# Toybox



## Sgt BOMBULOUS (Oct 9, 2014)

Hello,

This will be a lot of catching up... Anyway, a while ago I decided I'd build a toybox for my son, Jon who happened to turn recently. Originally I planned to build the whole thing out of red oak, which I went and bought just for this purpose. A sizable delay in the project occurred, and during that period I procured about 90 bd ft of 4/4 rough white oak for less than a dollar a bd-ft... So I decided to use that instead. I wanted to use this project as a chance to push my limits, so I took on a number of new challenges as I undertook it. As follows:

*The Front Panel, Inlay & Mosaic*

I wanted to have his initials, so I decided to attempt a scroll inlay. I used walnut lettering on a maple background. the final result is below:










Things I learned:


The blade you use can drastically change the angle you need. I originally used a cheap bosch blade, and then switched to a #5 Olson blade, and tried to use the same angle... It didn't work

I used some resawed pine scraps to eventually determine the proper angle for the Olson blade. For whatever reason, the walnut/maple combo was a much tighter fit. Still worked, but the walnut barely made it through


The next was putting a mosaic around the inlay, into the white oak. I had originally planned to just use a mitered walnut frame, but came up with the idea of a checkered mosaic border after seeing a similar (albeit more complicated design) for a decorative border on a picture frame. To do it I decided to make little 2x2 tiles, which I could slice from a rod that I'd create by gluing up maple and walnut "rods". The tricky part was determining the tile size, since I had to be careful to match the center inlay to a finite number of tiles for both width and height. I eventually determined that about 0.8" per square was good. Here's the original layout:










Then I cut it into little tiles on the bandsaw, using a stop clamped to the bandsaw fence. 

Things I learned:

It takes a lot of clamps to glue small sticks of wood together reliably

doing it in 2 rounds results in a bit of creep. It wasn't bad, but it made the tiles less than perfect.

It takes forever to sand end grain... The tiles were a bit proud of the surface, and I had to resort to a belt sander to even it out.
I should have used a finer blade to cut the tiles on the bandsaw, the 4 TPI resaw blade I had in it resulted in a fairly nasty surface on the tiles and I had to do a lot of sanding to clean them up.


Here it is, inlaid into the front panel:










So that I didn't have to resort to a router on such wide area, I just found a piece of wood that was the same height as the whole inlay, and cut a huge dado into it, THEN joined it to it's neighboring pieces. The only hangup here was that removinr that material cause the board to bend a bit, which I anticipated. Biscuits, cauls, and clamping at the tips of the joints all helped make the board reasonably flat.



















*The lid*

For the lid I wanted it to be sturdy, and stable. So I decided to take a chance at trying breadboard ends. I started with a thick panel that I made out of four 7/8" thick boards. I made it overlong, because I wanted enough to make it into a simple wide panel should my breadboard end attempt fail.

Since the board was rather wide, (almost 19"), I started by attaching a temporary runner to it with some pin nails, and use that to ensure I had a square edge. Without too much science (yes, for an engineer I do shoot from the hip a bit too often...), I decided on a 1" long tennon, with at least 1" of material in the BB end at each end. 

I used a router to cut the mortises, and that went fairly well. Attempting to center the pilot hole was a failure, so I just decided I'd get it as close as possible and flip it to cut the other side, which worked well to center it. I used a 5/16" spiral up cut bit, the mortise walls were maybe 6.8~6.9mm. 

The tennons were trickier... I cut those on a table saw with a dado, and started from the end in, with the depth just short of the tennon thickness, and gradually creeped in on it by flipping and cutting in tiny increments. The final cut that made it fit must have been achieved my turning the depth wheel on the table saw about 5 degrees... Welcome to precision work! The final mortise was about 6 mm thick. 

The one thing that I had a bit of a hard time with was getting a the shoulder perfectly straight. I think it was a mistake to creep in from the end, and might have been a better idea to use a combo blade to cut the shoulder line first, since the work piece can't really move away from the fence much. All of the subsequent cuts could be with a dado, since there'd be no concern in messing up with shoulder. In my mind, this piece was just barely manageable on a table saw, I'm curious how people do big tables...

