I mentioned in my jewellery box thread that I was going to a weekend course with Andrew Crawford. Well that was the weekend before last, and I have spent the last week and a bit finishing it in the evenings. The course was a birthday present from my wife and I was not sure what I was going to get out of it. The main things I came back with were: I use too much glue, a little thinned down PVA goes a long way; Andrew has exceptional levels of craftmanship and accuracy; disc sanders are a really usefull tool; I use too much glue; 0.1mm and 0.5 degrees are a lot when fitting mitred inlayed corners; he has a number of really simple really useful jigs; I really mean it about the glue; I really like making boxes and I loved evey minute of the course

The box we made up was from sides of solid walnut and a veneered walnut top and base. The sides were already machined up with the rebates and the grooves for the lid and base pre-cut. Our first task was to ensure that the lid and base were the right size for the sides, then we glued it all up, then sanded it to true it all up; then chamfered the top and bottom edges and routed out the recess for the inlay.

Fitting the inlay was very intricate work, but looking at the joints at the end of the day I was amazed at just how well it all went together.

As there was no time to put on the finish and line the boxes before we left we were given detailed instructions which seem to have paid off. The hinges are extruded brass which were polished before attaching and the lining is pigskin suede (Andrew gave us both the hinges and the lining as part of the course).

If anyone is interested in boxes I can whole heartedly recommend his course, even if you already think you know how to put a box together, there are just so many tricks and tips to learn.

The final box is 10.5" long, 8" wide and 2.75" high; lining is dark red pig suede and the finish is 3 coats of Chestnut Hard Wax Oil and a coat of clear Briwax to polish it up. As usual, all photos are links to Flickr if you want to see the larger size pictures.

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If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer!

That's very nice. You should be very proud of that!

Where is he based for the courses?

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Paul

Very nice job Frugal.

I like the hinges you used, whos are they and is there a UK supplier?

Did you made the snakewood banding with Andrew or was it sliced from a bar already made? I looked at Snakewood at Yandles and almost had a heart attack - very envious!

Well done again,
Simon

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Regards
Simon

Hi Frugal,

Nice job!

Malc

F, very nice, very crisp...didn't see a bit of glue 'squeeze out' in the corner did I? Probably not - Rob...ducking and diving

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The Blokeblog

Excellent

Cheers

Paul

Wow! Excellent work frugal, very nice indeed!!!

Andrew said that he gets his butt hinges from J Shiner & Son and that he imports his quadrant casement hinges from the states, however a bit of surfing leads me to believe that J Shiner get their hinges from Armac in Birmingham, the same place as Martin, however Martin also stock the quadrant casement hinge which andrew now uses for all of his jewellery boxes.

Andrew makes his hinges look a bit special by getting them all exactly to length, and then rounding off the corners on a disc sander. He recommends polishing them with wet and dry sandpaper, but as I had some polishing mops for the lathe and some metal polishing compound I used them as it was quicker




We did not make the banding, he already had it made up. He did walk us through the process of making the banding. Fortunately you do not need very much snakewood to make a lot of banding (I think that the piece he used was about 24" x 2" x 1/4" which would have made about 15 pieces of 24" long banding, enough for 6 or 7 boxes). I have some sycamore that I may well try to make some banding out of for future projects.

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If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer!

Strangely enough no the big trick seems to be to water down the PVA slightly. We used 90% PVA 10% water for veneering and 95% PVA 5% water for everything else. It just makes the glue flow more easily. That and little bottles with thin nozzles to get a small amount of glue just where your need it.

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If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer!

The other very classy touch which I've just noted is that you've rounded off the ends of the hinges and they're polished and all the screw heads line up. Just the way it should be...very Barnsley

The other thing to use to get exactly the right amount of glue where you want it is a pointy bamboo BBQ skewer, works a treat -Rob

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The Blokeblog

And don't forget that the screwheads are also polished

Andrew was quite dismissive of screws lining up, his claim was that either the screw would not be tight, or it would be overtightened and start to strip the wood. I cheated I used a self centering 5/32 drill bit that was a perfect size for the No 4 screws that I used, then I started them all off in the same orientation and pressed down firmly before I started to screw them in, I got lucky in that the walnut is nice and soft and so they all ended up at the same angle when I had finished, but it was more by luck than judgement.



