that i can shoot it the final length [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] now it's really critical that these pieces be square so we'll get these done up first thing i got to do is pull this away from the fence just a little bit cut a little chamfer now whenever i see that i always worry that there's a slight blade slightly askew that should be square across same thing still happening a little more in the bottom try that again that's better that's what i'm looking for okay there's our two pieces all right for this jig all you need is a cross cut fence and a few small pieces of scrap this is a piece of half inch mdf i'm going to use this for what we might call a vertical zero clearance so i'm going to make a cut here with the table saw blade and that's what i've got to fit so i'm going to take another piece of mdf i'm going to square off the end first and then i'm going to guess at what i think is going to be an eighth of an inch you might want to measure it but i'm going to just guess on it [Music] now i'll clamp this piece in place make my cut only part way now i got to get rid of this material in order to be able to test it so i'll cut back some of this and we'll come over here and that's so i've got to make that a little bit smaller i'm just going to tap that over easiest way to make tiny adjustments i don't think that's enough [Music] we want a really sharp blade there's not much supporting that little piece of mdf [Music] hard to believe that's still staying in place [Music] [Music] [Music] okay i think that's it now to make it a little more precise i'm gonna go back [Music] in [Music] i'm not going to cut all the way off just for fear of that firing out of there break it off okay that's snug and i actually want it snug because that should make our joint a little bit tighter all right we're gonna save that now we'll get set up to cut this joint okay i need to mark this so i know which is a face and i chose that just because that's the one that's got the figure on it and on this one this is the face i'm going to cut the pins first now this is completely an arbitrary setting i'm going to use a couple of blocks of wood now i've squared these up so that was shot on the on this shooting board and this is square to it and that is square to that as well so i'm going to come in here now what i'm determining is going to be the bottom pin how big it's going to be i don't want it to be an eighth i need to be a little bit bigger than that so i'm going to set it right there i'm going to lock this in place i really like these bessie f clamps because they they uh they hold well and they don't slip and slide when you're trying to set them i'm putting this clamp over here just to keep that that vertical piece of mdf exactly where i want it now we've got to check our we've got to set the height of our blade as well so remember this needs to be set to the height that equals the thickness of our thicker end pieces which are going to be 3 8. i'll just see if i've got a piece of scrap here that's well that's a strong 5 16 so i'll guess off of that would say right about there we've got to use this on both so we'll hold this in place like so i'm going to make this cut flip it around and make the same cut on the opposite end remember we're doing both the same time make sure i've got my faces out [Music] having that vertical zero clearance piece make sure that you get a nice clean cut back here [Music] now while that's in place we need to come in and make our cuts in what would be our front and back now we can't do that we've got to we have to uh we have to move this over what we want to do is we want to take away from this corner this piece right here so we've got to match the thickness so what we need to do is we need to move this over one saw blade so i'm going to bring my other spacer block in [Music] i didn't bring that piece of mdf over far enough [Music] loosen that take our spacer block [Music] slide that in and then lock that in place now we'll take our box front [Music] make sure we're cutting through the front side i'm going to move this over just a little bit make sure it's standing plumb [Music] flip it over and move it just a little bit to the left so i can cut off that piece now you have to make sure this is standing one when you cut that piece off or else the bottom cut by the saw blade is not going to be nice and flat like you want it okay next thing to do is come over and determine how wide we want that tail to be so i'll take this off save my little spacer [Music] and you can do whatever you want on this i'm gonna i'm gonna actually let's come in here and do a few measurements so if our lid is gonna be well actually we'll go from this side we've made this about 3 30 seconds so if we come down from the top a quarter of an inch for the lid and then 3 30 seconds for a pin that would be about the same size [Music] that means we're going to cut to the right side of that second mark so what that's going to do it's going to allow us to have a pin this size on the top and then our quarter inch lid and this will be flush with the top of the lid so i need to move this over thing about having a new sliding table is the slot is still relatively precise created by that blade so it's easy to know where you're