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Biting off more than I can chew

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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby sunnybob » 26 Sep 2021, 08:32

Steel toe caps are for wimps :lol:
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 26 Sep 2021, 13:57

The next job was to start making the box bits. I've decided to make the lid separately (so it can overhang a bit); that means that I don't have to allow for the size of it when making the box base, so I marked up the height I wanted the base to be and filled in the marked line with a pencil to make it clearer:

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I then put the two boards (one at a time) in the vice from my portable workbench and cut a millimetre or so to the side of the line:

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This gave me two slightly oversize boards:

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Which could be planed to the line with my #5:

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There were some rough bits on the face near the ends (where I didn't scrape enough), but the boards are much longer than needed for this tiny box, so I picked out some good bits and marked the two boards and which bit joined which. Spot the mistake I made here...

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I then cut the pieces up (with the two boards together this time):

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The result: most of this wood is spare for a future project!

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It's not quite right yet:

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Next up was the trusty shooting board to turn those right-angles into mitres:

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All done and matched so they're all the same length:

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It was at this point that I realised my mistake: I'd marked the end of each piece with A, B, C or D so I knew which one joined onto which and then proceeded to plane off the markings. That meant I had to shuffle them around on the bench until I found how they should fit together. As the grain is quite straight, it was quite difficult to figure it out, but I got there in the end. Unfortunately, the only masking tape I could find for a test fit didn't allow me to check the grain pattern but I'm fairly sure it's right!

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My plan had been to reduce the size of the box sides until they were a fairly close fit on the lead block, but the trial fit showed I'd have to take a millimetre or two off each side and I realised it would be better to have a gap to allow for expansion/contraction (not that I expect there to be much on a box this size). I had some neoprene (or something like that) sheet in the drawer, so I cut out some pieces to match the size of the lead block and this should hold it in place while allowing for a bit of movement if necessary:

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The next job is to plough the grooves for the base and the insert that goes over the lead. My plan at the moment is to use a rebate (rather than a groove) for the base and glue a piece of wood into the rebate. That won't allow any room for expansion/contraction, but the base will only be about 50 mm × 50 mm, so I'm hoping it won't be a problem.

I've also got the challenge of figuring out how to hold such a small piece for ploughing/rebating. I'd wondered about cutting the grooves while the boards were long, but I was worried that there would then be a lot of break-out when shooting the mitres. Hopefully some double-sided tape will allow me to hold them down and cut the slots.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 26 Sep 2021, 15:38

sunnybob wrote:Just remember that handling cold lead without gloves, and then not carefully washing, and breathing the fumes from hot lead, is much more dangerous than the hot lead itself.
If you want a safer way of casting small quantities of lead, go surfing for a LEE PRODUCTION POT.

Available quite cheaply from gun magazine ads or or from ebay. I've cast tens of thousands of bullets with one.


Thanks Bob. I wore gloves while doing most of the work with it and did all the casting in the open air to avoid fumey problems. I can't imagine myself casting lead very often, so it wouldn't be worth buying a lead melting pot.

I'm not too worried about the cold handling risks anyway (although I wore gloves most of the time to be safe). I know there's a small risk, but like a lot of these things it's more of a risk if you're doing it day-in, day-out. This is the first time I've worked with lead in at least a year (a year ago I used some sheet to cover a bird box roof) and before that it was probably 10 years ago or more.

Fumes, on the other hand, I take no risks with!
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby sunnybob » 26 Sep 2021, 17:23

Hand washing regularly helps a lot, but lead is actually absorbed through the skin with handling.
30 years ago I had a good friend who's business was casting lead bullets. He handled tons of the stuff daily, and a lot of it was reclaimed lead from ranges with huge amounts of lead dust in it. He had regular tests for poisoning. It was an inherited business, and his father had suffered lead poisoning many years previous.
From an old memory, you get white arcs at the bottom of your finger nails in very advanced cases.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 26 Sep 2021, 17:41

sunnybob wrote:Hand washing regularly helps a lot, but lead is actually absorbed through the skin with handling.
30 years ago I had a good friend who's business was casting lead bullets. He handled tons of the stuff daily, and a lot of it was reclaimed lead from ranges with huge amounts of lead dust in it. He had regular tests for poisoning. It was an inherited business, and his father had suffered lead poisoning many years previous.
From an old memory, you get white arcs at the bottom of your finger nails in very advanced cases.


