Making the Mini Smile Bandsaw Box

welcome back to the portal works channel my name is john when i first started woodworking i started with bandsaw boxes and i thought it was a great entry level project and i even did two kickstarters to help fund the shop that i currently have this box here is the smilebox and it's the mini version of the original size that i designed about five or six years ago and so i had this blank lying around that i never actually cut out so i decided to take some time in the shop to just mess around and make a little smile box so i used a 4x6 shipping label to print out the template because it fits perfect i can just kind of stick it under my blank what you see here are the important entry and exit cuts for this specific design and because the box has curves in it you need to do these little humps for the cuts here so that when you glue the pieces back together they don't slip in or out so these will kind of lock the pieces in place as you glue the pieces together and everything will work out nicely what i like to use for these mini boxes is a 3 16 inch blade if i don't have any curves i'll use a quarter inch or 3 8 inch blade but the 3 16 inch blade is probably the sweet spot for this size box especially if it has tight curves now what i'm doing here is cutting the sides off the drawer and now i'm going to cut the front and back off the drawer and then after that i can cut out the cavity of the drawer and then after that i'll go to glue things back together you can see i marked a line on the drawer that i'm cutting out now and i just use a pencil and mark in about a quarter to 5 16 of an inch from the edge and then round off my corners so that i have a nice rounded inside so it's easy to get things in and out of the drawer after that i can go over to the spindle sander and sand the inside of the drawer i'll do a little bit of sanding on the inside of the top and bottom pieces but i don't want to get too close to where my glue surfaces are because that'll mess up the glue line if you start sanding material away now i'm going to glue the top bottom and sides together and you can see how the pieces sort of lock in place if i didn't make those hump cuts these pieces would slip in or out as you applied clamping pressure and it's a real pain in the butt to glue this together so if you don't do these cuts you'll probably have to use some sort of super glue to secure the piece immediately otherwise these cuts are pretty much necessary for this specific design next i can glue the drawer together and i'm using this little glue bottle that i've been using for my mosaic and it applies a small amount of glue in a precise way so that i can kind of manage the squeeze out here and i just try to align the pieces as best i can and add some clamps there's not much to it other than to not use too much glue so you don't have to clean up too much later on i dug through some of my old photos and found these pictures from the kickstarter as i was making all the boxes i ended up making close to 200 boxes both mini and original size and the funny thing is i bought my cnc for this specific project thinking i was going to cut out all of these legs and handles on the cnc but i ended up cutting them all out by hand because i didn't get the machine set up in time you can see the smile handles being glued on here with a stack of lumber underneath being ready to mill later on in this next shot you can see a stack of smile boxes all ready to go i offered walnut cherry purple heart wormy maple you name it there was a lot of options in this kickstarter and it did pretty well like i said it funded my shop and you can see here's the family of smile boxes as they were getting photographed and ready to ship out to their customers i did a ton of the smile boxes that was the most popular one and this next one here is the scallywag design i haven't done this on the channel before but this is my favorite design to date it's a little uh interesting and contemporary i guess but maybe i'll do that in the future if i find some time though i haven't done a mini version of it i think it's a little too complicated to do a mini version of but lastly here are all of the blanks from the inside of the drawer cavities that i stacked up and i didn't really do much with these i think i ended up throwing them away sadly just like earlier i'm using a shipping label to put my template onto the workpiece here and then i'm cutting it out of the bandsaw using the same 3 16 inch blade this is probably my least favorite thing to do is cut out these mini handles that's kind of why i got the cnc because i thought i was going to be making these for the rest of my life anyways if you have a scroll saw it might be a little bit safer but if you just take your time and use a zero clearance table underneath the work piece you should be okay just kind of take your time and be careful i get this question a lot and that is if it's okay if you make these boxes and sell them like with this design it's perfectly fine with me i love when people make these boxes and share them with me it's exciting to see this design all over the place the templates are available on my website for free to download they've been there for a long time so feel free to go download those just if you want to make this size print it at fifty percent size and you should be good to go i would recommend using a blank that's at least an inch longer than the template just so that you have enough space to do those hump cuts that i mentioned earlier i've mentioned this in my past bandsaw box videos but i prefer to leave the back off my blank to start with and then glue it on at this point in the build as opposed to starting with a full blank resolving the back off and then gluing it back on it's just less work at the bandsaw with the resong and everything like that now you will have a drawer that's not as deep just by like a quarter inch or so but it's not a big deal these are more form over function anyway so i think this is the best way to go once the back dried i could cut out the final shape back at the band saw i have a half inch blade on here now that's just because i was doing some resawing for a separate project so you'll be more than fine using the blades you're using for the previous steps though a 3 8 or a half inch blade can get the job done on a box this small for this specific step over at the edge center i can get the main part of the box cleaned up now this is a pretty aggressive standard so i had to be kind of careful here but i would suggest getting something like the ridgid sander that has the belt center and spindle center built in in one i use that for all the boxes i've made in the past and it's really handy especially at the price point that it's available at it can do a lot for these types of boxes especially this design that has the inside curves which a spindle sander is pretty valuable for that type of thing so now i'm getting the drawer fitted here because it's going to be the same size as your opening so you do need to take some material off the top and bottom to get that perfect fit you really want to take delicate passes i try to sand the back part of the drawer first to get that to fit and then i'll start finessing the front face of the drawer to make sure that that reveal and the gaps are nice and even staying at the spindle center i can get the legs and handle smoothed out if you can't tell there's a lot of sanding involved with bandsaw boxes because you're making all your cuts at a band saw so that's not going to be a finish ready cut so you're going to have to smooth that out one way or the other so like i said a spindle sander is going to be handy i probably should have used a larger drum for all these sanding operations but for some reason i did not swap it out but if you just take delicate passes you should get there eventually i did a little bit of hand sanding to ease the edges and smooth things out to the final grit which was 220 in this case and then i can glue the handle and legs on using that same glue bottle i just applied a few small dots of white glue and then a few dots of super glue and the super glue is going to hold this in place quickly and then the regular wood glue will do the long term holding of the handle to the drawer and i'm just doing this by eyes trying to center it as best as possible and then applying some pressure until that super glue can set up the same situation for the legs here although i will apply one clamp to each leg i'm going to apply that clamp to the middle of the leg and it'll sort of act as like a spring joint to the middle of that leg joining to the bottom of the box and this is just the way i've always done it doing it by eye you might get a little bit of wobble afterwards but it's easy enough to sand that over a flat plate and sandpaper to get everything nice and steady lastly i can apply some finish in this case i'm using mahoney's wallet oil which is a really good light duty finish especially for this type of project i only did one coat because this box is just gonna sit somewhere in the house for the rest of its life but a second coat definitely won't hurt if you intend on selling these and here's the final fit and here is the mini smile along with some of the other mini boxes i've made in the past if you want to see some of these other ones made on the channel let me know i'll be more than happy to go back and make them again because they are a lot of fun to make just let me know which ones you guys are interested in seeing and i'll see what i can do until next time i do appreciate you guys watching have a good one you

Channel: parillaworks

Views: 27,923

Keywords: woodworking, diy, do it yourself, parillaworks, bandsaw box, bandsaw boxes, band saw box, smile box, diy woodworking, make a bandsaw box, mini bandsaw box, mini box

Id: y2d4EgOcPAY

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022