Heather's Netbook Cherry wood box-Part 3

Hi Everyone!

In this part I will be focusing on strengthening the mitered corners of the box. I favour using contrasting splines on the corners, not only for strength but for aesthetics as well. I will also illustrate the method I use for separating the lid from the bottom of the box.

To safely cut the spline slots on the box corners I used a shop made carrier that cradles the box securely while it slides agaist the table saw fence and over the saw blade. I simply used the thickness of the saw blade or kerf of the blade, which is usually about an 1/8" thickness.

Since the spline slot is an 1/8" thick, I also made my contrasting maple splines the same thickness. There are variables in play when you are dealing with multiple cuts such as these. Sometimes the vibration of the blade or maybe the movement of the box in the carrier could make the slot wider or smaller. Therefore I always individually fit each spline to each slot and I glue the splines into the slots one at a time.

After the glue dried, I used a flush trim saw to trim the splines, just proud of the box surface. I then flushed up the splines with a chisel using a paring cut. I then sanded the box sides with various grits of sandpaper to a smooth finish.

After I cleaned up the sides of the box, I separated the lid from the bottom using the table saw. This is a great method, when the box lid is flush to the box bottom. There is no way the lid will line up to the bottom when you attemp to build each assembly separately. Since the lid and bottom of the box was the same height, I simply found the center of the sides and split the line in half on the saw blade. To prevent the parts from binding as it comes apart, I did not cut the sides all the way through. I left a little bit of a lip to help keep the box together.


After all the sides were cut in half, I carefully split the box using a hand saw. I took extra care on this step, since I did not want to cut and ruin the edges.

Wow, this project is going by fast! Please stay tuned for part 4!

Thanks for looking!

Roshaan