My initial thought was to have all the sides of the dovetails in the maple point to one common perspective. However, during layout I quickly found out some of the angles would be far too severe, putting the integrity of the joinery at risk. Thus I used two perspective points for this joint.

Note there are four tails in the maple. The uniqueness of this joinery is that the angles of the maple tails are not set at a uniform and traditional 1:8 hardwood tail ratio. Rather the angles of the sides of the dovetails are determined and aligned to perspective points refered to above. If you bisect the piece of maple in the direction of the grain (horizontally in the picture directly below), I used a perspective point 3 ½” from the corner edge and 3/8” away from the center line of the maple. Thus in theory each set of tails on either side of the midpoint in the maple should mirror each other. However, because they are handcut they are not precisely mirror images.

I’m going to play around with this some more before using it in a box, because by moving the perspective points I’m using, I think it might be possible to have the two rosewood pins on either side of the center pin to be similar in shape as the maple tails. In other words these two pins would be wider at the edge than their width at the base of the tails. This is the reverse of normal pins. I slightly achieved that (which can be seen in the pictures above) in the pin just below the center pin. But the one just above the center pin looks more like a box joint…rectangular in appearance.

I rounded the sides on this piece to help accentuate the radial characteristics of the tails. I plan to use this in the actual box construction too, and also plan to add some type of inlay in the sides to further draw attention to the radial shape formed by the dovetails.

I was fairly pleased with how this turned out, but it was much more difficult than the deceptively simple appearance of the final result because the angle of each side of each tail is different than the next. I won’t be able to start on this box right away but I’m already anxious to see how it will turn out.

In this blog, I’m focusing on the sides of the box, but here’s a few pictures of the nearly completed box -

Materials.
For this box’s sides I used three types of primary contrasting woods, although there is no real reason to do so. Two contrasting woods would work just as well. The woods I chose are:
 Honduras Rosewood – front and back. Quite hard and brittle. Chopping pins was a slow process with many trips back to “Mr. Tormek” to regrind/hone. But it’s beauty made up for it.
 Caribbean Rosewood – sides. This wood is very close grained, although very hard, it’s not quite as hard as the Honduras variety, and not as brittle. Has some “florescence” when changing the viewing angle.
 Birdseye Maple – inlay (the first dovetails). It’s really pointless to use birdseye in this application, but it’s what I had handy at the time. Regular hard maple would probably work better, maybe even holly.

Construction Keys.
The things I found key when constructing a box like this are:
1) Each side of the box receives a rabbet cut on the inside of each end.
2) The width of the rabbet equals the width of the side to be joined into it.
3) The depth of the rabbet equals the thickness of the initial (or “inlaid”) dovetail – maple in this case.
4) You actually build the box frame (sides) twice, cutting the box apart leaving the first set of dovetails, then cutting dovetails within dovetails.
5) When doing so it’s imperative that all the dovetails use precisely the same angle…all the time. To the degree they are not, the inlaid lines (maple in this case) will not be a consistent width, thus detracting from the overall appearance. You can see some of that in my try here.

The picture below shows the rabbet joint cut on each end of each side –

I set the rabbet depth at 1/8” and cut it on my router table. The decision on the depth of this rabbet made here initially is what “sets” the width of the inlaid dovetail for the entire project. In future boxes using this joinery, I’ll strive to go narrower, (maybe 1/16”) but for the first time this seemed a little risky.

Below is a top-view picture of the pieces in relation to each other once they become integral to the box. In the center is the second of two of my practice joints I tried before starting the box.

The close-up below shows in more detail. From this picture the steps I next took were:
1) cutting tails in the maple (note the sacrificial maple receives no rabbet joint)
2) cutting pins in the Honduras rosewood (the front/back pieces)

The Tails.
Most often I cut my tails first, pins second. The photos series below shows the tail cutting process in the maple -

I don’t normally do this, but for this project I used a small block of wood cut precisely at the dovetail angle for hardwood (1:8) and used this as a “guide block” to rest my saw against for all tails in the box, so they would all be as consistent as possible. This seems like cheating in a way, but it’s critical that both sets of dovetails are all consistent. Again, this is necessary to have an appealing “inlay line” in the maple once I’ve cut the second set of dovetails in the Caribbean rosewood.

