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Nothing fancy but I acquired a Festool extractor so decided to put my cyclone on top of it. It makes it a bit more movable than my previous setup with a vacuum and a bin.
Simple MDF box assembled with dominoes, yes I’ve gone all modern with power tools and techniques…
I 3D printed the latch connectors where it clips to the extractor as well as the adaptors for the cyclone.
One big disaster occurred when flush triming the recess in the front, strategically hidden in the photo 😀. The bearing on my super cheap flush cut router bit self destructed resulting in a less than flush cut

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In the thread about Maths being everywhere I was disparaged for saying that I would use a milling machine to do the job. I also mentioned that I was designing a box with a secret catch and Adam hoped that that turned out OK. Well - I've nearly completed that box - machined 90% on the milling machine (just a small bit of turning hinge pins and bushes on the lathe) so thought that you may like to see why I find machining exotic timbers on the mill easier than trying to use 'normal' saws & chisles which are far too large.
View attachment 148543
This is the 'dry' assembled box as yet without the catch mechanism - you'll soon apreciate why!

Overall width and depth is 50mm and the height is 30mm. Top, front & back are Olive and the sides are Rosewood.

The 'hinge' is created using 2.7mm Ø Brass bushes with a 1.6mm Ø bore inset into the lid and 2mm Ø St. Steel pins in the back turned down to 1.6mm 'free fit' to the bushes.

The base is 1.5mm Oak ply.

Now, the interesting part is that there will be a Brass sprung catch inset into the front which will be operated by pressing a 3mm Ø ebony button on the left hand side. There will be 7 other 'false' Ebony buttons, making four 'dots' on each side. Here are some photo's of the catch - one with a 5p coin to show the scale.
View attachment 148545
View attachment 148544












The left image shows it un-assembled but with the actuating rod in place - that is a 1mm Ø St. Steel pin. It's difficult to see, but the body is a dovetail. The next image may make that more obvious.
The hole on the left hand side will position a 3mmØ spring 2.5mm free length which will keep the lid closed until the Ebony button is depressed - travel will be no more than ½mm.

Fitting the catch is my job for tomorrow :ROFLMAO:
Interesting that you have used a mill for wood.
When I was making a six segment wheel for a spinning wheel ( see my post "Twisted" ) I set each segment up in the mill to cut in the joining tongue and matching grooves. Much easier set up and far more accurate.
 
Interesting that you have used a mill for wood.
When I was making a six segment wheel for a spinning wheel ( see my post "Twisted" ) I set each segment up in the mill to cut in the joining tongue and matching grooves. Much easier set up and far more accurate.
When you're dealing with joints/housings at 2.5mm x 3mm or 1.5mm wide slots which don't break the outside of the object it's difficult to see a better way.

The fact that the timbers are Olive, Rosewood & Ebony means that I'm happy to treat them as 'soft' metal and I seldom use any softwoods.

There were times - on this project - that I was taking a cut of 0.05mm.

To give you a better understanding of the challenges, here's a drawing of the front panel:
Front TD.png

and the left side :
Left Side TD.png
 
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Coffee table for lounge. We moved in 2 years September, so this will be a nice addition finally.

American white oak, Osmo poly X. Second time doing breadboard ends, had a bit of a disaster as one of the holes for drawboring broke, so lesson for next time is move them closer in so there's more long grain. If I can combine this effort with my first my third set should be spot on.

One improvement I stole from the wood whisperer was to leave the breadboards slightly oversized. This means they always look this way, regardless if the top shrinks or vice versa. My last set was cut flush which look good half the year round.

Hard to see in the picture but I spent a lot of time getting the grain on the legs to match (quarter sawn) and the smaller rails were glued up from about eight or so pieces of scrap laminated. I'll be using this technique again as I have quite a bit of thin strips like this going, you can't even tell which is nice.
 
I was somewhat surprised (and indeed heartened) to see so many [likes] to my post about the little box I made. Such that I thought that you might like to see the finished product. My grandson has elected to work part-time so that he can spend his 'free' days making jewelery so I thought that he would welcome the oportunity to make my Sister a broach for her 80th which is today (we are making a surprise visit tomorrow).​

Finished with Broach.png
Finished from back.png

Finished.png
















You may notice that I added an extra item after the initial design work -- the pin that lifts the lid once the catch is released -- I found that there was no indication that the catch had been activated so this sprung pin just pushed the lid up about a mm. The spring is 1.5mm Ø, 9mm long and the brass pin passes through a 1.6mm hole in a 4mm Ø Ebony collar.
Here is a shot prior to final assembly showing most of the components in their respective positions
Unassembled.png
 

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