Thought I'd post this to potentially encourage someone else to make one. It's based on an origianal in the collection of Old Salem, probably made late in the 18th century. The dimensions were graciously provided to me by Dan O'Sullivan of Durham, NC, who has built dozens.
The salient dimnsions here are 14-3/4" long, 8-3/4" wide, by 3-1/2" deep (that's outside measurements). The sides are 1/2" thick, the top is 3/8" thick, and the bottom is 1/4" thick. The woods in this example are curly maple from Irion Lumber Co, Birds-eye maple from a local woodworking store, and eastern white pine as the bottom. The finish is French Polish.
A couple of construction comments: The end grip of the top is, of course, long-grain attached to face grain. So it is attached with 5 tiny #2 brass screws from underneath the lid, with the 2 outside screws on each side having oblong holes in the underside of the lid to accomodate wood movement. The close-up of the dovetails is one way to accomodate the grooves for the lid and the bottom - one simply cuts the bottom and top tail short, and reduces the depth of the mating pins to match. Easy to do with handtools, not so easy to do with power tools.
There is one significant mistake I made with this box - the upper corners should be mitered, not a tail/pin combo (that's what happens when you get a too busy laying out the pins and tails!). The next couple will correct that issue.
And, as one might imagine, this one was done totally with hand tools - no tailed assistants. The tools used were the usual layout items (square, marking knife, 14 degree dovetail saddle square), a wooden plow plane to cut the grooves for the top and bottom, a wooden panel raising plane to cut the top and bottom bevels, a dovetail saw, a carcass saw, and a foreplane, a jointer and a smoother.
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