These pictures are kind of blurry, but hopefully give the idea –

Below all the saw cuts are made –

Here you can see the relationship of the shoulder in the maple to the rabbet in the rosewood –

In the picture below I’ve made a cut nearly through the waste, but I stop short of going through and finish coming in from the other side. This prevents any chance of the fret saw blade cutting into one of the tails.

Ready for pins –

The Pins.
The next series of photos shows how I mark and cut the pins in the Honduras rosewood. These will accept the maple dovetails. Note again that the maple is sacrificial, meaning it will be cut off once glued into the Honduras rosewood pins –

Below shows how I mark the pins. When I’m doing this for real, my free hand is applying downward pressure on the maple to prevent it from slipping during the marking. The first picture shows squaring everything up prior to marking. Notice that I like to use a light under the pieces when positioning the tails for marking the pins…so that the gap between the maple shoulders and the edge of the rosewood can be easily seen and closed very precisely.

For this project I’m using a x-acto knife. I have marking knives, and I was a little hesitant to try this, but it worked out fine.

Here I’m marking the full thickness of the maple (plus 1/64”) on the rosewood so the pins will be a little proud after glue up –

In this picture I’m cutting out the waste between the pins using a fret saw. Again, at the point of this picture I stop cutting and feed the fret saw down the left side of the waste to finish the cut.

Notice how the pins look in combination with the rabbet initially cut into the rosewood. This is a key to the maple “inlaid” dovetail being visible from the outside of the box sides. Below is a picture of the finished pins -

The next two pictures show trimming the inside edges of the pins/tails. Rob Cosman shows this techique in his video series and this helps remove some of the friction when fitting the joinery -

These shavings are then cut off cleanly using the chisel.

On this project I took this idea one step further and did a small amount of filing on the back of the sides of the pins/tails, to further relieve friction when fitting the joinery together. This photo below is blurry, but I think you can get the idea. Note that I’m angling the file to purposefully avoid having the file come in contact with the front side of the rosewood pin. I also will only do this at the base of the pin…never at the end where it will show once assembled –

The Completed Joint.
If you look closely you can see the pins/tails are slightly proud of the side surfaces –

Even though it’s really hard to “destroy” something I’ve just finished…here I’m cutting the box apart right after getting all the initial corners completed and glued. Notice the remaining maple revealed by the initial rabbet cut into the rosewood –

Below, I’m re-squaring the rosewood to prepare them for the second set of dovetails –

This picture shows the relationship of the Honduras rosewood, to the Caribbean rosewood –

The amount of maple remaining on the inside face of the rosewood is the same thickness that needs to remain in the walls of the maple dovetail, thus determining the size of the Caribbean rosewood tails. Here I’m rechecking this width (after sanding) and will transfer that into the marking of the tails –

Unfortunately this turned out blurry, but this is how I transferred this width to mark the tails in the Caribbean rosewood –

In this picture below you can see how the maple and Caribbean rosewood pins will overlay each other, once cutting and assembly is complete:

This series of pictures show the second set of pins being cut:

At last! The second set of pins/tails are complete!