If he was handling tons of the stuff daily, then being super careful definitely sounds like a good idea. I doubt I'm at quite such a high risk handling something in the region of 1 kg in two instances over the course of 10 years!
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 26 Sep 2021, 17:44

Back at the start of this thread, I hand planed some maple that was going to form part of this box. However, for the box design as it is, I need some maple that's a lot thinner (4 mm vs 9 mm) than the stuff I prepared earlier. Rather than carry on reducing the thickness of that bit, I dug around in my drawer and found this little bit of 5 mm maple:

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I used my #4 to plane that down to 4 mm thickness.

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I then got started on the rebates and grooves. First of all, I used a knife and a handy little edge gauge to cut the edge of the rebate on each piece:

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I then clamped each piece in turn on the edge of the bench, hanging over slightly to give clearance to the rebate plane's fence:

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The grain direction was right for the rebate (on all the pieces) so it left a nice finish:

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I then used the edge gauge again to mark the positions of the edges of the groove for the maple insert:

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Unfortunately, I haven't managed to find any cutters for my plough plane in sensible metric sizes, so 4 mm wasn't an option. There's a 3.2 mm (1/8") cutter and a 4.8 mm (3/16") cutter. I felt the 4.8 mm one was a bit thick, so I went with the 3.2 mm one. My plough plane is missing a screw and nut for holding thin blades in place, so I used an M6 cap screw with a penny washer, which seemed to do the trick:

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As there was no way of clamping the part down without the clamp interfering with the wood, I used some carpet tape that I'd bought in Lidl earlier today:

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The carpet tape worked really well: it held the part down firmly but it was quite straightforward to get it back off the workbench once the groove was cut. The grain direction had changed by this point, so the cut was a bit rougher than the rebate.

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Stupidly, I stopped being quite so careful on the last piece and levered it off from the tape using the rebated edge rather than the opposite side:

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Thankfully the broken off corner came off in one piece so I could glue it back on again. Being on the bottom, it shouldn't be too noticeable and, if I remember, I'll put the hinge on that side so it's at the back as well as the bottom.

The next job was to work on the 4 mm maple piece, starting by shooting one corner square (apparently using my #5 instead of my more usual #5½ - I didn't realise that until I saw this photo!):

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I then marked up the size for each piece (one at a time: this photo just shows one marked out):

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Rough cut it to size with my ryoba:

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I could then shoot it to size and (in the case of the piece that goes into the groove rather than the rebate), stick it to the bench with carpet tape and plane it down to a shade under 3.2 mm.

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Time for a quick test fit:

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I used some masking tape to help with gluing the box together:

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I only fitted the insert that goes in the groove as the one that goes in the rebate can be added later. It's now drying; top view:

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Bottom view:

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Next job is probably to add some splines for reinforcement and then I need to figure out what I'm going to do about a lid. The cylindrical hinges I've got are relatively long, so they need a relatively thick piece of wood for the top. I'd like it to overhang the front (for ease of opening) and maybe the left and right too (which at least should reduce the required accuracy!) One option is a simple bit of maple (maybe with some chamfered edges) if I've got anything thick enough. Not sure what other options there are so I'm open to suggestions at this point!

I'm pleased with how it's gone so far: unless you count the TIG welder, I haven't reached for any power tools so far, which I think is a first for me: there's usually something I "cheat" on! Of course the thing I said in the first post about possibly doing a dovetail hasn't happened: mitres are a lot easier than that! Maybe I'll be brave and try that using the rest of the padauk.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby AndyT » 26 Sep 2021, 17:50

I do mean this as a polite question - there are always many options and you have to pick one - but did you consider making a 4.8mm groove and just lightly bevelling the edges of the 5mm maple? It would have been quicker.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 26 Sep 2021, 18:11

AndyT wrote:I do mean this as a polite question - there are always many options and you have to pick one - but did you consider making a 4.8mm groove and just lightly bevelling the edges of the 5mm maple? It would have been quicker.


It's a good point, but there were two problems with that:

  1. I wanted to reduce the amount of "lost height" in the box, so felt that 5 mm was too thick.
  2. I'd already planed the maple down to 4 mm when I realised that there wasn't a cutter any closer to 4 mm!

