Make an Acorn Box with a Curved Tenon

in all the woodworking realm I find making small containers not only the most challenging but the most rewarding I loved making in fact if you look in the background of all pretty much all my videos you'll find small containers everywhere because they the smaller you get the tyre the Tarsus has to be it really is a great skill exercise plus they don't take up much too much material and small boxes and stuff are what people put their most cherished blessings in it seems to be what they lose eyes the most and if you've ever walked into somebody's house you've seen really nice inbuilt bookcases nice tables and stuff like that what is it we always comment on the nice bowl sitting on it holding all the stuff the Box in the corner all the little decorative stuff like that that just really draws out people's attention so it's kind of an ego boost when you can make that kind of stuff and have people hold it in their hands and notice the quality this is not a five-foot rule where it looks good so you see got 64th of an inch off it's no big deal this has to be to the thousandth of an inch to work and yes I do make a lot of square items square boxes nice recessed hinges or nice edge hinges all the Custis but today I want to talk about turn boxes and turn boxes don't have to be just round cylinders they can be square items they can be triangles they can be spiraling triangles there's lots of different stuff you can do about it but the hardest thing there is to the master seems to baby lids because boxes have so many different kinds of function I have a box right here a nice book end grain for go-to box notice the grain matches top to bottom I use it to hold get get but this is kind of box that you want the bottom to be heavy enough so they doesn't move when you lift it off easy access you don't want have to be dealing with it's a one-handed operation saying for this long grain style box where I had one off cut from a lumber mill where I just took it and flipped it over to get some what grain master on the top but once again you want it loose enough that you can just lift it off people don't want to work to get into their eminem's or paper clips or whatever but sitting on your office desk but it can't be loose enough that it rattles because it is moving around it seems to diminish the quality and since people are holding it touching it dealing with it that little bit really does stand out then you might have boxes where something might have to have an airtight seal but once again you don't want it to lift off it will need to be a one-handed operation well you might then have to design the tolerance is so tight that it will actually lift up the box a little bit with a vacuum seal so that just the weight of whatever contents inside will make it stay on the table then you might have boxes like this right here this is why I hold my soul guide for my handsaw notice once again grain operating run but this is something I just want throw in a drawer I don't want it to open up so you need a fairly tight seal that will hold its own way it can rattle around do anything you actually have to put pressure on it to separate it pops out you got whatever valuable items you have on it on the inside and it will go together fairly easily and listen to the click fit pretty cool huh lots of different variation once again I find the hardest thing to do is mastering that locking mechanism or that's the fit of the mortise and tenon in a turn joint so let's explore that today I'll show you one variation that I do quite a bit so first got to go get some lumber [Music] you yeah [Music] one of the reasons I like this drive center that sticks into my one-way justjust perfectly is because when I'm making a tenon I don't have to measure anymore I just look over at the circle on this side and get it close works out pretty well I mean [Music] [Music] and now I've been using a half inch spindle gouge to do my end grain hollowing because I like that a lot better than scraping most of it away because it does more cutting than scraping and I've been using this one right here but I regretted this a few weeks ago with a wicked edge on the side which I would do like better for fine work and stuff like that so over the holiday break my family bought me a 5/8 inch spindle gouge which is one size bigger than this one I'm going to use a special grind on the tip for most of my future and grain hollowing and I'll be making a video I'm making a really cool weighted handle on bat in the future so keep your eyes off of that [Music] you either I didn't turn on the little red button or it just stopped filming but what I just did was I took this scraper this is the only square scraper I have I use it for cutting the dovetails to fit in the dovetail jaws it's got cut out on the slide and what I do is I line up this little angle right there with my bed rails in a reflection to make sure I go straight in and what I did was I put a very straight shoulder on this side for the mortise of the mortise and tenon joint I then just put a little flat right there at this point I'm going to do any kind of decorations I wanna enter because this will be the last time I get to finish or touch the interior of this little acorn top [Music] [Music] okay you haven't noticed we are making it small acorn box I used to make a lot of them they'd spend about six months max I didn't my dad forgot you're on by like making them because in the farmers markets they have that kind of earthy vegetable field nuts and stuff like that but also I can sell them to ladies because they will assemble them in the nice round shape their size so you can put in aspirins band-aids safety pins all your loose stuff so they normally carry in a bag put it all in that small little box and put it in their purse and then they can find all