Wooden Box - Vinyl Storage

My love of making sawdust in the garage started about 30 years ago.

When I was a young boy I always enjoyed spending time with my grandpa Mongosa at his house. And if conditions were just right there was a chance we might get to play in the wood shop. He would push the door open and you could smell the sawdust even before your eyes could adjust to see the giant woodworking tools looming in the dark. In time my grandpa would teach me about each one and what its purpose was. He would also tell me scary stories that taught me to respect each one of them.

If we had time he would fetch the extension cord and run it up to the house to power up the shop. He would then ask me to pull some pieces from the scrap bin and would quickly run it through every tool turning it into something for me to play with quicker than one could mold it out of soft clay.

I was far too young to use the table saw and band saw and on most days the closest I got was spinning the disc sander by hand when he wasn’t looking. But there was this one time he helped me up onto a chair and he let me use the drill press to put some holes in a board. It was awesome and I always hoped that someday I would have a chance to get into woodworking myself.

I woke up on Saturday morning knowing in my heart that this would be the day my grandpa would pass on. He'd been putting up one hell of a fight over the past couple weeks but something told me it was coming fast. So I made a decision to duck out to the garage, open the door to let in some sun, pick a board off a shelf and make some sawdust and think of my grandpa.

I ended up hauling 3 random boards out to the fence to look at them. I had no idea at the time what I would be making so I just stared at the boards, flipping them over one by one, to see if any of them 'spoke' to me. I noticed the knot and little bit of live edge on the first board and thought about cutting it off and throwing it away, but then I thought let's make that the design challenge.

I put the other boards away and stared at the one on the fence for a while longer. It was a still morning throughout the neighborhood as it appeared everyone decided to sleep in. I could have stood there all morning but I needed to get started. "A box to store my records in", I thought. That could be cool but what would it look like?

I measured the desk that it would sit on. I measured the cardboard box that currently held all of my vinyl.

 

I figured I would have enough material to make 2 boxes to handle my growing collection for many years to come. I set some objectives and started to sketch out some ideas.

     Objective 1: I wanted to put the live edge in the most prominent location

     Objective 2: I wanted the grain and colors to march around the boxes continuously

     Objective 3: I wanted to do my first set of box joints to challenge myself.

Once I had the pieces cut I went back and forth on the thought of making a jig on my iffy cross-cut sled or doing it by hand on the band saw. In the end I chose the band saw even though it was more work and less perfect. This option did allow me to print out the box joint pattern and glue-stick it to the board. Then all I had to do was trace the lines with the blade and sand off the paper. Wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be.

I did several dry fits to see how strong the joints were. Some corners were tighter than others but I made sure to get all 3 full size corners as tight as possible on the box below to help support the small live edge joint.

I then cut a groove in the bottom to receive some 1/4" plywood I had left over from another project for the records to sit on.

 

It was just after I assembled the second box when I received the call letting me know that my hunch had been right that morning and he had just passed away. I took some time to pull out a lawn chair and sit in the garage surrounded by sawdust on the floor.

I took the rest of the night off but got right back to it the next morning. I cleaned up the box joints (I cut them long so I could bring them down flush later) I eased the edges of the box and applied some tung oil to all of the surfaces. By evening I would be using it in its new home.

In the end I am very happy with the build. From the memories I put into it to the final details. I'm sure my grandpa would have been proud.