Having said all that, if I'd have thought of what you said, reducing just the edges of the 4 mm bit down to 3.2 might well have been quicker & it's definitely one I'll try to remember next time. This wood thing is still all very new to me!
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Woodster » 26 Sep 2021, 22:35

Looking good, I’m following with fascination. ;)
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby NickM » 27 Sep 2021, 08:47

Looking good. That is a very vivid timber.

Tape is a good way to hold small and awkward shaped pieces down but I've found carpet tape can be a bit too sticky (tearing the wood when removing it).

One option I saw on YouTube which worked well was to put masking tape on the bench and on the work piece and to use a few dabs of superglue between them.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 27 Sep 2021, 09:15

NickM wrote:Looking good. That is a very vivid timber.

Tape is a good way to hold small and awkward shaped pieces down but I've found carpet tape can be a bit too sticky (tearing the wood when removing it).

One option I saw on YouTube which worked well was to put masking tape on the bench and on the work piece and to use a few dabs of superglue between them.


I've used the masking tape and superglue trick a lot in the past, but I've been looking for ages for a relatively low-tack double-sided tape to replace it. So far, carpet tape seems to be working well (it might depend on the carpet tape and how long it's left to cure, but I tried it on a little bit of scrap oak and left it for a couple of hours and it came off very easily).

Masking tape/superglue (and activator) works extremely well, but is a very good way of getting through reels of masking tape very, very quickly! I had some bits of wood I wanted to put through the thicknesser on a sled a few months ago: they were thin and hence needed to be on the sled for both sides and I think I used up more than a roll (50 metres :shock: ) of masking tape on that job alone (plus all the superglue and activator of course). It might be that carpet tape ends up even more expensive: I just wanted to see whether it works before thinking about relative cost or anything. The carpet tape is a lot less hassle, which is quite nice.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Woodbloke » 27 Sep 2021, 11:37

NickM wrote:Looking good. That is a very vivid timber.


Digressing slightly from this gastronomical thread; I went to Yandles a couple of weeks ago and bought a couple of really fabulous, very thick boards of Paduk. They were old stock and were right at the back of the stack but it was worth the effort to extract them and the colour was more rosewoody than vivid orange. Beautiful stuff to work with. I also got hold a 1.4m*230*50mm thick board of Cocobolo; again old stock and never to be seen again at Yandles, but you, really, really don’t want to know what I paid for it. :shock:

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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 30 Sep 2021, 18:12

I had an hour or so free this evening so I decided to do a little more on the box. I started by taking the masking tape off:

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There had obviously been a bit of glue squeeze out under the tape, which was a bit of a shame, but it was easily sorted by putting some 240 grit sandpaper on the bench and rubbing the box on it:

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The next job was to start cutting the slots for the splines. I started by marking where I wanted the splines to get to on each side using masking tape:

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This is my spline cutting process (this is the third box I've done in a way that's basically the same as this):

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The saw is a Dozuki dovetail saw. The small block of maple is the wood I'm going to use to cut the splines; the other block of wood is a random offcut of cedar that's 12 mm thick: this seemed about the right distance to offset the splines from the top and bottom of the box. On the right is a spare blade for the Dozuki. It's been taped down to the bench with masking tape and a couple of layers of masking tape added to account for the fact that the kerf is slightly wider than the thickness of the plate.

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The first step in cutting the splines is to put the cedar spacer on top of the spare saw blade and then put the Dozuki on top of the cedar.

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I can then press the blade of the Dozuki down onto the cedar and rub it back and forth to cut one side of the spline. I repeated that on each corner and with the box both ways up, so each corner had two cuts, each a little over 12 mm from the edge:

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To cut the second side, I replace the spare blade with the maple that's going to be used to cut the spline. This effectively moves the blade up by the maple thickness minus the kerf.

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After cutting all four corners in both box orientations, I end up with a set of slits all round the box:

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I use a square and knife to join the two saw cuts together:

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I can then use my 3 mm chisel to open the slot out, checking with a 150 mm ruler that there are no ridges in the middle of the slot:

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It's then ready for a test fit: if it's all gone well (which it did on the two I've cut so far), the maple piece pushes into the slot with light pressure and stays there of its own accord.

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I've only chiselled out two of the spline slots so far; I'll hopefully get some time at the weekend to do the remaining six and get the maple glued into place.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 02 Oct 2021, 16:40

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It's too wet outside to work on my Chunky Planter, so I decided to do a bit more on the box. I started by chiselling out the rest of the spline slots, which was quite a quick process having already cut the sides.