This picture below shows the groove cut in the sides to accept the base…it also clearly shows my “screw-up” in cutting the groove on both upper and lower sides of one of the sides. My “cover-up” was deciding to place a ¼’ strip of hickory inlay around the inside of the top of the box…whooops! -

This picture shows the hickory base (and inlay) being fitted. The tongue and groove were done on my router table -

Here’s a partial “dry-fit” and I’m ready for glue up. I actually did completely dry fit each corner separately once, but did not do this for all four corners simultaneously, fearing I’d never get them back apart without loosening the joinery fit –

The carcass portion of the box is complete. Here’s a picture of the clamping and end result –

And here’s one after sanding the pins/tails clean… –

I’m currently just starting to apply the finish to this box. The top is 6/4 stock cebil with a contrasting maple stripe that runs across the top, “joining” into the maple in the double dovetail. I’ll post this as a project once I get the finish completed. Thus far I’ve put on one oil coat, but I’m torn between a natural wood look and a multilayered poly/oil blend series of top coats that will end up filling in all grain pores. Any suggestions on the completing finish are welcome.

Even though this blog ended up quite lengthy, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

He showed me some online photos of the table, which I used as the basic, general design plan. The joinery I chose is original but the style was taken from the photos.

This piece is the result:

My nephew came with me to a local lumber yard to pick out the type of wood and grain pattern that he wanted. He’s not a woodworker but I did get him involved in a few aspects of this project.

The entire piece is made from solid 4/4 and 12/4 stock wood.

The Legs:
Each leg is essentially a hollow box. After gluing up sufficient walnut “planks” with enough width (across the grain for the height of the legs, I cross cut each “plank” so the grain sequence would flow or “wrap” entirely around each leg. I used rabbet joints for the leg corners. My first thought was that 45 degree miters would be more appealing, but I didn’t trust myself to cut the miters perfectly for the entire width of the cut (height of the legs). Thus rabbet joinery seemed to be safer, though at the expense of visual appeal.

Each hollow leg has a base of red oak tongue and grooved into the lower portion of the inside of the leg 1inch from the bottom. Because of the size or footprint of each leg, I used two levelers within each leg’s base to ensure the table would sit level on either carpeted or smooth surface floors. An unforeseen benefit to this is that even though the table is quite heavy, it actually slides on either type of floor surface quite easily for moving it around as needed.

The following picture shows the underside after all the glue-up was complete. In this picture, you can see that I’ve temporarily replaced the leveler’s feet with bolts until the table was completely finished. This allowed me to move it around the shop (to some people it’s called a garage) without worrying about damaging the actual feet that came with the levelers.

To mark the project as a gift on their wedding day, I woodburned a wedding message into the underside of the top:

The Top:

The top is a frame/panel design. The panel is basically 4/4 stock walnut, which my nephew specifically picked out for the top. I used a glue line interlocking type router bit on each edge before edge-joining/gluing together each of the four planks that make up the panel. Since I don’t have a drum sander (and am very jealous of all you LJs who do), and lacked hand planes at the time to do a sufficient job of flattening the panel, I took the panel down to a local millshop to have it drum sanded flat on both top and bottom. That cost me $20 bucks but was well worth it since I didn’t want to take a chance with my hand-held belt sander and not getting it dead flat.

I routed a tongue around the entire perimeter of the panel to be received by the corresponding groove in the frame pieces. The photo below shows a dry fit of the panel and frame before cutting the key slots in the miter joints.

And here’s a close up of one of the corners. Note again the key slots have not yet been cut:

The Frame:
The frame is made of 12/4 stock walnut. I decided to use 45 degree miters at the corners which I cut on my table saw. The grooves (for the tongue and groove) were done on my router table. I also decided to use a “key” lock vertically in the miters perpendicular to the miter joints at the corners. In order to do this I made a jig for my router table sufficient to handle frame pieces this large. The next few photos show this process. I made the jig so I could use it for any angle between 90 to 30 degrees. It is bolted onto the mite-r-slide on my router table.

The photo below shows the set up for cutting the key slot for one of the longer two pieces of the frame. I used a ½ inch spiral up-cut bit in multiple passes, increasing the depth until the depth matched ½ the size of the key size.

(As you can see above my “shop” extends out into my driveway thanks to mobile bases. My primary dust collection system is called “prevailing Kansas winds”. It sure keeps the garage cleaner)

Below is a close up of the end result of routing the key slots. You can also see the ¼ inch wide groove that will accept the tongue on the top panel. This was also done on the router table.