going to be cutting so make sure that's sitting right [Music] now we've got to remove all this material so we may as well do it now [Music] again it's imperative that you keep that standing plumb so that that baseline that you're creating with the top of the cutting circle of the saw blade [Music] it's nice and smooth okay now we've got to cut a tail that's going to fit in that pin so what we have to do is account for the fact that there's a saw kerf over there so we need to move in that direction by one saw kerf make sure i'm doing this right i would like to go in and just put it in roughly by pencil so i know approximately where i need to be so as you can see we need to get one saw kerf over i'll come in here put my my key in [Music] lock this in place loosen this take the key out move that over now if we've done everything right we should have a snug fit now that might be just a little bit too snug and the problem is that we don't want to spread that piece on the bottom so i need to take just a little more off of that which means i've got to knock this whole thing to my left just slightly i'm going to take this one off and just tap this now that's perfect that's the kind of fit that i want because we'll be able to use cyanoacrylate glue [Music] [Music] okay our next move is to cut slots on both pieces to hold our bottom and i'm going to use eighth inch baltic birch plywood which perfectly matches this cutter so i'm just using a router table that's an eighth inch bit and i've got it up because i'm using plywood i don't have to worry about expansion so i'm probably protruding up a little better than a sixteenth of an inch now i've got to set my fence so that i can run my cutter right across here and not bump into either one of these in fact i can actually move it over a little bit all right that'll clear so i'll do two passes back twice just to clean it out nicely and again because you've got a full-size piece it's a little more to hold onto [Music] that's clean [Music] now make sure you're using the bottom and i know that that's the bottom this one and i've got i've drawn a line on my fence to show where the cutter is so i've got to start [Music] i've got to start somewhere around about here i don't want i don't obviously don't want to go to the end but i've got this i've got to go this direction far enough to account for the depth of the tee of the groove in the opposite piece so i'm going to start my cutter part of them right in the middle of that tail all right you can if you need to you can clamp a piece over here to support it i just hold it firmly drop it down and stop at the same place on the other [Music] end [Music] this is not a very big piece to hold on to but it sure is easier than trying to hold on to that single side okay we want that guide to be down not only for safety but the closer the guide is to the piece of wood you're cutting the more control of the blade to prevent it from wandering one side of the other so my first cut is going to be just a little bit better than 3 8 of an inch and i say a little bit better just because i want to be able to clean that off now your teeth on your bandsaw are set each one to the opposite side so i'm going to work with the tooth that is bent or set to my left and make sure when i put that on there it shows it's just a little bit proud of 3 8 now i want to something to safely push that through i've got over here actually we're using the two outside pieces [Music] now we need to reset that for a quarter of an inch i'm going to go just barely a quarter [Music] okay there's our four pieces now we've got a route for the lid before we can assemble this and we also have to cut out the bottom but i'm going to look at the two and just see if i can tell which one let's get a little more figure maybe this one so i'm going to put this one on the back so i'm going to route for the lid on the outside of the back piece and the way i've got this core box bit and we're going to do a video entirely on this but i'm using a quarter inch core box bit that cuts a half round and you have to make sure that it's a true half round in order for it to grab the dowel and hold it like you want i've got part of it covered with my fence and i also have its height set so that it's just below the halfway point and again we're gonna we're gonna go in and go cover this in great detail but too long for this video now i'm going to go in there and i'm going to make a pass i'm going to do several times that'll prob prevents me from having to hog it all out at once enough to plug it in first [Music] [Music] we don't change that we use the exact same setting for the okay check the depth of our groove there's the 16th uh it's almost 3 30 seconds so what we're going to do then is measure from shoulder to shoulder so from here to here and then we've got to add and sometimes it's easier just to do this extend that out approximately the depth of the groove in the opposite piece and then come over here and just do the same thing and it would be safe to say three and eleven sixteenths and that gives us a little bit of wiggle room so our piece of our bottom needs to be three and eleven sixteenths and then for the side we'll do the same thing measure here move this over the amount that it's going to go into