POP Projects is a collection of new and classic projects from more than a century of Popular Mechanics. Master skills, get tool recommendations, and, most importantly, build something of your very own.
The box is the most fundamental structure: Furniture is boxes with hardware. A house is a large, waterproof box. Once you can make a box, you have the foundation to create far greater things. We asked three expert woodworkers to build a simple box to see how each would approach the task. Very differently, it turns out—despite giving them similar design briefs.
The outside dimensions had to be 16x12x8 inches, and they could only use tools and materials found at their local home center. We ended up with three boxes with three distinctive joints—all equally awesome.
These Tools Will Help
A Box Joint
By Ted Kilcommons
A box joint looks a bit like a dovetail, but you can make it with a table saw. Getting it right requires careful layout, but it’s worth the effort. Take your time and you’ll have joinery that’s strong and attractive. You also get to make a jig—a custom-made gadget that accurately guides a tool’s cutting blade when making repetitive cuts—and use a dado set. Those are two of my favorite things in woodworking.
This box-joint jig allows you to mill all the pins and sockets to exactly the same size. It comprises a fence with a key and a notch attached to a sliding miter gauge. First, though, install the dado set into your saw. This box has 1/2-inch pins, so I set up a 1/2-inch stack. Raise the blade to the thickness of your box material—in this case, 3/4 inches—or go a hair deeper if you’d like to sand the pins flush later. Hold the fence piece to the sliding miter gauge and cut a notch in it with the dado set. Move the fence over the exact width of the dado set, attach it to the sliding miter gauge, and cut another notch. You now have a notch, a space (called a step-off), and another notch, each exactly 1/2-inch wide. Glue a 1/2-inch x 1/2-inch x 2-inch key into the far left notch so it extends at least an inch from the fence.
Grab an end piece and hold vertically against the fence and up tight to the key. Cut your first pin. Move the workpiece over, placing the socket you just cut over the key, and make another cut. Continue across the width of the workpiece. You can mill the box’s adjoining side piece the same way, but you need to offset it so your first cut creates a socket rather than a pin. Take the end piece and place it onto the key in reverse so its pin provides the offset needed. Then butt the adjoining side piece against it and start cutting.
Spread a thin layer of glue onto the mating surfaces, and work fast to assemble the box, one corner at a time. Clamp together, ensuring everything remains square. Take a damp cloth and clean up any excess glue. Once the glue is cured, clean up the joinery with a palm sander.
To install the bottom, use a router to cut a 3/8-inch wide by 1/2-inch deep rabbet around the inside of the bottom edge. Square the corners of the rabbet by carefully chopping down with a sharp chisel, and then glue in the bottom.
The Spline
By Richard Romanski
You can make this box into something utilitarian or more upscale depending on the materials you choose. I was able to buy a quarter sheet of birch plywood from the home center, which is a handy size format for a small project like this. I also added a lid, making it ideal for storing tools or supplies.
A project like this is a bit like building model airplanes: You figure out the sequence of steps before you start. In this case, that means layout, milling, trimming, assembly, and clean up.
First, figure out how you’ll cut all the pieces from the plywood, and use a table saw to mill the blanks. Don’t try to cut anything wider than it is long. That’s dangerous—the board can kick back—so use a miter gauge to chop the pieces to length. Once you have your stack of blanks, trim everything to actual size on the table saw. Use a decent combination blade so the plywood doesn’t chip out. Next, mill a dado near the bottom edge of each side piece that will accept the bottom. Position the dado 1/4 inch from the edge and cut it 3/16-inch deep. Its width depends on the actual thickness of your plywood. Mine was close to 7/16 inch.
Rip the corner posts to width on the table saw, and then chop them about an inch oversize. You’ll trim them and the splines to length after the box is assembled.
Next, cut kerfs for the splines in the corner posts and side pieces. Mark the kerf on the end grain of a post. It should be 1/8 inch wide by 5/16 inch tall, which is half the width of the spline. Use this layout as a visual reference for setting up the saw. Unless your blade is 1/8 inch thick, you’ll need to make multiple passes. Make the first pass on all four posts, adjust the saw’s fence, and then make additional passes until the kerfs are formed. Repeat with the plywood pieces.
Rip the splines from hardwood stock. To do this safely, use a push block. A push stick won’t work here—you need to apply downward force so the thin pieces don’t rattle through. The splines should fit snugly into the kerfs but should also slide freely. If they’re too tight, they will cause problems when you add glue. Chop the splines about an inch oversize.
Mill the bottom and the lid. These look similar in that they both require a notch in each corner to fit around the posts. You can cut these notches on the table saw, but you’ll need to build a sled that allows you to hold the workpiece upright. You’ll also notice that the bottom of the box requires another set of notches to fit around the splines. Cut these with a handsaw.
Do a dry assembly (without glue) on a flat surface. This gives you a sense of what issues you might encounter when you add glue. When you’re ready, disassemble the box and spread a thin layer of glue into each groove. Push the spline down into the edge; don’t try to slide it in from the end or you’ll squeeze the glue out. Tap the spline flush with the bottom of each corner. You don’t need to glue the bottom. Use clamps to hold everything together, taking care not to rack the box out of square.
After the glue has cured, trim the corner posts. You can do this on the table saw: Make the cut and then carefully back out the box. To fit the lid you’ll need to trim the spline projection with a handsaw.
The Rabbet
By Paul Steiner
I completed the joinery for this box using just a circular saw and a straight edge. The box needed a bunch of rabbets, which are two-sided channels milled into the edge of a board (a dado is similar but has three sides). I could have cut these with a router, but instead used the circular saw against a Speed Square or a shop-made fence and then cleaned up the rabbets with a sharp chisel. This method is perfectly acceptable for building cabinet carcasses or drawer boxes.
I cheated a little bit here. I bought 1 x 10 boards, which have a nominal width of 9 1/4 inches. To keep this box simple, I didn’t bother ripping the boards to 8 inches. I just chopped them to length using a Speed Square as a guide. You can hold the square in position, or clamp it to the workpiece if that feels more comfortable. Either way, the square should be offset from your cutline by same distance that the saw’s blade is from the edge of its base. Make sure the workpiece is supported so when you exit the cut, the scrap won’t fall and splinter the workpiece.
Cut rabbets in the ends of the side pieces. These are 3/8 inch deep—half the thickness of the material—and 3/4 inch wide. Set your saw blade’s depth to 3/8 inch, and make a test cut in a piece of scrap to check it’s set up correctly. Using the same Speed Square setup, make a cut 3/4 inch from the edge. Move the square slight toward the end of the board and make another cut. Repeat until you’ve removed most of the material, and then clean up the cut with a chisel. Now cut rabbets along the bottom edges of the side pieces, but instead of using a speed square as a guide, clamp a piece of scrap plywood to the workpiece. Make the first cut 1/2 inch from the edge—that’s the width of the rabbet—and then freehand the remaining cuts. Take care to stay within the first cut.
All that’s left is to assemble the box. Spread glue on the end rabbets, and clamp the pieces together. Drill countersunk pilot holes through the side pieces and into the ends and fasten with a couple of screws, making sure you keep everything square. Finally, glue and screw the bottom into place.
