Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
My wife requested a storage box, and decided on a final size or roughly 9 square by 10 high. I thought this would be a good opportunity to refine my skills with (mostly) hand cut dovetails, as well as try some new wood combinations for the lid.The box sides are curly maple about 1/2 thick. For the dovetails, after lots of trial and error, I now use a hybrid approach combining several methods. I mark and saw the tails with a magnetic dovetail guide from David Barron. Before chiseling out the waste, I mark the saw kerfs on the pin board using Rob Cosman's method of offsetting the tail board by the width of the saw kerf (.024) into the waste area. I milled a small block of wood with the offset which makes the setup easier. The waste on the tail board is then removed with a chisel.The saw cuts were then made on the pin board using the dovetail guide, placing the saw in the kerfs already made in the previous step. The maple I used on this project had a nasty tendency to chip out along the base lines, even when the lines were carefully scored with a marking gauge and knife. I ended up using a technique that I saw on a video from Mike Farrington, partially removing the waste traditionally and finishing by placing the pin boards vertically in my Moxon vise and routing down to the base lines with a 1/4 pattern bit. The results were much cleaner than I got with a chisel. Perhaps I need to continue working on my chiseling technique.I designed the box in Sketchup, which allowed me to play with different wood combinations for the lid. The final design used an inner field of Sapele, a thin strip of Wenge, a slightly wider strip of Maple, edged with Walnut. The handle on top is made from Wenge, as are the 4 square feet which are not visible in the photo. I used 3 layers of Osmo Polyx for the finish, which produces a soft, satin sheen.It was a fun build, although time consuming for such a simple project. Thanks for looking!