the opposite piece and then go over here and i'm going to say 2 and 3 16. and again that will give us a little bit of wiggle room i like the baltic birch because it's it's what i would call a premium plywood easy to work with and it's actually sized well now we'll go over here and make sure that this is square i think i'll do it now and we just have to make two cuts on the bandsaw okay again i prefer the bandsaw when i can use it it's just i think it's safer so three and eleven sixteenths so all right we'll clean that up with some sandpaper get rid of that fuzz from the saw now get a bench dog to lean against so all right let's put the oh we got to clean that up on the inside get rid of those saw marks or that pencil mark now this will change the dimensions slightly but not much i'll make sure we've got a really fine setting makes a great eraser [Music] same thing on these get rid of the pencil marks okay now just before we glue it together on this leading edge i want to clean that up and also put a little chamfer that's actually the bottom this is the top make sure it's nice and clean just so that when you're reaching in you're not reaching over at sharp edge so i'm going to hold that on a bit of an angle and just cut a little chamfer that's enough and then when you close your lid if you close against two square edges and there's any variation at all or shrinkage in the lid it shows as a gap but if you have a little chamfer on both sides and then you close it that's hidden so we'll do the same thing on this again it's easier to do now than it is after i think i've got to hold it up like this in order to do it i want that to be even and i'm going to take one or two passes off of this and this is just to keep the lid from bottoming out or binding this is on the inside okay now we can put these together make sure our lid fits now thinking that that actually i called the lid but that bottom might be a little bit too long because it's not allowing this to close pull that one off just take a few passes so so now check and make sure that everything is tight so we can check it right here those four are all nice and snug as are those and then this is tight that's tight that's tight and that's tight last thing to do before we put glue on is check our diagonals to make sure that it's square so we set that in there we'll use the sixteenth of an inch side so inside cornered inside corner we have four and a strong sixteenth four and a strong sixteenth so that's good all right now what we can do is use cyanacrylate glue which is a uh what's referred to as super glue for wood and because the joint is nice and tight this this will wick and we can just put a little bit in there it's so much easier than trying to get regular glue in we don't have to worry about it possibly gluing the bottom because as i mentioned that's plywood so we know it's not going to swell and create a problem and that'll wick in around there so you don't to do anything more than that you can squirt some accelerator on there if you want to set it up quicker or you can just give it a few minutes and it'll set up on its own okay the glue is set up i'm just going to go trim those ends off and then we're going to we're going to make the dowel so you can see how we do the dowel hinge so i will raise this up actually i got to do it from out here [Music] now if you've got a belt sander we can trim that up or at least bring it a little closer to being flush okay that's not finished but that's got it close we'll save the actual finish part for once the entire thing is built now that's the piece of wood that we got the sides out of so i'm going to use that same piece to cut the material that we're going to make our hinge out of and the hinge is quarter inch in diameter so i'm going to cut this a little bit stronger than quarter of an inch i think i'll do it over on the band saw we'll cut it about maybe a 30 second over i'll do a couple of pieces just in case [Music] that's a little bit big the bigger it is the more material we have to take off with the jig [Music] so [Music] [Music] so there's a couple of things that we want to do with this before we actually put it in the jig oh it's just a little bit short i want to turn it into a octagon just so that we're not having to remove so much material hold that like so and using a block plane and we're just kind of holding the block plane so that it's level to the bench we're gonna have to guess on how much material we need to take off you can do this on a table saw or the bandsaw i find it's just as easy to do it like this yeah now i want this to feed through the jig as evenly as possible so in looking at that is actually pretty close but i can probably go in and take off more material from each one of those corners and again that'll just make it a little easier to feed all right that looks pretty close now i'm gonna we're gonna do a video on the jig and specifically on making dowels but this is essentially what it is this is a piece of lignin which is a naturally oily wood i've got a quarter inch hole drilled all the way through i've got the hole i've got a an opening that's flared and i've got a drill bit pardon me a bench plane blade in there that's going to that's set just right so we'll produce a dowel out the