A small walnut box with through dovetails
A box for my reading glasses and a pencil. Mostly an excuse to cut eight corners of dovetails in a wood that is kind to chisels.
Cut list
| Part | Qty | Size (in) | Wood |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front and back | 2 | 9 × 3½ × 3/8 | Black walnut |
| Ends | 2 | 5½ × 3½ × 3/8 | Black walnut |
| Bottom | 1 | 8½ × 5 × ¼ | Spanish cedar |
| Lid | 1 | 9 × 5½ × ½ | Quartersawn sycamore |
Process
I planed the walnut to thickness and shot every end square on the shooting board, because the dovetails can only be as square as the ends they start from. A cutting gauge set a hair over the stock thickness scribed the baselines all round.
Tails first, on the front and back, at about 1:7, sawn with a 15 tpi rip dovetail saw. I transferred them to the ends with a knife, sawed the pins on the waste side of the line, and chopped the waste from both faces with ¼ and ½ inch chisels, paring the last of it back to the knife line.
On one corner I sawed a pin right on the line instead of beside it. The dry fit showed a gap of about half a millimetre. I sawed a thin sliver of walnut from an offcut, grain running the same way, tapped it into the gap with glue, and planed it flush once it was dry. From a foot away you cannot find it.
The bottom sits in a ¼ inch groove from a small plough plane. The grooves in the front and back run through and come out inside the socket of the lower half-pin, which covers them; the grooves in the ends are stopped and chiselled out. The cedar's grain runs the length of the box, with a sixteenth of room across its width so it can move. It is not glued.
Glue-up with liquid hide glue, for the open time. The lid is a single board with a rebate around its underside so it drops into the opening. Finish is two coats of dewaxed shellac and paste wax.
What I'd change
Thicker stock. At 3/8 inch the pins are fragile while fitting, and I would go to ½ for a box this size. I would also mark the waste with a pencil X before sawing, every time, which would have saved me the patch.