How NOT to make box liners!

Still trying to nail the box - figuratively speaking. The main body is is done and glued up. Next, the liners. I am making the box to hold my wood samples so the original box dimensions were specifically decided upon so the box was just wide enough to hold one sample. But then the wood kept moving and the sides ended up 3mm thinner than planned. As the outside dimensions remained the same there's now a 3mm gap either side of where the samples will sit. Solution: split the box into three sections using dividers and run the samples across its length instead.

This is how it went.

Monday - set about making the liners. These are about 5mm deep and sit inside the box. It was all fairly straightforward - cut the pieces to size, plane, sand, mitre the ends and fit. Then it was just a case of routing a couple of grooves along each side piece to hold the dividers. Which is when I cocked it up by making the groove too deep, thus rendering the liners useless.

Tuesday - set about making the liners - cut the pieces to size, planed, sanded, mitred the ends and fitted. Only this time they didn't even fit. The mitre guillotine is one of those 'take too little and nothing comes off, take too much and it rips the wood into a nasty curve' jobs leaving said liners fit only for the bin. Finishing any day further behind than when you started it is never a good thing.

Wednesday - third time lucky!

The moral of the story being don't try and rush these things otherwise you just end up making more...



and more...



and more...



until finally....



...you get it right!

Next step: hinges

Thinking outside the box

With the bench now complete, the last couple of weeks have been all about the box. In fact, this was supposed to be a quick two- week project - and probably would be in any other wood. But not Honduras Rosewood. It's hard, heavy and boy does it like to move around. This is actually the same wood that I'll be using for my next project but we're advised to make a small box straight after the bench to get us back into the habit of focusing on the details of a small project after the larger-scale bench.

First though, I had to order the wood. Having been given a sample of Indian Rosewood and decided it was the way to go, I called Timberline in Kent and placed an order. Only when it arrived it looked nothing like my sample of Indian Rosewood. Why? Because the sample I had been given wasn't Indian Rosewood at all. It was East African Pau Rosa. And how did I find this out? By schlepping all the way to Kent with said non-Indian Rosewood to return and it and hopefully get the right one. I should say that this was not the fault of Timberline. I had ordered Indian Rosewood and they had supplied it. The problem was that I was given a sample that I was told was Indian Rosewood when it wasn't. Just a 5-hour drive each way plus a couple of extra hours of post-Glasto chaos just to top things off. And yes, I was pissed off.

That said, it did give me the chance to visit a great wood yard. My 'Indian Rosewood' was identified almost immediately as East African Pau Rosa but they didn't have any. So it was time to find an alternative. After about an hour of block planing various woods to find, first the right one and, second, enough right pieces of the right one, I was good to go. It cost me a couple of hundred quid more, plus petrol plus two days out of the workshop. But I'm not bitter. Much.


But the box will be pretty straightforward from here on in, right? Wrong. All was going fine until I tried to flatten it. Almost every shaving I took with the plain cause the wood to tear out. And just when I thought the piece was flat, I'd take a lunch break to find it had moved again. And so it went on... tearing and moving, and moving and tearing. The 8mm sides are suddenly nearing 6mm and still moving. Aarghhh.

First up, apologies for the delay in posting over the last month. Bit of a family emergency that meant I had to disappear overseas for a couple of weeks. Before I left, I had just completed the tail vice on my bench - a pretty complicated job, as you can see from the number of components...



Then, once the pieces had been cut and fitted came the glue up. I almost had a catastrophe when, once the glue had been applied, one of the dovetails wouldn't hammer into place but Tim saved the day with a couple of almighty (manly) whacks with the hammer. Then out come the clamps to make sure pressure is being applied in all the right places until the glue dries.



And there you have it...



I'm really pleased with the way the purple heart has worked with the maple. I also used it to create the handle for the vice - which also involved creating a composite of the two and then using the lathe (another first) to shape the wood.