that stuff by feel by just reaching in finding that little wooden box I also kind of liked the idea of having a nice wooden bowl on a table or a vanity or something like that with a bunch of different acorns from different species and each one might have a different piece of jewelry you can use the bowl as a joy container or and during Christmas time as a advent calendar or something like that I should say the holidays do parties anyway I like making the Acorn boxes plus the fact that you can't really screw up the shape it doesn't matter what your acre looks like if somebody says well that looks like an acorn to me you can say what's from the whatchamacallit oak tree there are lots of different Oaks and they all make a slightly different variation of an acorn so just make something up anyway the Acorn box that I make pizza uses a mortise and tenon joint and you saw me finish the interior of the top of it and I made certain to make a very straight mortise so I made the top of my more my acorn box with a very straight mortise okay I really focus on that because it's very easy to make a straight more adding shapes to it is very hard not common wisdom would think well for the tenon just make it straight that it will slide up but there are some reasons why you might not want to do that one if you have a perfect circle I have a piece of tape roll right here you have the perfect circle but what happens if somebody assembles it and it's slightly off well that 10 end distance makes it wire in this section even though it's the same size here so it will fit in and then they will push it in and that has potential for cracking the wood especially in the endgrain box otherwise other things you're pushing it in if it's a perfect fit there's no way for the air to escape and weave or not air pressure will build up on the inside so you actually want air to escape but then not to come back into that form to a small vacuum makes it harder to pull apart than put together certainly sitting a long tenon it's just hard to do so by adding a curve to the situation all those problems get changed so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pause for the beeper and come back to you so what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut the tenon on the acorn ever so slightly too big okay and James I'm going to cut in a relief cut down on bottom just to make it easier to do and then I'm going to round over the top this will make it easier for people to assemble it because they want to get that perfect fit and then I'm going to put a curve right here it's going to come out and and then come back out to the perfect setting now the reason why I'm doing this is twofold basically it's to allow air to be your friend in forming a nice seal because arrows set section up in here and as you pull it down it will release and that way as you get towards the bottom of pulling off it'll be easier to pull off but you'll be tight at the very beginning secondly sizing it to that perfect fit remember if you're shaving off a bug this whole straight line it's very easy to screw it up and get it too loose but if you have this a nice curve right here that just ever so slightly too big well then you can use sand paper and sandpaper you just touch it reset it lightly touch it reset it and you're only happy having to remove just the very top of that one curve until it fits perfectly and then what you'll end up with is a slight curve on top to make it easy a curve in the middle and a perfect fitting acorn bottom you see what we're doing we're using a curve to relieve it relief material make it easier to fix and also to handle air evacuate so let's keep the fitting this bottom on the acorn so I have the acorn bottom right here and I have the acorn top right here with some sections what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to bring this line down now that is not the full depth of the tenon I'm just doing that so I can get that initial setting up close and they'll put a slight angle on it which will be that little corner on the top that will allow me to fit it to a slightly too big so I can see the little burnish mark so that's what I'm doing next [Music] Hey [Applause] [Music] [Music] Hey yeah [Music] he is [Music] [Music] so there we go a small little acorn box just sticking up with your palm easily fit inside a purse or a bag all that's left is parting it off and standing the little kid [Applause] so there we go one grain match top to bottom little acorn box and listen for the click click solid nice firm close you'll fit in somebody's purse it's not going to come apart very easily you'll hold some aspirin maybe you fold it up banded whatever but like a lot of things that would turning it's just a little bit of thinking outside the box or that will make things that much better a step above everybody else I hope you enjoyed this video if you do please consider liking subscribing telling a friend about our channel we also have an online store where we sell stuff like this bowls boxes cabinets that kind stuff even some handmade shop made tools and occasioning if i replace one of my personal tools with another antig i'll put the one i had up on the online store too plus there's lots of other ways you can patronize us just visit worth the effort calm I run a blog and all that kind of stuff and there's a little support button there that I tell you all that you need to know and remember one last thing it is always worth the effort to learn create and share with others y'all be safe and have fun it was a good day

Channel: wortheffort

Views: 84,899

Rating: 4.9045787 out of 5

Keywords: wortheffort, woodworking, woodturning, box, box making, mortise and tenon, mortise, tenon, skew, spindle, end grain, bowl, gouge, acorn

Id: jIt-JxRKIWw

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2017