I then used my portable workbench and ryoba to cut the maple piece into 10 mm wide strips:

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After each cut (and before the first one) I used my [url=shooting board]shooting board[/url] to get one clean edge on the to-be-cut strip. This resulted in four roughly equal size strips, each with one good long side:

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To make things a bit easier later, I put all the splines in a pile on the shooting board and reduced them to the same size and with the two long edges parallel:

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I then put them back into the vice on the portable workbench and cut them in half.

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I could then do a test fit. Some of the slots needed a bit of fettling, but it didn't take long to get them all in and snug with the two edges.

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I then put some glue in the slots and a little onto the faces of the splines and pushed them loosely back in. I could then put the whole lot in the vice (taking advantage of the fact they're all the same thickness and with parallel edges) and squeeze them into the slots.

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I then took them back out of the vice and used some clamps to hold them while I wiped all the excess glue off with a damp cloth and then left them to dry.

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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 02 Oct 2021, 16:42

While the glue's drying on the splines, I decided to do some experimenting with hinges. I found a couple of scrap bits of cherry that are the same thickness as the box sides (9 mm):

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I marked the centreline on the end of one and the same distance (4.5 mm) in from the edge of the other, using my fabulous little marking gauge and a knife.

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I then marked a couple of locations for hinge holes:

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First of all, I tried drilling with a 4 mm pointy drill bit, but the hole was oversize and the hinge was loose. Thankfully, I'd stopped after only drilling a couple of millimetres to check, so rather than moving to a new hole location, I just drilled the rest of the depth a different way. For the rest of the hole and for the other holes, I used a 3 mm pointy drill bit to get the hole drilled in the right place and then a 4 mm twist drill to enlarge it to size. That worked much better. You can see the one that I did oversize at first on the right of this photo:

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I then transferred the hole locations as best I could onto the piece that would form the lid. I drilled this all the way through (in the real box I would make this a blind hole, but the cherry wasn't thick enough for that):

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I then used the mitre block on my shooting board to chamfer the edges down to the centreline that I'd cut with a knife at the start:

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That gave me two pieces ready for testing.

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I pushed the hinges into the holes with the hinge bent (as I figured it would be easier to get the depth right).

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I think my technique needs work...

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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 02 Oct 2021, 16:42

As an alternative to the cylinder hinges, I have some of these tiny (8 mm wide) butt hinges, which came with little brass nails to hold the hinges in place:

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I measured the thickness of the hinge in its closed state: 2 mm.

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I then bent the hinge back on itself and used it to mark (with a knife) the size of the slot. I used my marking gauge to mark a line 1 mm down from the edge as that's half the thickness I measured.

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Conveniently, I've got an 8 mm chisel, so cutting out the 8 mm wide slot was very simple:

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I could then bend the hinge back on itself again and use an awl to mark the hole locations:

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I didn't like the idea of driving nails in so near the edge of the wood without a pilot hole so I measured the nail diameter (about 1.2 mm) and drilled a hole a bit smaller than that (0.7 mm):

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After repeating the same process on the other piece, I could try a single hinge test fit:

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Conclusion so far: hinges are hard and I'm not very good at fitting them!
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 03 Oct 2021, 12:43

It's too wet to work on my Chunky Planter, so I thought I'd do a little more on the box. I started by unclamping the box so I could inspect the splines; so far they all look good.

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I used a flush-cut saw to cut off the excess pieces:

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All done, does anyone need any miniature V-blocks?! :lol:

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This is what one side looked like after cutting off the spline excess; you can see some glue squeeze out visible in places and some white something-or-other (maple dust maybe?):

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I didn't fancy sanding the sides (partly because I don't like sanding but mainly because I was worried about padauk dust colouring the maple), so I used a thin card scraper to clean up the faces of the box:

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I then rubbed the top and bottom faces on a sheet of 240 grit sandpaper:

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Two of the mitres (on the right of this photo) were ever so slightly gappy; it looks worse on this photo than it did in reality, but I've generally managed to get mitres spot on, so I was a bit disappointed with this. I suspect it would have been good to add some additional clamping as well as the masking tape; I probably didn't pull the masking tape tight enough:

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I'll make those two mitres sit at the back of the box (where the hinges are), so they're not too obvious. Nevertheless, I thought I'd try cleaning them up a bit by using a very thin saw I have to cut a shallow kerf (using a combination square as a reference to make sure the cut is at 45°):

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I then shoved some glue in the hole and covered it in the sawdust that came from sanding the top and bottom faces.