other end that is exactly what we're looking for so i'm going to clamp that onto the side of my bench and then using a cordless drill to feed it through hopefully we'll get the exact size dowel we want now i don't know whether one is going to hold that so i better put another one on the other side now it helps if you start this off with a point you can do it with a piece of sandpaper you could also do it with a you could possibly do it with a plane like a pencil sharpener and that'll get us started so you want you want to feed this through at the appropriate rate you'll you can tell only tell that when you start cutting and you want it to you want to feed it through so that it goes straight through that hole and you're not on an angle 2 i forgot sometimes we got to get those keep those shavings from getting in there now i got to put this reverse i mentioned the feed rate if you're dealing with figured wood which is what this is you've got to go slow or else it gets really badly torn like it did out there in the beginning but now i want to check this to see what we got for a diameter i'd like to have it as close to being 0.25 as possible all right i'm gonna check this so that is two five two it's two five o down there it's a little less than that but that's really close now what i'm going to do just to smooth it up a little bit i'm going to squeeze it between a couple of sanding sponges and do the other end as well now we'll check that it's just under just under just under that's good i want to see if it fits in the jig it's snug but it'll it'll fit that'll hold it perfectly so it won't go off center when we drill the i find the easiest way to do this and maybe it's just because i've done so many of them this size but i'm looking at this and thinking okay i've got three and a half inches i'm going to take my two middle pieces so i always do it in odd numbers and i like to fasten the two middle pieces to the lid and the smaller pieces on the bottom uh the smaller pieces to the bottom don't ask me why it's just the way i prefer to do it so if i in dividing this up into five if i use the bottom the top ones or the middle sections at one inch each that's what will be glued to the top that leaves me approximately an inch and a half which divides into three real easily so that means i'm going to have a half inch and then a one inch a half inch a one inch and a half inch and as i've done on here that's what it ends up looking like i think it looks great so we'll take now i've made a jig and again we'll we'll cover this in greater detail in another video but this is just a little bench hook and i cut a quarter round groove in there primarily so that when we saw the dowel it acts as a zero clearance so i'm going to trim the end so i'm pushing this in place so it's sitting firmly in that groove i'm using my joinery crosscut saw for two reasons number one it's easy to control number two it gives me a really clean cut and a very thin cut so the less material i lose the better it's going to be when i put the joint when i put the dowel back together and you don't end up losing that uh the grain so i'm going to take a pencil or a pen whichever works best first i'm going to look at this and see if there's one side looks a little better than another this shows a little bit better and see some of the figure so i'm going to draw a line on the entire length that's going to serve so when i put this back together i'll just connect the line and the grain will line up now i've gone in here and i've marked my half inch spot actually i've used this a lot so you can see there's lots of marks on here but there's my half inch spot so the first one i'm going to do is come in and set that for half inch now i'm just going to go in and put a one on either side of the cut so when i line it up i know where i should be [Music] and then we'll move this one over to the one inch mark i don't need to label that one because i already have this one and there's only going to be two one-inch pieces so as long as we label both of those that's enough so i'll put two hash marks on either side of the cut on this one and then this will be our second one inch piece i'll leave the last one attached to this long piece of dowel that way we can make it fit exactly and it's a little easier to hold on to now somewhere here i have a pair of pliers you'll see how i need those here's my dovetail jig now probably my wood inch drill jig so i've got a 16 inch drill bit in there and there's the quarter inch collar that just screws on now i've got this sticking out quite far but that's because i've got a very short section of dowel and i've got to be able to drill into that at least an eighth of an inch so i'll put this in my drill [Music] that's the middle piece keep these in order so i only need to drill one side of this sometimes if you just lick your finger you can get a little better grip on this [Music] now i need my pliers okay so there's my perfectly centered 16th inch diameter hole hey [Applause] just approach that slowly so it allow it to stay on center you don't want that drill to wander at all [Music] and then our last section okay now i'm using a 16th inch welding rod don't need a piece quite that long now nice thing about this it's hard enough that when you pinch