To attach the BB ends I took and planed a minute amount of the middle of each end, to create a bit of a sprung effect, and glued only in the middle, as is appropriate. Dowel holes were put in on the drill press, size is 3/8". 3 dowels per BB end seems appropriate for the space I had.

Here's the clamp-up:










Dowled and sanded:










Lessons Learned:


The initial cut on the shoulder needs to be done first, and then you can work your way outward from there. 
A Sprung BB end seemed to help ensure the entire edge was tight. 
Dowels are fun to hammer in...
I should put pipe clamps on both sides next time. There's a very slight upward bow to the BB ends.



*Mitered Corners on Main Box*

This was the first thing that went wrong... though not badly. Try as I might, apparently I didn't get my blade tilted to a perfect 45. I used a very reliable 45 degree square, and it appeared to be perfect... Anyway, I laid out and cut the beveled edge on each of the 4 panels using an Incra Build-It tablesaw sled. Cutting them to length went well, opposing sides were about a 1/64th of eachother. I then put in 4 #0 buscuits in each corner, to help insure that the corners didn't slip at all during glue-up, since the box is fairly large. The glue-up itself was done using 3 strap claps, which held it nicely, though as soon as the whole thing was in place I realized that all of the outside miter edges had about a 1/64th gap, which was wide enough to be noticable. I was able to create a putty out of white oak dust and glue to seal the corners, so you have to look pretty hard to see it. 

Since these pieces are only 3/4" thick, I think maybe if I'd cut a scrap piece vertically, at the highest blade setting this would have been better for calibrating the tilt. I'm open to suggestions though, since I obviously DON'T want this to happen again. 


Lessons Learned:


Make test cuts on a piece that gives the longest mitered edge possible, or make a small frame out of scrap and make cuts until it's perfect
Mitered edges are SHARP!!! I actually cut my thumb on it...
I cut these with an 80 tooth cross cut blade, and it really showed how 1 1/2 HP is on the low side for demanding cuts in hard wood.


*2- Tone Splines*

Since there's a maple/walnut accent theme, I figured I'd have a go at trying a spline that looks like it has a border around it. To do this I cut a piece of curly maple about 3/4 x 1/4", then found a piece of walnut and cut a 1/4" dado into it. I glued the maple into the walnut, and clamlped it up. At this point, it was 3/4" thick, but since I was going for a 1/2 spline, I used the planer to mill it down to the 1/2" I needed. The final dimension ended up with the spline depth at about 0.7", and the walnut at the "bottom" of the sline being about 0.1", which, once cut to 45 degrees would make a border roughly 1/8" all the way around. 

The spline slots were cut with a jig I made out of plywood, which was clamped to the box, and I used a router with 1/2" straight bit to make the cut itself. 

Lessons learned:


Great care has to be taken that the piece inset INTO the dado is clamped to the bottom. It took a lot of clamps, and there were places where an opening spoiled the look a little bit. I fixed mose of these by chiseling some tiny wedges and gluing then into those spaces. 
It seems like the splines need to fit well, but not too tightly. A few of them I had trouble sinking all the way. 


*2-Tone Handles*

This is one of the things that went the very smoothly... I started by resawing a piece of oak to just over 1/2" thick, and walnut to 1/8", maple to 1/4". I then glued the walnut to the oak to make a piece ~20" x 3.5". once the glue set, I planed the walnut side till that layer was 1/8" thick. Then I cut this in half, and glued the two resulting sides to the maple. Once that was set, I ripped that piece into 1 1/2" strips, and then cross cut those to 8" long. I cut the curve on the corners with a bandsaw, however I still had the problem of how to cut the recess... The answer came when I visited my brother. He insisted that he could do the job with his old Bridgeport milling machine...












It had an 8 tooth milling blade, and while the rate of rotation looked very slow, by moving the piece slowly through it we got the desired result, and it was easy, since we used the automatic table to do 95% of the work.



So with the handles mounted, here is where we are now:


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## MissionIsMyMission (Apr 3, 2012)

Only the last pic is showing. I really like the end results!!!! Very nice Craftsmanship!!!


