Wood Hinged Boxes Build for Beginners | Splined Miter Corners

hi I'm Rob cin welcome to my shop wood hinge boxes make wonderful gifts and getting close to Christmas I'm going to show you how to make a really simple box that you can put the hinge on stay with [Music] [Music] me going to be different I'm going to show you how to do a very simple mitered box you can use mostly hand tools but then we're going to go in and if you're not really highly skilled in dovetails or don't feel like you're ready to take tackle that I'm going to show you how to mimic the look of a dovetail using a little thin spline it's not hard to do looks complicated but it isn't there's one using Okay I want to explain what we're going to do with this joint in case it's not clear so if you've NE if you're new to cutting dovetails the smaller they are the more difficult they are you wouldn't think it but they really it's very very difficult to get in those little tiny places so if you want the dovetail look but you're not confident in your ability to do it what we're going to do is going to miter the pieces first and we're going to show you how to clean those up and also how to tweak it so that the miter comes out perfect so you're not having to squeeze it together it actually goes just exactly how it should and we'll glue that and that actually gives you if you especially if the surface has been pled and you GL it properly that's going to be fairly strong but we want to strengthen it a little bit beyond that so what we'll do is we'll take it like this we'll literally draw out the dovetail shape on one side and then we're going to take our dovetail saw and we're simply going to saw down through that line then we're going to take in this case since I'm making the box out of U which by the way that's specific you we're going to take some Ebony Ebony is not going to change color it's always going to be black and even as the U ages a little bit you'll still see that so we're going to go in kind of cut our splines out of ebony set them in there and when we flush them off we're going to have that appearance so reason for doing this strengthen a miter joint which needs a little something extra but because we haven't got our dovetail skills right up to Snuff we're going to go and make the very the next best and I think you're going to be happy with the results every once in a while you got to make modifications so I was cutting this on the table saw and it was splintering really bad on the top on the back side and that was on the top side was actually haded up like that so rather and I know this uh U is often very brittle so rather than risk that I put together a little jig for sawing it by hand and I'll show you how I'm going to do this because I'm going to use a u a special shooting board so it doesn't matter what the cut looks like I just want to get rid of the bulk of the material so before I go any further I've got to see what I've got left for material I'm going to have to modify my Dimensions so it we'll carry this line around make a new cut now once we do that we can clean it up make sure your blade is parallel to the sole on your plane I'm going go in there don't have to worry about breakout in the back side because we have support right there by that piece of plywood since this wasn't one long board and where I would wrap the grain around they actually came like this I'm going to and the inside is as good as the outside I'm going to make this cut right here and then this will be the outside and what that will allow me to do is maintain my length so instead of having to come in and make another cut this way and losing that much material I'll use this as the outside so that one cut will serve cut the miter in both pieces and then I will simply cut this way out here and I can maintain my length okay I'm going to use a piece of ebony for the lid and a piece of 8 in plywood for the bottom and uh that means I need to cut a Groove now to make it easy I'm going to cut the groove in the same spot top and bottom and then I can mix and match as far as lining up the grain or whatever way I want to make it look I'll I'll probably leave the lid a little bit thicker and and just kind of WRA it around it and the bit that I use I use an E8 in router bit is the exact WID I need for the 8in Baltic birch plywood on the bottom now to measure for the both the lid and the B bottom go right to the end of the groove and to the other side always managed to put the wrong end on that is 2 and 1316 I'm going to cut it back to 2 and 3/4 so the width is going to be 2 and 3/4 and the length hold it in a little bit six and a [Music] quarter okay pieces are all ready uh that's a piece of ebony I cut RAB it all the way around it so it'll sit down in that's been hand planed on both sides the piece of Baltic Birch I actually hand planed one side sanded the other reason I did that is because when I hand planed it it was taken off enough that I didn't couldn't spare much more and I would make it too loose so I just gave it a little Z sanding with 320 grit now I want to line these up now there's a a little difference in that band you can kind of see it so I'm going to turn put that like that turn this one around that looks better now I just want to have a quick look at the top Edge since that's what you're going to see you can see how the grain is quite a bit different so I'm going to keep it like that and the last thing I'll check is just to make sure I've got them in the order that looks best so the option would be to switch these around this one