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Once that's had plenty of time to dry I'll sand it and see what it looks like.

While the glue's drying I thought I'd have another go at a hinge test fit. I was disappointed first time round that, despite carefully measuring the thickness of the hinge, the test piece "box" didn't close properly. As a test I decided to slot the nails into the holes and measure it again:

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It's clear that the nail heads are stopping the hinge from closing; the side view shows that the hinge ends up at an angle, which is far from ideal:

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After pondering for a bit, I concluded the simplest solution would be to use the 240 grit sandpaper I already had on my bench to reduce the height of the brass nail heads a bit; I'd then need to polish the brass to get them looking good, which would be a bit of a chore, but there's only 8 nails, so it probably wouldn't take that long.

However, it turns out they aren't brass, just plated steel:

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Onto plan C (whatever that may be)...
Last edited by Dr.Al on 03 Oct 2021, 16:14, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby sunnybob » 03 Oct 2021, 13:08

Brass (brassed) countersunk screws. I find I can use a drill bit or countersink bit to deepen the angles on the hinge holes, which alleviates 90% of the problem.
Drill 1.5 mm pilot holes into the hardwood to stop the tiny screws snapping off.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 03 Oct 2021, 16:01

sunnybob wrote:Brass (brassed) countersunk screws. I find I can use a drill bit or countersink bit to deepen the angles on the hinge holes, which alleviates 90% of the problem.
Drill 1.5 mm pilot holes into the hardwood to stop the tiny screws snapping off.
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Thanks Bob. I'll have to see if I can get screws small enough... the holes in the hinges are tiny: if I drilled 1.5 mm pilot holes the existing nails would fall straight out: they're only 1.2 mm diameter! I tried my smallest countersink but it wouldn't get anywhere near the hole without hitting the barrel. I might try a small drill bit, but the rear of the heads of the nails are quite flat anyway: it's the domed top that's the issue.

I think I probably just need to buy some better quality hinges!
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 03 Oct 2021, 16:19

Putting the hinge decision off for a while, I went out after lunch and sanded the top down to see what the filled-in mitres look like:

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I think that'll do.

I then experimented with some different ideas for lids, a thick one:

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...and a thin one:

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I think I prefer the thin (5 mm thick) lid, but of course that means I need to use a butt hinge rather than the cylinder sort, so I'll have to figure out a way to deal with the problem of the nail heads (I'll probably just have to buy better quality hinges!)

In the meantime, I thought I'd get on with sticking the base in. Do you remember that bit of maple that I cut up into strips and used to make the splines? That was the base of the box. :oops:

Anyway, I still had plenty of the 5 mm thick maple, so I cut a new bit roughly to the right size and then used the shooting board to square it up and get it to be a snug fit in the rebate:

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My original plan had been to have the base flush with the padauk rim, but seeing what it looked like with the slightly thicker maple, I decided I rather like it. When the box is the right way up it lifts the edges off the base slightly, which looks good to me:

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With the new base prepared, I fitted the large neoprene square into the pocket, followed by the block of lead surrounded by neoprene on all four sides. It took a little bit of hand filing to get it to the right size, but it didn't take long as the lead is really soft:

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I put the other large square of neoprene on top:

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I then ran glue around the rim and used the vice to push the base into place. It won't be a very strong joint holding the base in, but I'm not planning on lifting the box very often, so it should fine. If the joint ever fails, I'll remove the neoprene above and below the lead and replace it with some appropriate glue so the base is glued to the lead which in turn is glued to the other piece of maple. Hopefully that won't be necessary though.

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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby MattS » 03 Oct 2021, 20:23

This box is looking really good, very fine work at that scale! Agree with the design decisions, the thin lid looked good and the shadow gap with the thicker base is very neat.
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby AndyT » 03 Oct 2021, 20:42

A suggestion on the hinges. When I made my little walnut box recently, I used some cheap brass hinges from Screwfix. They're not at all bad. They are proper extruded brass with countersunk holes.
The sizes in the descriptions are for the hinge laid flat, so their 25 x 19mm hinge should be ok for your box I think, needing only about 8mm depth of recess, depending how much you want the barrel to protrude.

