Woodworker's Journal 1993-17-2, страница 14

Woodworking Basics

Continued

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grain, I don't think it's a good choice for boxes whose attraction is beautifully figured wood or subtle details. But its strength and relative ease of making put it among the best for "working" boxes, such as tool, toy or blanket chests, as well as for decorative painted or carved boxes of any size.

Miters

Perhaps no box joint shows off handsome wood better than the miter (Fig. 3). Uninterrupted by end grain or joint lines, a beautiful wood surface flows like a ribbon around a mitered box. Unfortunately. the price of this "invisible" joint in time and frustration is often very high. Miters can be difficult to cut accurately and a real pain to glue up. And, without reinforcement, the end-grain gluing surfaces that are most common for box-corner miters provide little more strength than a butt or simple rabbet joint.

I have never mitered the four corners of a box on a table saw without having to 14

14 The Woodworker's Journal

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spend lime truing the joints with a hand plane to get them to fit just right. Admittedly, I don't miter every day (indeed, I avoid mitered joints whenever possible), but I suspect many woodworkers experience the same difficulties, Every additional inch of width and any deviation of the board's face from dead flat compounds ihe problem. Nevertheless, with practice, patience, well-tuned machinery and the help of a few jigs (an accurate table saw sled with hold-downs for wide or springy box sides, for example), decent miters can be cut.

Glue alone is enough to hold a small mitered box together. A friend of mine has been successful with a simple procedure, also shown in Fig. 3. He cuts the joints on the table saw, lays the pieces end to end (outside faces up) and applies strips of masking tape across the joints. Then he spreads glue on the mitered surfaces and folds the sides on their tape hinges to form the box. The tape both aligns the joints and holds them fairly

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tightly while (Ik- glue dries.

Mitered owners tor larger boxes require reinforcement. Fitting loose splines hi grooves cut along the length of the miicis. .is shown in Fig. 4, provides hidden strength, but the procedure can be lough to do accurately. An alternative is to miter and assemble the box, then slip splines into kerfs cut across the corners (fig. 5). Thin splines matched to the sides can be almost invisible; thicker splines of contrasting wood, perhaps inserted into kerfs cut at various angles, add decoration as well as strength.

I struggled for years gluing up mitered boxes before I finally tried what all the old books suggest—temporary glue blocks. I glued the miter offcuts lo ihe box sides as shown in Fig. 6, placing a piece of newspaper between the block and side. (Put glue on both sides of the newspaper.) A series of C-clamps on each corner draws the joints nice and tight. The technique works for boxes of any size: a sharp rap from a hammer severs the blocks (the newspaper splits in half) when you're ready 10 clean up.

If you have a router table or a shaper, you might want to try culling lock miters with a special router bit (Fig. 7). The joint has a great deal of mechanical