I've been asked to teach a one day class on box making. Boxes are good for teaching woodworking because you use many of the joints and skills that you would use on larger projects and you don't use a lot of wood.
To prepare for the class, I made several boxes out of pine - just to see what will work well. Since the class is a one day class, I can't use dovetail joinery because I can't teach dovetails and box making in one day. So I'm going with miter joints. This allows the grain of the wood to flow around the box and a glued miter joint is plenty strong enough for a box. In making the boxes, I varied the thickness of the wood, the way the top goes on, and some techniques for doing some things on the box. For example, I hand beveled the top on a couple of these and cut at least one on the table saw. Here are some pictures of the pine boxes I made.
This first box has a lift off top. The top is held in place by the boards lining the inside which extend upward from the main part of the box. This box uses 1/2 inch material but it looks thicker because of the lining material. If this was a "keeper" box, I'd have taken the liner material all the way to the bottom of the box.
Box001.jpg
Box002.jpg
This next box also uses a lift off top but the top is captured by putting a groove all around the top so that part of the top fits inside the box. This box is made from 3/8 inch material - which works well for this box.
Box003.jpg
Box004.jpg
I also made a lift out tray for this box.
Box005.jpg
Continued to next post
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