almost doesn't fit in there very well back the way we were I guess that's what we're going to have to work with okay now just before I put it together I'm going going to tape up the glue surfaces and wax the inside I'll wax all of this all of this and I'm going to wax the inside surfaces of the Box Parts I don't want to get any glue on the miters so if I just take a piece of masking tape and mask that off that'll prevent that from happening KY get the color change okay ready to glue up everything's been waxed now I'm going to use this this is Automotive refinish masking tape and it's a little bit stronger than regular masking tape or painters masking tape it also is stickier and it makes a good clamp so what we want to do is line these pieces up actually probably good to have a straight edge to put them against right I'll have couple layers make it even stronger in fact I think I'll do is trim this off so the eony piece will go in there make sure that that's going to fit that's a cleaner look ins side although this is nice and smooth that's one the hand PL I'm going to put that on the outside drop that down in there now I'm going to use some Q-tips just so I can place that glue well one advantages of putting that wax on the panels before it went got assembled is it will prevent any of the glue that might squeeze over from seizing the joint or seizing the the panel carefully fold these in make sure that those line up in the Groove Line up this last one the joints look tight top and bottom there'll be enough pressure on there to uh have that turn out all right [Music] you've got to get this down to fit that and the only way to do it is with a hand plane but you may be thinking how are you going to hold that in place well I've got a piece of MDF with a piece of sandpaper on it on it and the friction created with the Sandpaper will allow me to do this okay that might be it now fact that that side's a little bit thicker well what I'll do is plane so that this part of the plane where there is no blade rides over here so all I'm taking is Material off on the right side it's only going to go probably to about there so as long as I can get it over the entire length of this piece and I sure hope I made this piece long enough I'm going to make this one a little bit long so I can trim it use my cross cut saw well number with this and this one will go out to the 2inch mark don't need to number that one we've already got a this one is right on the 29 put a mark on here detail but next move is to drill these for the pin so there's the pin it's 16inch welding rod we got to drill a hole dead center so I'm going to take my jig we sell these been selling them for years and I project that drill bit the amount that I want to drill in so when we do this that's going to come right to this point so I screw on my receiver which is for a quar inch Chuck this up now while that's spinning it gives you your perfectly centered hole when it comes to these little tiny ones these are easy to hold on to but when you they're real small ones you just lick your fingers and that'll give you enough grip line those up what you want are nice tight fitting sections so that when you put it together and when the lid is closed you can't see now going to set this aside until we're ready to use it now the lid on the box that we're mimicking was 3/4 but the difference is this hinge doesn't go all the way through so I didn't have to worry about it here now I am going to go all the way through so I have to allow for that so use my steel rule if we went 3/4 first thing we have to recognize is that we're going to lose some when we cut the lid off so let's assume that we're going to lose can do it on the band saw keep it down to 337 seconds so that part's going to be waste let's just draw that in with a square hope I can keep it to that so that's waste now I think what we're going to have to do is have a small dovetail here and then two down here that are going to be bigger and that's okay um you don't have to all be the same and we want to keep we want to have as much uh spline doing the job of strengthening The Joint as possible so if we draw 45 five coming across the joint see how can we do this so we don't the boot there Now problem with that is that makes that looks too long for something like this so I'm going to suggest we're going to back off maybe maybe right here yeah that looks better this would have made this would have been really awkward looking at it from this side you're seeing a doveet tail that that that long with the material only being 38 of an inch or less so that looks good so this will be our what would be our waist if it was an actual dovetail okay so that's what we're going to do we'll lay out the other side so that we can we know how far down to go and then we've got to do that on all four corners that's pretty close Okay you kind of have to watch both at the same time and I don't I normally cut Bes side the line but I'm I'm going to almost cut on the line I'm going to get some help with my eyes now you want that base of the cut to be flat so when you put your spline in it goes right to the bottom on both sides and the grain direction is kind of going in both directions on this got to be really careful if you're playing across because the Grain on these splines is a really prone to tearing out in that direction but if you got a really a very light setting should be able to get by you also have the option of sanding this but I like the look of this material when it's plained now I've got that throat down really