Here is my second project! This is a box to hold my router plane and its accessories. Eventually, I will make boxes like this for a few other tools and will post that when it is done. They will be a nice set that fits in a tool till I have in my garage. It is made from PG medium maple plywood.
To make this I used the box making plugin for inkscape. I tried the kerf setting of .007 and the joint was tighter than a friction fit. I ended up having to file a tiny bit off each of the fingers to get it together. So I will try for a smaller kerf next time and see if it is better.
I also made an insert for the box to hold the plane and parts from sliding around. I set the plane and the parts out and traced around them to make pockets. This was my first use of the trace feature, and it worked pretty good. I am a terrible drawing, and trace is excellent at tracing, so it exactly copied every wobbly line I drew. I had to do some filing to get stuff to fit, but not a lot and the result was the nice friction hold I was looking for. The insert is PG medium draftboard.
Plywood really likes extra tight friction fit, if it send too tight, you can use a hammer to get it to go together sometimes. Here’s the trick: you want the “top” surface of your ply to be facing inward.
This works because of the sloped face of the laser cut profile makes the top surface narrower. The fingers are very slight wedges at that point, so they really lock together as you force them.
Of course there are limits to this, but if it’s just barely “too tight” that’s perfect for ply. Of course your engraved face had to be “top out”, but sometimes your sides are symmetrical and can be flipped. Something to try next time maybe.
This trick is less useful for hardwoods, if you’re too tight there, it’s very hard to assemble without cracking any fingers that are crossing the grain. Making a friction fit hardwood box is definitely possible, it’s just a lot more delicate and has less margin for error on the kerf adjustment.
Thanks everyone. My usual level of organization is by pile, and for tools that usually means remembering where I used it last and going back there to find it. I’m not saying the glowforge is going to turn me in to a neatnick, but I will say I would not have done the insert without it.
As for the joints, I will need to mess around with it some more. These were tight enough that I was afraid they would delaminate from the hammering.
Cool! One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that the thin ply is bendy enough that picking things up from one side of the box can be kinda off. (Still have to redesign the hot sauce caddy for that.)
I have found that a small vice or vice grips can provide the huge pressure without the shock, and things put together like that do not come apart easily.
As they say… when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I’ve wondered if a parallel vice would do it, but I’m sans vice. Good tip!
My tools are a mix of vintage and new. The value in the secondary market for old router planes is very high. At the time I bought this one a few years ago, it was actually CHEAPER than a good condition Stanley or Record.
I just put together another cupholder that I knew was tight and used a small vice I got at Skycraft. There is no glue but I don’t think that will be a problem as except where a bit split off everything is holding well and one might dump the table over but the cup is going nowhere.
I looked on Amazon and saw nothing similar, but lots of small vices on ball joints so they can be positioned anywhere. At one time I had three of them so obviously manufactured but if I had a metal shop it is the sort of super simple minimalist thing I would make.
I had the good fortune to take a plane course with Roy Underhill and we worked with his 45. I have not used mine in a long time as I never felt it did as good as a dedicated plane. He showed me some things and regularly use mine now when making mouldings and things that I am sure I could make faster on a router.
