Bandsawn Boxes
|
|
Resources
For Making Bandsawn Boxes
Band Saws
Clamps
Drill Bits
Drill Presses
Glue
Table Saws
BOX OF DRAWERS
Large thick rectangles lend themselves to the drawer configuration, though they could just as easily be oriented horizontally with a long lid if you wish. To start a box of drawers, first square up all six sides of the rectangle on your table saw. Note that you need a piece over a foot long to do this safely. Then rip off a thin back as shown in photo 1, at about 5/16" thick. Set this piece aside.
|
|
Photo 1-
Begin a box with drawers by cutting off the back, which will be glued back on
after the drawers are cut out. |
Sketch the shapes of the
drawers you desire on the front face of the box. Remember that the radius you
can cut on the band saw is limited by the width of the blade you use. 1/8"
wide blades are available and they will cut very tight radii, but they break easily,
so I use 1/4" blades for my tight curve work. Do tests in scrap to see how
tight a curve you can cut, and use this as a guide as you sketch your drawers.
At the band saw, rip off
one side of the box, following the edges of the drawers you sketched. Then cut
out each of the drawer blanks as shown in photo 2.
|
|
Photo 2- Trace the drawers on the front face, then rip off a side following the drawer sides. Then cut out the drawer blanks. |
The next step is to rip off
both the front and back of each drawer blank. Make each of these about
5/16" thick or so. As you do this, tilt the piece while it is being cut so
that the area immediately below the blade is always touching the band saw
table. If you don't do this, the blade could grab the work and throw it down
quickly, causing an accident. Keep your fingers out of the path of the blade,
and keep your eye on what you are doing.
|
|
Photo 3-
With the band saw cut off both the front and back of each drawer, then cut
out the cavity of each as shown here. |
Mark the front and back
pieces of each drawer so you remember where they go. Sketch the inside drawer
contour onto the remaining drawer blanks on their front faces and cut them out
as in photo 3.
|
|
Photo 4-
Glue the carcass and drawers back together, carefully aligning the parts to
each other. |
Glue up the box carcass and drawer parts as in photo 4. Use a lot of clamps to evenly distribute the pressure. When out of clamps, round over the sharp edges and sand or scrape the exposed band sawn surfaces. Finish to your liking and install pulls that please.
SWIVEL LIDDED BOX
How you proceed with boxes
made of rough pieces such as this will depend upon the shape of the piece you
have and what you want to do with it. I'll describe how I made this one, but
feel free to alter the procedures to suit your wood and taste.
This gnarly burl was crying
to be made into a box so that it could retain its rough exterior while showing
us its figured inside. The first thing I did with it was to cut away the
remaining section of attached trunk on the band saw, then assessed how best to
orient the piece as a box. I decided to make the largest flat area into the lid
so that viewers would see the beautiful burl figure on top.
|
|
Photo 5-
On an uneven chunk of wood, first make flat surfaces as I did by making
careful cuts on the bandsaw, referring to a fence. |
I flattened the broad area that
was to be the top with a belt sander and rough grit to eliminate the chain saw
marks it had, then cut off the bottom of the box as in photo 5. By holding the
flattened top against a fence as shown the bottom came out parallel to the top.
|
|
Photo 6-
For a swivel-lidded top, bore a hole from the bottom toward, but not through,
the area that will be the top. Then cut the top off at the band saw, exposing
the bottom of the hole into which you can glue a pivot dowel |
Next I bored a 1/2"
hole for the swivel top to pivot upon as in photo 6. I carefully set up the
drill press so that the bit would stop at 1/4" from the drill press table
top, and made the cut from the box bottom as shown. This way the hole didn't
come through the box top.
Then, back at the band saw,
I cut off the lid at about 9/16" thick. This left about 1/4" or so of
the 1/2" hole in the underside of the top. Into this I glued a 1/2"
dowel about 1-1/2" long for the top to swivel upon. To ensure that the
dowel was oriented correctly, I placed it in the box carcass after gluing the
other end in the top, and checked to see that the lid was parallel to the
carcass.
|
|
Photo 7-
Now cut out the body of the box. Tilt the band saw table if necessary to
accomodate the |
To cut out the front
portion of the carcass body I tilted the band saw table to match the angle of
the rough surface, as in photo 7. But the back portion of the carcass was at
right angles to the top and bottom, so I made a separate cut with the table at
90o for that section. This released the central core. From this core I got two components;
the box bottom and shelf. The bottom I cut off with a fence to regulate its
thickness as in photo 8.
|
|
Photo 8-
This shot shows the central chunk cut out from the body of the box. I'm
cutting off the bottom of it to use as the box bottom. Next, I'll cut off the
top of this chunk to make the shelf. |
I made a similar cut to get
the blank for the shelf. Then, I cut off a thin section from the shelf bottom
to make up that part, and began to cut out the cavities for the shelf. Once
again, I had to make one cut with the band saw table angled as in photo 9 for
the shelf front. The other cuts I made with the table at 90o to complete the
shelf.
|
|
Photo 9-
To cut out the body of the shelf, I once again needed to tilt the band saw
table to match the angle of the front of the drawer piece. |
Because of the thickness of
the band saw kerf, the bottom fit loosely within its space. But, because the
front was angled, I was able to drop the bottom down a bit and wedge it in
place during the glue up. When the glue was dry I flattened the bottom by
sanding.
