Okay, so you’d think that doing the dovetail joints would have been the hardest part of this box, right? Me too. I figured on this nice leisurely Sunday afternoon, I’d do the simple task of cutting the rabbets into which the box bottom would fit. Then I’d glue the dovetails and heck, maybe even glue the bottom on. But it turned out to be not so simple, and after much groaning (and nearly cursing), I’m left with two busted pins and only one rabbet done.
See, I realized that on the walls the rabbets have to be stopped, because otherwise I’d cut off the bottom pins and part of the bottom tails. I really wasn’t sure how I was going to do this, since I don’t have a tiny little saw or anything. So I started with a nice deep knife line – as deep as I could manage. Then I started carefully chiseling away toward the knife wall. But on nearly my first pass chiseling near the pin, I broke off part of the pin. Long story short, I had two breaks on each pin (see pic below). Fortunately, I have all the pieces so I will be able to glue them back together. I figured I’d might as well carry on chiseling since the pins were already shot. So in the end, I got an acceptable rabbet for one wall.
I’m kind of hesitant to begin the other walls. Part of me thinks I might be better off to just go ahead and chisel off each pin at the rabbet line, just get it out of the way, and then do the rabbet as normal and glue the pins back on. With such tiny pins and tails, it might actually be the easiest way.
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February 17, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Dave
Hi Eric,
I might be misunderstanding what you’re trying to do… but it looks like you plan to glue a solid wood bottom into a rabbet cut on all four sides. This will result in a wood movement issue. When the bottom expands, it could break the whole box apart.
The way to avoid this is to cut a dado on all four of your box sides to hold the box bottom. Then you cut the box bottom slightly undersized so that it has room to expand and contract within the dados. It’s important that you do not glue the bottom; it needs to float freely so that it can expand and contract. This is the same concept as frame-and-panel construction. For a box this size, I think a 1/4″ thick bottom would be sufficient, depending on what you plan to store in it.
Please let me know if my description isn’t clear… it can be difficult to explain without a picture.
Dave
February 18, 2008 at 6:31 am
Luis
Hi Eric,
Dave is right on the money. You will also need to cut rabbets on all four sides of the bottom, these will go in the dados on the sides of the bottom. This way the bottom will be locked in place when the sides are glued.
I would put just two drops of glue on the mid-points of the end-grain edges of the bottom. The wood will expand and contract across the grain… there may be some movement along the grain but for the sizes you’re using these will be close to zero.
I’m sending you a PDF by email with a drawing. Check the bottom of the second page.
Luis
February 19, 2008 at 2:47 am
Eric
I’ll email both of you offline, but wanted to put a comment in here in case anyone else reads.
First off, is there a wood movement issue in a year-round hot and humid climate? I asked the Wood Talk Online guys this, but I haven’t listened to the latest podcast to see if they answered it.
Secondly, I’ve already done one rabbet so I can’t exactly do what you’re suggesting. However, I COULD do a dado on the other three walls, and rabbet the corresponding bottom edges. The one wall would be off structurally, but with such a tiny box you might never really know by looking at it.
Stay tuned and keep those comments coming!