I was COMMISIONED to make THIS? (No Payment)

there are times when i feel like i'm in control of this channel and there are times when i'm pretty sure a mutiny has begun top no so it was only so long until a competition was organized by my viewers in which i had no place on the judging panel may i had where the brief was designed a simple yes simple jewelry box what's more apparently the winner of the competition would even have their design built by me this simple box turned out to be anything but simple if you've ever seen those videos of prince rupert's drops this was basically like handling the wood equivalent mainly due to the abundance of short grain throughout to demonstrate this on the left we have some long grain and we have a mallet on the right we have short grain and my little finger yeah i will just add a little note here saying that when i wasn't worried about this piece blowing up this actually ended up being quite a satisfying and educational build hopefully you'll pick up some great tips along the way because i certainly did anyway back to complaining why do i have to build this now because elements of this box have been designed unconventionally i can already see a few things that are going to be tricky everything is telling me that i should adapt these plans to make my life easier but in the spirit of education and entertainment i'm going to attempt to follow them to a t first let's get machining [Music] [Music] [Applause] this project called for some rather wide components so the first thing i did was get everything edge jointed so it could dry overnight in addition to this i also veneered a piece of plywood in bur oak veneer which would eventually become the back [Music] panel with the material all glued and prepared all i had to do was take it down to its final dimensions we now move on to layout and joinery to begin with i decided to tackle the upper frame which required mitered halving joints on each corner that would surround a glass panel as we're all very aware glass is rather fragile and i planned on surrounding it in short grain which as previously discussed is also pretty fragile let me explain why this is wood is like a bunch of straws if i pull on these end to end it's going to be very difficult to tear them likewise if i bend them there's an element of flexibility present however if i pull them apart they don't stay together very easily let's consider the orientation of grain we have along this frame as you can see these long components are very strong these short ones however could easily separate as demonstrated at the start of the video if i make these dovetails slightly too tight or i just do my usual practice of dropping something i'm screwed now i know some of you will be saying just turn the grain 90 degrees then you idiot well by doing that you then make the dovetail short grain which completely voids the use of them in the first place there are a few other reasons why this isn't possible but i'm bored of talking let's get making the frame [Music] dammit [Music] as you can probably imagine clamping something this thin and flimsy is incredibly difficult oh all it wants to do is bends twist or even worse break even with the use of specialist equipment such as these frame clamps now if we take a look at the plants somewhere within this matrix they specify a four millimeter dowel to lock these joints in place both for strength and aesthetics but in one of my rare moments of genius i figured out i could temporarily use these dowel holes to create an assembly jig that would not only allow me to keep everything aligned and flat but also temporarily strengthen the entire assembly and yes i made it from osb what are you going to do about it an unexpected benefit i got from this jig was that i could remove individual components without interfering with the others this meant that i could glue three of them in place while leaving the fourth unglued thus giving me an opportunity to add the glass towards the end of the build instead of much earlier on speaking of glass the next job was to route the grooves in the frame to accept the glass panel again this was very very treacherous given the short grain and small components so i made a simple hold down jig that would keep the components flat minimize vibration and keep my fingers well clear of the cutter now i'm not going to lie after filming an entire series on making this dovetail toolbox and after spending weeks attempting to break the dovetail speedrun record i am rather sick of dovetails so please forgive me for skimming over this stage let's do it wait am i back on already the next job was to cut the back panel so the back panel was originally designed to be solid oak however this was not possible due to wood expansion potentially being an issue furthermore domino's was specified to hold this thing in place however i was too scared to use a domino on such fragile material to get around these issues firstly i made the back panel from veneered mdf which would prevent movement from being an issue secondly i opted to use loose tongues to align the back panel instead of domino's this was easy enough to do on the base of the box however cutting a groove in the sides of the box required a special jig to do so [Music] so yeah it works nice with most of the joinery sorted it was time to prepare for glue up firstly i sanded and pre-finished the insides of the box to prevent glue from sticking made a bunch of gluing blocks and then after a series of dry fits got it assembled keep in mind that the back component in the upper frame has been assembled without glue to allow me to insert the glass later in the build the next day i came back with a freshly sharpened plane and began flushing everything off in preparation for the next stage [Music] the next part of the build is the draw and there are ways of designing a draw that look very complicated on paper but are actually quite easy to construct vice versa there are ways of designing a draw that look very easy on paper but are an utter nightmare to construct and unfortunately this was the latter well it looks like he's having another breakdown i found it i found it i won't get into the details of how and why this is because i've taught draw construction in a previous series for now all you need to know is that i made some minor changes to the back of the drawer to make it easier to construct while still maintaining the overall theme that the designer specified as for the front of the drawer one thing i forgot to mention about this competition was that osb must be included somewhere and this designer chose to include it exactly where it belonged front and center after much pondering otherwise known as procrastination i figured out the easiest way to inlay this would be using the router table by dropping it onto the cutter don't try doing this yourself unless you have a good understanding of router table setup and cutting directions because this could easily go very very wrong if you don't know what you're doing [Music] with the base of the drawer glued in i could now begin doing the final fitting of the drawer before moving on to sanding and applying the first coat of finish this first coat was purely the result of impatience rather than tactical thinking but while the first coats were drying i began making a small handle for the draw on the lathe i was now on the home run all that remained was fitting the dowels within the mitered halving joints creating a pair of drawer runners and of course installing the glass while these tasks sound simple these finishing touches were actually the ones that scared me the most [Music] it was all starting to come together i could talk about fitting the draw runners and the finished i used and everything like that but honestly i was so excited to hand this thing over to the winner of the competition after starting this project with such apathy to then witness it slowly evolve into something so beautiful was a feeling to behold it was only a matter of minutes before we could see this story conclude and i couldn't wait to see how it ended [Music] here is your box cheers [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 119,537

Rating: 4.9003916 out of 5

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Id: 4Evl0JkYFM8

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021