My first bandsaw box

I've had the  bandsaw for a while now so I figured that it was finally time to make a bandsaw box.  All the bandsaw boxes out there are all curved and graceful looking so I wanted to see if I could make one all boxy with a square drawer.  I couldn't be bothered to glue anything together so I grabbed a well used and abused piece of scrap 2x4.  Here is the result.

I forgot to take any pictures while I was actually cutting it so here it is all cut up.

The first thing I did was to cut the back off.

I then cut the top and the bottom off.

Next were the sides which left me a chunk of wood from the middle.

I took that center chunk and cut the front and back off and hollowed out the center. 

I then glued the top and bottom back onto the sides

The next step was to glue the drawer back together.

And then clamp it up

Once the glue was dry it was time to glue the back, back on.

I put that block in the front so the clamp would have something to push against.

The drawer should have been the same size as those side pieces but was a smidge larger so I sanded it down to size with the disk sander

Here is what the final piece looks like.

Now that I know how to do it I am going to make a bigger and nicer one.



This is a pretty cool video showing some steam bending wood techniques.

Project - How to build a 5 board bench

My sister recently bought a used table on Craigslist but it only came with 3 chairs so she asked me to make her one.  Her only request was that it be 17" tall and flat black to match the other chairs.  I did some looking around on the web and found the traditional 5 board bench design.  I also found Charles Neil's video on YouTube and figured that I could build a variation on that design.  It also gave me an excuse to try out the new bandsaw. You can download a free sketchup file of this project in the downloads section of this site and you can also watch a video of me building it here: http://youtu.be/1_hz2n7v9ss

I started by cutting the legs to rough length using my little cordless saw.  I don't feel safe cutting

pieces that long on my contractor table saw.

I then cut them to length and width on the tablesaw.

Here are all the pieces cut to size.  There is 1 extra 1x6 in this picture because I was originally

going to put a support shelf under the seat but the legs are slightly bowed and it didn't match
up when I cut the shelf straight so I decided not to use it.

I used 1 of the side aprons to mark the notches on the legs.

This notch will be cut out and the side apron will rest in it.

I then marked in 3" on the other end of the board for the width of the bottom leg.

I marked the center of the board at 5" to drill a hole later.

I then glued the aprons to the top pieces.

I drilled out a 1 1/4" hole at that 5"  mark.  It is recommended that you drill a hole rather than just cut a "V" there so that the board doesn't split later on.

I then drew a line from each side of the hole down to the 3" mark that I made earlier.

An \d cut the shape out on the bandsaw.  You could just as easily made these cuts with a jigsaw.

The legs are slightly bowed so I marked them to have the rounded side facing out.

I used the scrap pieces from the legs to make some blocks to glue in later.

I used my little sanding wheel on the drill press to smooth the inside of the legs.  I found this one at

Lowes for under $10.

I then rounded over all the sides not getting glued to something else.

I sanded everything before assembly.  I also only sanded it to 120 because I am going to paint it.

I clamped it up to see what it was going to look like.

I used a scrap piece of 2x4 as a spacer for the ends.

I glued the legs to the top/apron pieces and then made sure that they were square before clamping them up.

Here are those block that I cut out earlier.

I took it out back and spray painted it flat black.

 I sanded the whole thing with 220 to smooth it out and also gave it some distressing to make it

look a little older.  I'm not a big fan of over distressed projects so I tried to keep a
semi-light touch.

This was my first time using satin poly.  I've only used gloss up to this point.

I ended up putting 4 coats on the top and aprons and 3 coats on everything else including the underneath.  I also put some felt feet on it but forgot to take pictures.