And they are only £1.29 a pair.

https://www.screwfix.com/p/self-colour- ... tid=463785
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby sunnybob » 03 Oct 2021, 20:46

I know you wont do this, because its just too simple for you :lol: :lol:
Forget hinges and make the lid lift off, with a tea caddy type stepped lid. 8-)
my wood projects are here https://pbase.com/sunnybob
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 05 Oct 2021, 07:46

AndyT wrote:A suggestion on the hinges. When I made my little walnut box recently, I used some cheap brass hinges from Screwfix. They're not at all bad. They are proper extruded brass with countersunk holes.
The sizes in the descriptions are for the hinge laid flat, so their 25 x 19mm hinge should be ok for your box I think, needing only about 8mm depth of recess, depending how much you want the barrel to protrude.

And they are only £1.29 a pair.

https://www.screwfix.com/p/self-colour- ... tid=463785


Thanks Andy. My instinct says that these will still be too big (compared to the 10 × 8 mm ones I've got at the moment), but at that price I'm tempted to get some and offer them up anyway. Worst case I have some spare hinges lying around. Now I need to figure out if there's anything else I need in the "big city" (Stroud) to make it worth driving over to Screwfix!

sunnybob wrote:I know you wont do this, because its just too simple for you :lol: :lol:
Forget hinges and make the lid lift off, with a tea caddy type stepped lid. 8-)


The last two boxes I made used that method (because it was simple enough for me to manage!) but I want this to be a box I can easily open and close in the dark so I think a hinge would work better.
My projects website: https://www.cgtk.co.uk
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Re: Biting off more than I can chew

Postby Dr.Al » 14 Oct 2021, 18:14

I'd had a day of trigonometry and differential equations and felt like I needed a bit of hand tool time to settle my mind, so I decided to have another go at a test hinge fit. I haven't been anywhere near a branch of Screwfix for a while, but I'd managed to find some small-ish hinges available online, so I thought I'd give them a try:

Image

They're more than twice the size of the original ones (and come from a company that sadly seems to be stuck in the 19th century when it comes to measurement units), but they're just small enough to be plausible for the box. They're advertised as solid brass hinges on the website, although the screws that come with them are magnetic, so the screws definitely aren't solid brass! To be fair, they only say that the hinges are brass.

I started by getting a bit of cherry that is the same thickness as the box sides. I used a knife to mark the positions of the hinges, then chiselled out the slots.

Image

I chipped one corner off one of the pieces (visible by the bolster of the chisel in the photo above), but that's why I'm practising! I then measured the core diameter of the screws and on the basis of that chose a 1.5 mm drill to use as a pilot. I positioned the hinges in the slots, drilled the pilots, then fitted the hinges. Here it is open:

Image

(the chipped off corner is probably more obvious in this photo). Here it is closed:

Image

If you look at the top of the photo you'll see that the screws have come out of the top of the test piece. I knew this was going to happen, but decided to carry on anyway as I was more interested in practising the careful cutting out of the hinge slots. The box lid is less than half the thickness of this test piece, so if I do use these hinges, I'll have to fix them to the lid in a different way. That's going to be a problem with any butt hinge, but I doubt there's a different type of hinge for which it isn't true. Serves me right for wanting a thin lid but also wanting it to be hinged! The only thought I've had so far is to glue the hinge to the lid (the lid is light, so hopefully glue will be strong enough) and then cut the heads off the screws so the heads can be glued into the countersunk holes for aesthetic reasons.

I learnt a few things in this experiment:

  • Be careful when chiselling near the end of a bit of wood!
  • The screws are probably made in Japan: the head fits my JIS PH1 screwdriver much better than it fits my Wiha PH1 screwdriver.
  • I need to be careful when marking out the holes to make sure the hinges go back in the same orientation: the holes in the hinges aren't the same distance from each edge (which doesn't say much for the quality of these hinges), so if I mark them in one orientation on the lid and a different one on the base, the holes won't line up!
  • Getting the depth of the slot right is quite important: after marking it up based on half the barrel measurement, I had to go back and chisel a little more off to get the two parts to close properly.
My projects website: https://www.cgtk.co.uk
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