it it doesn't mushroom if it mushrooms and it's going to ruin the hole when it when you put it in and i find it easier to just put the dowel apart me the pin in the big sections then you don't end up going to put this together and finding out that you stuck a pin in both pieces when you should only have it in one so i'll insert that bottom it out and i don't need a lot maybe three thirty seconds of an inch having those holes perfectly on center is the secret to having this work if they're off center at all when you operate the lid you're going to put a lot of stress on it and something's going to give all right now see if we can connect it and see how well it fits so there's the one and the one i also want to make sure that it doesn't bottom out that's okay make sure there's no sawing debris in there that's good remember the less material we have to take off or we lose when we separate that the better it is and the more the the better the grain is going to line up okay now this part we need to cut that dowel to fit we want it actually a little bit tight so what i do is push it firmly against this side keep it out near the end and you want to be careful because you're taking a chisel and you don't want to end up stabbing yourself what i'm going to do is just lay the chisel flat against the inside edge of the box and then just carefully without too much movement you can see how close my hand is make a mark on there it's hard to see but i'll put an arrow at it so when i get to the bench hook i'll be able to find it now put that in place and you really don't want to have to do this twice meaning the first cut needs to be the one and only okay see how that fits make sure that you don't have any of this thin little feather of wood preventing that dial from sitting in that groove properly now the reason i like that to be tight is i like a little bit i like enough friction when you open the lid that it'll hold it open and it doesn't fall shut and it also pulls those tight so it could you have a better chance of having that dial be completely concealed okay while i'm here i'm going to go in i'm going to mark the joint lines and we'll remove that now i'm going to put a w to stand for wax so i'm going to wax this section i'm going to wax this section and the reason we wax we don't want excuse me we don't want to get glue or allow glue to squeeze over into the opposite section when we put this together the fir one part is glued to the base the second part is glued to the lid and there's always a wrist that when you place it in there that some of that glue is going to squeeze over and if it does you run the risk of it seizing your hinge so right on that joint line i'm putting a piece of tape just use the eraser on a pencil to place that firmly now we'll just bend those down to get them out of the way now any paste wax will do and i'm going to use again the eraser to go in there and just apply enough wax so that should some glue spill over it won't adhere of course the tape prevents the glue from getting on the part that i do want to adhere now when we do the lid we'll do the exact opposite where we glue on one side we wax in the opposite i don't know where this coloring came from off of that eraser i save all my scraps these are some off cuts of some bird's eye this is small bird's eyes this is for other large bird's eyes so you just have to decide what you're going to want and i think i'm going to use this piece and look at this closely it's rough sawn so it's a little bit hard to see but i like this cluster down here and i've got the thickness that i need so i'm just going to rough it out make sure that's wide enough i'll stay outside the lines [Music] [Music] now we need to get that flat and there's a couple ways to do it you can do it on a disc sander or belt sander or you can do it with a hand plane i'm going to go over to my disc sander it's a nice fast way but you've got it it's very small so you got to be careful the way you hold it because this was cut on the side of a thicker piece it's got a quite a bit of a cup in it so if you were to plane that it's not difficult but it's going to take you a little bit of time i can lay that on that disc sander and do that up pretty quick so i just hold it my fingers the disc is spinning this way and i'm going to work on the top side and i move it up and down just in case there's a dull spot on the disc it won't interfere with me getting this as flat as i need okay so all the mill marks are off now we can go over now i want to finish that before i start fitting it so i'll just hand plane that get rid of those marks pull that blade in a little bit c that feels nice and smooth now i need that to lay flat seems to have a high corner here okay nice thing about a hand plane is i can put a finish right on that and i'm done but our next step is to get that to fit perfectly in the box and i'll show you what i mean by perfectly now i'm going to use my shooting board for this entire procedure you want your blade nice and sharp because you're going to be planing the end grain of that piece of maple get that blade parallel to the sole first thing i need to do is plane a straight edge so that i can rest it against the fence [Music] so all i'm doing is pushing the piece of wood against the sole