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## Sgt BOMBULOUS (Oct 9, 2014)

MissionIsMyMission said:


> Only the last pic is showing. I really like the end results!!!! Very nice Craftsmanship!!!


Fixed, sorry. Sorry also for the long tome, but I figured maybe it might help someone.


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

Great job on the toy box Sarge. 
The personalization you put on it will make it an heirloom in your family. 
Beautiful.


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## Chamfer (Sep 6, 2014)

I agree with the above ^. Very nice Sgt.

I really liked the in length post and how you mentioned what you learned from pushing your limits on this build. If only all build posts were so detail oriented and informative. 

Great job!


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## Quo Fan (Feb 15, 2015)

TLR, just looked at the pics. Looks good. I may try something like that someday.


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## Travico (Dec 25, 2012)

I cannot see the pictures on my work computer. I will have to wait and get home.


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## rayking49 (Nov 6, 2011)

Very nice box. Love the inlay on front - Great job.


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## Sgt BOMBULOUS (Oct 9, 2014)

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I had one design question, and maybe ya'll would be suited to give an opinion. I had originally planned to put splines in the skirt as well. When I asked the opinions of two of the girls I work with, they both said not to, and my wife said similarly. I can see how maybe it'd look like overkill, but I wanted these there for structural purposes too.I also thought of possibly using dowels to reinforce the miter on the skirt, since it'd have a similar theme to the lid...


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## woodchux (Jul 6, 2014)

Great design, great build, and IMO best to leave the design as is rather than trying to improve on "perfection". Many thanks for sharing, and be safe.


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## Chamfer (Sep 6, 2014)

Sgt I'm inclined to agree with your ladies but it's really subjective personal opinion.

As long as the miters were glued/clamped and the skirt is securely attached to the box it should be fine strength wise.


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## Sgt BOMBULOUS (Oct 9, 2014)

I think I'll go without any additional splines, and just reinforce it from the inside. The the biggest remaining items are to fill the knots, sand, finish, and mount hinges. I'm planning to use a water base poly for the finish, unless anyone has a better idea. :icon_smile:


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## Masterjer (Nov 6, 2012)

I love the splines and agree with others that you don't need them in the base. 

If you go WB poly, you have to show off that beautiful wood with something like BLO before the poly. The WB poly, while nice to use, leaves the wood looking really blah. 

It really is a fantastic piece!


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## Sgt BOMBULOUS (Oct 9, 2014)

Masterjer said:


> I love the splines and agree with others that you don't need them in the base.
> 
> If you go WB poly, you have to show off that beautiful wood with something like BLO before the poly. The WB poly, while nice to use, leaves the wood looking really blah.
> 
> It really is a fantastic piece!


I'm gonna show my ignorance here... How do you apply BLO? Can you put a WB Poly coat on top of that? The main reason I wanted to do WB poly is that let's not forget... This is going to be given to a 3 year old. I'm sure it'll endure some abuse, and it seems silly to go overboard doing a pristine, mirror finish if it's going to have a preschooler banging on it. I can always strip it down and refinish it later, right?


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## Masterjer (Nov 6, 2012)

You just wipe on the BLO, let it sit for 10-15 minutes then wipe it off. Yes, you can put WB poly over the top once it's dry. You can also put a barrier coat of shellac on over the BLO and before the poly. 

I've used WB poly, and it makes the beautiful wood look, for lack of a better term, yucky. Something like BLO or shellac will really pop the grain. If you wipe the wood with mineral spirits, or even water, it will show you what the wood will look like with a coat of BLO.


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## Sgt BOMBULOUS (Oct 9, 2014)

Quick look with the hinges dry-fitted. I love how these things just hold the lid exactly where it is... It's literally like a laptop screen!


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## Sgt BOMBULOUS (Oct 9, 2014)

We're finally done:


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## Toolman50 (Mar 22, 2015)

Great job on the toy box. I'm impressed by your design, your craftsmanship, your attention to detail, your summary of construction and your pictures. 
Your son will enjoy this project for his lifetime.


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## Sgt BOMBULOUS (Oct 9, 2014)

Thanks everyone! Not to figure out what to build next... Maybe a bed?


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