For my birthday last summer I got “Hero of Weehawken”, a solitaire puzzle/board game. Great game but the production isn’t so great and it comes in a plastic bag.
Enter the Glowforge! I want to learn how to make boxes of different types, so this was my first attempt at a snap-fit box. I used some birch from Home Depot and https://makeabox.io and made an (incorrect) guess at the kerf.
I had no expectations of success for this first attempt, but I think it came out pretty well. The graphics are scanned from the game materials and from Wikipedia. Opening the box from the top isn’t as easy as I’d hoped but I’ll figure something out.
Really nice work. It seems that a very common solution to adding a lid to a laser jointed finger box without using hinges is having a sliding top or side that goes into grooves you engrave. It does add some time to the make because you are engraving the rabets for the groove. Lots of wine boxes have that feature. I’ve been thinking about this and haven’t done some boxes that I’d like to because I can’t decide how to make a functional, simple and nice looking lid. You can always do a top that nests over the bottom. Uses more material, but would work very well in a case like this.
It looks great. Really nice having forum comments to help on future projects … and all the rest of us absorbing it all as well!
My husband had bought a couple of games on Ebay that he fondly remembered from childhood. The boxes are pretty tattered. Perhaps a new box will be in order!
A snap-fit finger-joint box is nice, except for the lid. You want the lid loose. If you can’t only kerf-adjust the bottom pieces, you’re stuck gluing the bottom or fighting with the top.
Another option, besides extending a finger to use as a tab or your ribbon solution, is to cut a hole in the lid and lift up after inserting finger. Not a great solution if there are little bits in side you don’t want falling out, but works well for everything else.
Looks good! I’m in the same boat with box experimenting. I made versions of Catan, Carcassonne, and Karuba games but still need proper boxes for them. So far the Catan box is way way bigger than I thought it would be, and Carcassonne was a kerf adjust fail so its pretty much a airtight fit making it nigh impossible to take back off.
I am also interested in making board game related things on my glowforge (which I just got!!) so I would love to benefit from y’all’s experiences. Any tips and tricks? Things you wish you’d known? Help me start off with a more successful first go!! (please and thanks!)