Wooden coffee stirrers from Costa are also quite nice and you can sharpen them to a point I also have a set of fine paint brushes from someone who used to paint and gave it up

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If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer!

I really like that. Have long admired Andrew Crawfords work since before he moved out of London but never had the money, courage or skill to attend one of his courses. Of most interest to me would be stock prep - how he machines timber to the precise dimensions required. I know he did this before you started but did you notice monster machines in the workshop or is it all hand tools and shooting boards?

Having a fundamental think about the type of work I want to do at the moment as I am rejigging my workshop and leaning heavily to small items such as boxes and scroll saw work. Not really into furniture as there are only so many tables and bookcases one can usefully use. Trouble I am having is what sort of machines do I need for that small scale work - do I need the same big TS and bandsaw to achieve accuracy or can the machines be smaller / cheaper and accuracy obtained with handtools for finishing. If the later, I need to learn how to use handtools properly as well, rather than just throw money at ever larger and more expensive machines. Sorry to hijack the thread, will start another elsewhere so I don't take your fantastic box off-topic!

Steve

The people on the previous course had all been complete beginners and they all managed to complete their boxes. Of the four of us on teh course I probably had the most non-DIY experience from the conversations we had (but not by much). I really would not worry about your skill level.



He normally tries to buy a thick piece of wood and then cuts his sides from it to get quartersawn cut from a flat sawn board. I.e. if you start with a 3" thick piece of wood 6" wide and cut 24 x 1/4" slices 3" tall to make up the sides of a box 3" tall. He seemed to thickness the big plank to the height of the box, then plan one edge square to that; then bandsaw off 1/2" x 3" slices, and then thickness the lot to exactly the same dimension. He did have a big wadkin cross cut saw, but that was borrowed from the cabinet makers next door rebates and groove were cut on a simple router table.



In general I would say that you are better off with a smaller accurate machine than a larger inaccurate machine. If you need the fence to be exactly 45 degrees, then having a table that wobbles to and fro by 2 degrees is not going to help you

Thinking back, once the sides were made up, the only tools we used were the router table, bandsaw, a disc sander, a scapel and a 3'x2' board with sandpaper glued to it.

The bandsaw was used to cut the lids off of the boxes, but if you only had a little bandsaw then you could use the router table or a table saw to do the same thing (or even a hand saw it you were confident about cutting to the line).

To be honest the basic set of machines I would recommend are:

- Bandsaw - always useful, the most used machine in my workshop, get the biggest one you can afford (look on ebay for some bargins) and get a good blade from Tuffsaw.

- Disc sander - brilliant for cleaning up mitres, abrading veneer to perfect length and angle. You can also use it for getting all of the sides to perfect length if you do not have a tablesaw. I am rubbish at using a shooting board so I tend to use the sander for a lot of the tasks others use shooting boards for. I have a 6" disc with a 4" belt, and I have used the belt maybe twice in 2 years. andrew had three, two of which he made himself by attaching a piece of MDF (?) to the face plate of a second hand motor

- Router table - Can be as simple as a piece of MDF with a hole for the cutter and a couple of holes for screws into the base plate. Then clamp it to a workmate or something. This one has done me proud for 2 years:



- Thicknesser - Allows you to get your stock to the required thickness (and all of it to the same thickness) pretty much essential if you move beyond buying wanting to use what thickness the imber merchant wants to sell you.

That is pretty much it, everything after that is a nice to have I would say.

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If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer!

Whilst not wishing to denigrate the great man, I think he's wrong. Although on the face of it, inserting screws is a simple enough task, if it's done badly, the whole job is spoilt...and screw slots that don't line up immediately draw the eyes to that dispairity (at least mine)
Regardless of the timber (and assuming a hardwood) the thread should be cut with an identical steel screw and after all the adjustments have been made the brass screw should be lubricated (Vaseline or candle wax) and driven home with a screwdriver that's an exact match in the slot and preferably one that's been expressly ground for the job.
It's this attention to detail that's important and it's something like this that makes the job stand out above the 'hum drum, run-of-the-mill' sort of stuff.
If it's of any interest, John Bullar in a very recent edition of F&C showed a nifty way of ensuring that the screw depth, and hence the slot, were identical in the hinge plate.

What happened to the dovetails? - Rob

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The Blokeblog

Thats a lovely box mate well done.

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www.yorkshirejoinery.co.uk