tight so hopefully that'll control any and all tear out let's get rid of that built up glue all right now I still have to cut this and then finish it one more time after it's all assembled with the hinge so I'm not going to worry about taking off anymore right there I'm going to have to do this with a handsaw by the time we allow for the curf of the saw and then coming back a quarter of an inch so we don't interfere with the hinge and we don't want this to be right on top of that we don't want this ebony veneer to be right on top of the hinge so we've got to allow a little bit of room want about of 16 so I'd like to be right there and that barely allows it I'm going to have to do this with a handsaw all right let me show you how I'm going to do that now I need to split that right in the middle between here at least that's where I need to make my cut so we get that actually right here that gives us 38 to an inch so 316 I check that down from the top and that's going to be 1316 so just randomly check another one to see if we're going to be okay 136 yeah it's okay so I'm going to make a little jig just to hold the saw blade against so I I can't risk being being off at all and making a long cut like that with a back saw is going to be a little bit difficult so I'm going to make just a block of wood that'll reference up against here that'll come down to that point where we want to cut which is 1316 yeah right there okay I made a little jig for helping hold the saw I'm going to reference off of the bottom and I'm just going to draw a line and see if everything's going to line up time you get to the other side good okay now clamp that between a couple pieces of wood could just hold this freehand but I think might be advantageous to clamp it somehow at least have one clamp on there I'm going to clamp right on the edge of the right on the joint line so there not to pull or to apply too much pressure to the middle of the box now I think this could use one out here as well these are a light duty clamp so good for stuff like this so this is a rip tooth medium Tenon and this is going to take a while just because of the size of the cut now I'm I'm holding I'm holding the saw against the straight edge okay now we need to get these two lids or two pieces perfectly matched up and to do that I'm going to use some sticky back sandpaper on a piece of 1in MDF and it secret here is just to make sure you apply even pressure and I'll occasionally flip it around just so that if I'm bearing down more on one side than the other it evens out and you want to keep your paper clean so it'll cut [Applause] faster well we may have a problem I've got lots of room here I can easily cut it without touching the spine but on this side I'm really close and I'm almost positive it's going to cut into the spine and then if we look on this side because we always have the option of putting on the back and leaving the front alone but I don't think we have room also I I uh made my cut on the lid I made it too narrow I got extra room on the bottom I don't have on the top and I really can't put more of the hinge in the bottom in the top to save it so I guess we'll just cut it and see what happens mark it so we get it back together properly now I'm a little concerned about this blowing out the backside so I think what I'll do is I'll I'll have another piece of wood behind it to support [Music] it I'm going to do this in multiple passes don't try to take it all in one got to stay tight to the fence [Applause] [Music] [Music] well we just touched the [Music] sline it might not look so bad there's our Gap that's just about uh exactly what we want if you if you don't have a gap you risk after it's clamped together the front being sprung so it'll end up sitting like that instead of closing down tight so we'll make our hinge fortunately they're hard to see so we're going to glue here we're going to glue here and we're going to glue here now we can put this in place line up the ends bring that up a little glue here glue here for for for for for all right out of the clamps now we'll just flush off that excess and then try opening it I've got this throat down tight and to avoid any possible tear out I've got a very light cut all right let's see if it works yep everything moves just the way it's supposed to I like that amount of opening no glue on the inside and it closes down tight that's actually turned out really nicely now I've got a Plane off the ends put a finish on it clean it all up if you like my work and enjoy my style of teaching click on any one of these videos and help take your woodworking to the next level I've always said better tools make the job so much easier if you click on the link below the Chisel and plane icon it'll take you to our site and introduce you to all the tools that we actually manufacture right here in our shop it'll also give you information on our online and in-person workshops

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 23,062

Keywords: box building, box building box, box building techniques, box making, box with wooden hinges, building a simple wooden box, building a small wooden box, dovetails, hand tools, hinges, how to, how to make a box with wooden hinges, how to make wooden hinges, make, make wooden hinges, pask, rob cosman, walnut, wood hinge, wood hinge box, wood hinge box build with rob cosman, wood hinged boxes, wood hinges, wooden box building, wooden hinges, woodhinge, workbench

Id: Qn2jTEENFxs

Length: 41min 4sec (2464 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023