of the plane so that it makes contact over the entire surface now that's on a bit of an angle so i've got to pull it away cut a fairly heavy chamfer on this end flip it over still have to cut some more i don't want any tear out here now i still don't have enough of a chamfer here in order to get rid of this gap so that should do it now i've got a bit of a nick in the blade but rather than stop to sharpen what i'll do is just raise that up above where the nick is and what have i got let me grab a piece of half inch mdf all right that's nice and clean all right now i'm going to take this put it tight against that side we'll deal with this and this surface later but right now we've got to get these two to fit perfectly down in there without any slop at all this is where you want to strive to get that beautiful fit now i'm going to do this mostly by just trial and error but i want to be able to get close so i'll mark that i've got to cut quite a bit of a chamfer to get all the way down to that line [Music] so [Music] shoot i was cutting off of that side and i shouldn't have been that's not that's not a reliable edge i hope i didn't go too low no i didn't what i need to do now is go over to the table saw and make this side parallel to that side so that i can plane against that side [Music] that would have been a fatal move had i not caught it in time see how far that was off hopefully we've got enough to save it oh yes just enough at this stage i'm going to go one pass and check doesn't quite fit down in almost okay i'm gonna cut my chamfer here one more time that should be it yep okay no slop just fits in perfectly and these two pieces are parallel to each other that's the reason why you can do it on the shooting board like i did okay so now our next move is to make this back edge perfectly flush with these two ends that's one of the reasons why we need to go over to the sander earlier and flush that up we'll see how far off we are okay it's it's sticking out a little bit more here it's flush here sticking out a little bit here so i need i've got to come in and remove some material so what i'll do is i'll start with the blade right about here make a pass keep coming back a little more each time you should be able to feel within about a thousandth of an inch with your fingers so okay so that's right on but i don't think i went all the way and as i look at that it's kind of torn so i'm gonna back the blade off some and what i need to do is make sure i make complete passes meaning the blade has to cut from one end to the other in order to keep that where i want it okay that's flush that's not so i'm gonna take off a little bit more so it's this one that's going to remove leave a little okay that's flush what we're going to do is make this cut exact same setting only this time we're going to lay this piece flat as opposed to the way we did this one where we held it up on its edge [Music] now before we mark this out we're going to go in and spray the inside we want that lid to be as stable as possible so you can't spray the outside and leave the inside because that's just asking for trouble so i'll put a piece of masking tape on there to protect protect that surface from being sprayed which would affect the glue and then i'm just going to go in there and slice that masking tape carefully and i need to do it on the end as well because i've got to be able to spray along here backside doesn't matter that'll be finished let me spray the rest of it i'm going to get the edges now i'll put three coats it doesn't take long to dry and sometimes just a matter of rubbing it with my palm is all you need in order to take off any little bumps from the finish but three coats and that'll give me enough of a finish and protection to help stabilize that lid now that's dry we can take that off and i'm gonna transfer the marks right off of this base piece and because they're one inch wide it's the width of my tape this down a little quicker i've been doing it like this for a long time and this is the first time i've actually had pink from the eraser stain that not to find a new pencil supplier okay now this is ready to glue in we want to make sure that our lines or our line lines up see which way we did this it was that way i would like that to have lined up a little bit better i'm going to go with it but ideally it would be more like this one than this one we'll see what happens now when we put that in place we have to glue this and we have to glue that then we'll set this in place we want to make sure that the line is facing out so it'll be removed and we need we may as well grab the clamps right now that we're going to use i prefer to use these quick clamps a quick grip just because they don't apply a ton of pressure and i don't want a whole lot now i need something on the bottom that we can clamp against i'll use this block and then i'll put one clamp here and one clamp there now i like type on three and i'm going to use a toothpick to apply it so i can get it exactly where i want it you don't want to use you have to use enough but you don't want to use too much my the glue is there to help prevent anything from interfering but you don't want to go too much so what we'll do is we'll do the bottom we'll put the we'll put the dowel in