My youngest son will be moving off to college in a couple of weeks.  The other day he mentioned that he wanted to learn something about woodworking before he left.  Thinking about where to begin teaching him woodworking, we decided that building a box would be a good place to start. 

We began by searching for a design, one that he liked and wouldn’t be too complicated.  On LumberJocks.com, we found this two-tone oak box made by Eric (also known as “Woodwrecker”).  The design looked like it would meet our needs and yesterday we started our project by cutting to width the pieces for the sides from some old shelves made of edge-glued red oak. 

The shelves had been decommissioned many years ago and sat around for a several years because I couldn’t decide what to do with the built-up boards.  A few years ago I checked them and found that they had warped slightly.  I decided to planed them flat again and wait to see if they continued to move.  I still didn’t know what I wanted to use them for so they sat around again until this week.  They haven’t moved appreciably so I feel that they are reasonably stable and will make for a good practice box.

After cutting the side pieces to width, we had some off-cuts that we used to practice cutting miters.  As you can see here, they came out pretty well.  Today we’ll cut the side pieces to length, miter them and cut the grove for the plywood bottom.

Happy woodworking,

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