Fastening the top to the legs:
The design of this table posed some challenges in deciding how to join the legs to the top. I much prefer wood joinery and really dislike using metal fasteners, unless absolutely necessary. Even though I’m sure there are many ways in which I could have chosen to join the legs and top, I chose to basically dado grooves on the underside of the top to accept each leg. Then for strength and stability I decided on a series of braces that were also dado’d
 into the legs,
 into the underside of the top,
 into the frame itself, and
 between the legs that are on each end of the table

This photo (below) shows the basic pattern of these dados on the underside of the top.

(No this isn’t an aerial photo of Aztec UFO runways for visitors from other galaxies)

The dados were cut by a combination of (1) a handheld router using a homemade straight-edge guide (it’s called a board) and (2) hammer and chisel. In the photo directly below you can see the connecting braces being fitted to the legs, the top, and the frame of the top.

The photo below shows a close-up of the braces being fitted into the dados that were cut in the top, frame and legs:

Another view:

The photos below shows the legs and braces being simultaneously clamped to the top (and frame by way of the braces that serve as structural supports). As you can see I used gorilla glue for attaching the legs and braces:

A close up view:

Another close up:

I wasn’t sure how stable this technique would be, but I was very pleased with the result. There is absolutely zero wobble or sway in the legs…which was a concern due to their weight and the fact that there are no cross braces near the bottoms of the legs. The legs and top truly are “one piece” as a result. For this I was thankful.

All edges were rounded over using a 3/16 inch round over bit in my handheld router. The piece was sanded to 220 grit. This was repeated after wiping down the entire piece with water to raise the grain. The finish was four coats of wipe-on poly/oil blend. This was followed by two coats of paste wax, with the first one being rubbed in with 0000 steel wool.

One reservation I have for the construction style I chose was whether or not moisture content changes over time would ever effect the frame/panel top and the bracing design for attaching the legs. It’s been 2 ½ years since this table was completed and I’m happy there are no signs yet whatsoever of any changes in the joints, etc., and it remains rock solid… so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I hope you enjoy this post. I’m also posting this table as an LJ project.

Thanks to all who made the kind comments to my posting of this project. These are some of the steps I went through to make the “Frame / Panel Keepsake Box” at http://lumberjocks.com/projects/7096.

Frame/Panels:
This box consists of five Frame/Panels (FP) – the top, and the four sides making the carcass. Each of the FPs were completely assembled separately prior to gluing to the ebony corner posts.

A few of the comments to the original posting of this box made me think about how many wood “parts” were fitted to actually make this box. If I count the two pieces edge-joined for the top and base, I think I had 57 separate pieces of wood to size, cut, or fit one way or another.

Perhaps the most challenging part of this box was the combination of the miter keys in conjunction with the tongue and groove joinery used on all four sides of each panel. I let the outside dimensions of the frames of the carcass determine the overall dimensions of the box. However, because I used Mortise/Tenon (MT) to join the FPs to the ebony corner posts, I had to allow for additional tenon material on each of the vertical pieces of each frame which you can see in the photo below:

Thus the stock for the vertical pieces of each frame had to be cut from wider stock than the horizontal frame pieces. The tenons were cut on my router table prior to cutting the miters on my table saw, using an Incra miter gauge with a stop along it’s fence. I actually cut the frame’s grooves for the panels using the router table after cutting the miters. Thinking back… it would have been much easier had I cut the grooves before the 45 degree miters. The tongue on the panels were next and this was also done on my router table. The overall size of the panel was determined after the frames were cut and “dry fit”.