place then we'll do the top and add it in i always like to make sure i get plenty of glue on that outside part that'll give you a better a better look where the dowel meets the base i actually prefer to stay away from that line now i'm going to come back and take some of that glue off because that's a little bit too much i got to wipe it on so okay mark is on the outside put that in place well you know that is a little bit too tight well it's a tough thing to try to do to take some of that off but i'm afraid i'm gonna have to gotta work quick that glue's drying actually maybe i can shoot it now i'm going to i'm going to put the inside and cut a little chamfer i wasn't planning on this see if that was enough yep and force that down into the into the groove the clamp will put the appropriate amount of pressure on there when we get it in place oh almost put in the wrong spot shoot i put that on there and then i forgot to put the put the wax on hard to believe i've done this many times i hope that red stain doesn't show put some glue on there before i put it together again make sure you get the outside edge now put that piece on the bottom you got to put enough pressure for that round groove and lid to position that dowel exactly where you want it we got some squeeze out so that's good now we'll give that about 25 minutes to set and then we can flush it off and we'll be just about done okay that's been in the clamps for over half an hour take that out now we can do this a couple of ways you can do table saw we can do band saw i'm going to plane off the back excess portion of the hinge just until i get close because i don't want to hit i don't want to hit the side because i don't want to break off the ends of the walnut and pull the blade in a little bit and clean up the front make sure that's not tearing so i'm pulling that blade in just so that i'm taking off less with each pass so i can kind of sneak up on that again if i happen to hit that it's going to break some of those fibers out okay now i prefer to use the bands on this so we'll go over and trim that off [Music] [Music] [Music] could have taken a little bit more [Applause] [Music] [Music] now we either have to plane that or sand it and i'm going to try planing it to get it close but to protect this i'm going to come in with my block plane and i'm going to cut a little chamfer on there i think maybe this way actually i think i'll put a couple of pieces in there just so that the pressure's not in the middle of the box now my my bandsaw went quite deep right there so i've got a fair bit of a material to remove i've got to watch that chamfer over here to make sure it's deep enough and put a little wax on there to cut the friction i also want to make sure that we're taking the same amount of material so we don't end up introducing a taper okay that's better and that's still yeah i've got a little bit of a no maybe not okay i'm going to go over to the belt sander i've got a 150 grit disc band on or a belt on there right now and that'll allow me to get it close and then we'll switch it and put a 320 on to finish it i flip it around like this because the pressure when you're using a belt sander it's gonna it wants to wear on this side more than the back one so by flipping it around i just hopefully even that out and i also like to move it up and down just so that you're not working a uh or if you have a dull spot on the blade on the belt it doesn't end up showing up on your work the last thing i'm going to do is cut a chamfer all the way around you want to be careful that you don't break out these ends so i always skew the plane a little bit and make sure you're going the right way so that you get a nice smooth cut it might be better this way [Music] it is you could do this on the belt sander too i just find a little easier to control with the hand plane that's tearing so i got to go this way and then the same thing on the top it's torn smoother a little chamfer on the inside there you go okay the last thing we do with that is finish it and we're going to leave a link below on finishing small boxes a couple of things to help you with when it comes to that but i would sign that on the bottom and it makes a beautiful gift it'll really show up nice too when the finish goes on it wood hinge business card box oh you should make sure it fits beautiful hi if you like my work if you like my style of teaching click on any one of these videos to help take your woodworking to the next level and i've always said better tools make it a whole lot easier if you click on the icon with the plain and the chisel it'll take you to our website introduce you all of our tools and also talk to you about our online and in-person workshops good luck in your woodwork

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 29,194

Rating: 4.9456067 out of 5

Keywords: box building techniques, box building, box building box, wooden box building, wooden box building plans, box, building a simple wooden box, building a small wooden box, building a wooden box with a lid, wood hinge box, wood hinge box build with rob cosman, rob cosman, wood hinge jig, wood hinges, wood hinges woodworking, woodworking

Id: i9sR--StQIg

Length: 92min 5sec (5525 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020