11 years ago i made a video about this milk crate inspired box and i want to build more
boxes like that and because last time the video quality was awful i thought i'd film it again
as usual i'm starting with some 2x4 type lumber here's some two by sixes and i plane that first
and here i'm cutting the pieces to width because i don't need the whole piece and i don't need the
whole thickness either so i'm using my table saw to cut that down because i want the scraps
all right got enough cut out to make two of these this will be
slightly rectangular so i'll have some long sides and short sides
and then on the bottom these are a little bit narrower and all of these off cuts
that i made those will form the slots here because those don't need to be very thick
i cut out parts of my one-to-one templates to make a story stick
for where to cut the mortises in these pieces with my slot mortiser
so now i can just use my story stick to set the position for the first mortise for the slots
i'm using that same stop setting to cut the first mortise in all 16 pieces
and now setting the stop for the next position and cut them all again
i had to clamp an extension to my slot monitor to set the stop position for the next slots
for mortises i like to make a series of plunge cuts and then route between them
that way there's less sideways forces on the bit so i get less bit deflection and more precision
got 88 mortises cut and i cut all my scraps into these pieces which will form the slots and cutting
those to length because they're all short pieces it's relatively easy to work around the knuckles
i want to cut some tenons on the end of these slots to go in here with the panther router
and it turns out uh this template is actually almost the exact size that i need if i had thought
this through ahead of time i'm going to check this template to make sure it matches exactly
so i've already actually made this template which is about one millimeter wider than this
one to cut those tenons i need to cut 88 tenons on the ends of these pieces
and i've already got my pantorouter set up and this time i actually set up a backstop so that i
can swap these without stopping the router because usually i use the router bit as a front stop
and i have it centered vertically and for the first time i actually use this feature here where
you just stick your piece of wood in between this part and this part here
and that centers the middle groove on here right on the work piece
so now i've cut the tenon on one end of all my work pieces
and i could just flip them over and use the same stop to cut the one on the other end
but that doesn't ensure maximum consistency in terms of shoulder to shoulder length
so what i'll do instead is i'll change the stop to reference the shoulder that i previously cut
and that will ensure maximum consistency in terms of shoulder to shoulder length
so that made for quite a bit of shavings and i didn't even use the dust collection thingy on
this thing which actually works quite well but i was standing in the airstream coming from my air
cleaner so i'm actually standing in the wind and i wasn't breathing the dust coming off of this thing
so these pieces are all going to fit into these mortises and that'll form the sides of the box
like this but before i do that i need to round the edges of these things here and i figure i
can do both the top and bottom edge of these if i just use a round over bit against the side like so
got all my sides glued up now i need to cut handle holds in some of them and for
that i'm going to use my other panto router and i already have a piece clamped in here
and i made a template to trace out the shape of that handle
hey now i need to join these sides to these sides using box joints at the corner and this time i'm
going to make them a little bit coarser this size in fact using my screw advanced box joint
jig and for the slot i've got two saw blades side by side and the increment on the jig that
works best for that is the 25 tooth against the 12 tooth and three turns per increment ideally i'd be
using a 37 tooth gear but uh with all the gears that i've got i haven't made one of those yet
so that'll work best so now i just need to go ahead and cut those
uh
that's a little tighter than i would like it i cut all the short sides by putting two sides in the
jig at a time but it's a lot of cranking so this time i'm just going to put all four sides in the
jig at once and i was afraid that i might lose count on this thing having to turn three times
per cut so i made a pencil mark at the start and then for every increment there's another little
tick mark because if i were to be one turn off that tick mark would be way off compared to this
now for these ones i need to offset these by half of an increment so one and a half turns
so to get that extra half turn i need to back this gear off turn it by half and mesh it again
so my new starting position is here and this one's no longer valid to make the joints fit
not quite so tight i'm cutting forward and then advancing the gear just a little
bit before i do the backstroke and that way on the backstroke i cut a
little bit more off the side of the slot which makes for a looser fit
now i can see what this box is going to look like i still need to make a groove to attach the
bottom which is going to be this type of plywood and for that i'm going to cut some slots using
again two blades stacked i'm just getting ready to glue these pieces together but i'm curious
how strong this box joint is so let me just break it the glue has only been drying for maybe an hour
well it only broke one of the pieces of wood but again the glue is probably not fully dried yet
so
i'm just giving a joint a brief squeeze with a big clamp and that's just to
seat them all the way down they don't really need clamping to dry
i find it necessary to say this every time you don't need to give plywood room for expansion
for a bottom of a box like that it's much better to glue
it in because that gives extra strength to the box
and it's a bit stressful gluing big joints like that because if i don't work fast enough
the glue can set on me before the joints are fully seated and once again i'm using a big
clamp to force the joints fully seated i like to put sawdust on the excess glue not so much
to absorb it but it makes it less gooey when i scrape it off and that makes less of a mess
i rounded the corners of the box by making two cuts from different angles with a table saw
and then mounting it on the belt sander i could have used a router but i was too afraid that it
might cause tarot but i did use a router to around the along the grain edges last risk
of tear out that way they were routed backwards just to make sure i wasn't going to get turned
and here's the boxes all done now these are going to be for the kids and i thought the bottom might
not be strong enough so i add another layer of plywood to the bottom and i figured it would also
be nice to engrave their names on the sides and for that i'm going to use my pantograph and i was
just trying it out here's my pattern here's one of the names engraved in a test piece taking a while
to figure out how to rig this up but i think i'm finally ready to start engraving names in those
boxes that's not bad
well that was a crazy amount of work for a couple of boxes but i think the kids will
really enjoy them and one of the reasons they're rectangular like this is because i
figure the kids will probably use them to build houses and that way they get a little bit more
height
you