Key Slots:
The next challenge was cutting the key slots. The series of three pictures that follow show the jigs I used in conjunction with my router table to cut the key slots. I’m fortunate to have a Jessem router table with a miter-slide (what Jessem calls their miter gauge). It’s a little difficult to see but there are actually two jigs, (1) the larger adjustable one can be used to set a variety of angles for holding stock. This attaches onto the miter-slide, but something similar, or simpler could be made for any miter gauge. The jig was made for another larger project. (I made a table with an 8/4 stock mitered frame with similar miter keys – I’ll post it sometime in the future). The second “jig” is simply two pieces of plywood joined at precisely 90 degrees, and mitered at 45 degrees on the end so it sits flat against the router table and the primary jig. This was only necessary because the FP pieces for this box were too small for the larger jig to support. So it’s only purpose was just to serve as an extension of the larger jig. (Hopefully this will make more sense in looking at the pictures below)

I initially tried to make it much more difficult then needed in trying to measure to get the key slot “centered” in the frame’s width.

As it turned out I didn’t need to measure at all…the position of the key slot in relation to the “center” of the frame was determined by “what looked right” and set by the distance of the router fence from the bit (since the miter-slide is attached to the fence on my router), once the jig was set precisely at 45 degrees.

With a 1/8 inch wide bit, several passes were needed on each slot to get the desired depth of the slot. This was done by raising the bit some with each pass…remembering that you’re never supposed to take a cut deeper than the width of your bit. To make the actual cut it was just necessary to “register” and hold the mitered frame piece flatly against the router table and the jig simultaneously.

This was repeated for each FP, but as mentioned below … for the top FP piece a ¼ inch bit was used.

Ebony Keys:
After having the key slots cut in the frames, the ebony keys were (very carefully) cut on my table saw ripping the width I needed off the side of the blade opposite of the table saw fence. I let my router bits determine the key width. For the four FP sides I used a 1/8 inch router bit requiring 1/8 inch keys. For the top FP I used a ¼ inch router bit, requiring ¼ inch keys. Since the top panel was larger, this matched better proportionally as well. All the keys were cut with the grain running perpendicular to the miter joint. They were also cut a little longer than I needed so I could sneak up on the exact length I needed to make the miters fit tightly during dry-fit. You can see in the picture below that the keys on this panel are a little long preventing the miters from closing completely together. The keys were trimmed a little at a time until all four miters in the panel fit properly.

From the perspective of the picture above…because of the close tolerances, in assembly of each panel I found that I could slide the keys “sideways” into the key slot for two of the corners. For the remaining two corners the ebony keys had to be pushed into the slots once each half of the slots were aligned. This design truly makes each FP piece “interlocking”. Care should not be overlooked to keep each panel flat/square during gluing/clamping. I used Titebond II to glue up this box.

Once each panel was dry-fitted properly and glued they could then be fastened to the ebony corners. As you can see in the picture below, the mortises were cut into the ebony corners using the router table. This wasn’t necessary, but I rounded off the frame tenon’s edges before gluing together to match the contour of the routed mortises in the ebony. I think you can also see that in the picture below. Also note the inside corner of each ebony corner was cut off at 45 degrees to give the inside of the box better contour.

After all the panels were glued/sanded it was time to assemble the box. However, this was done in stages because it seemed too risky to get “out of square” had I tried to glue all eight pieces simultaneously (four FPs and four ebony corners). Thus I glued the front and back FPs to the ebony corner posts first and let these dry before attaching these to the side FPs. See the picture below:

The base:
The base was made of red oak and was rabbeted into the sides. The rabbet was cut “freehand” on my router table using a rabbeting bit/with a bearing. The portions of the rabbet next to the ebony corners were cut out by hand with a chisel since the router bit couldn’t reach there.

As you can see below, the base was then cut to fit the shape of the rabbet including “cutouts” for the ebony corner posts.

The cocobolo feet have round tenons that were turned prior to parting them off my mini lathe. The feet are actually pen blank stock. The ebony handle is also joined using MT joinery. All outside edges were 45 degree beveled 1/8 inch wide. The feet were also slightly beveled prior to gluing into drilled out holes in the ebony corners.

Thanks for looking at my first blog.