This will be my second attempt at making a bandsaw box, with the first one going to my daughter Angela for Christmas last year. This type of box requires a bunch of sanding because there are many steps along the way. Now this box will be going in our kitchen and will be primarily for my wife to keep packets of tea in.

Working With Wood

I'll be using four species of wood for this project. In fact, these will be almost the same as the two fruit bowls that I made in January of 2022. The reason is so they'll match each other in our house. The species of wood are maple, alder, mahogany and black walnut. The only difference for this project is I'm using mahogany in place of cherry that I used on the fruit bowl. Why? Because I couldn't find any cherry at Reel Lumber the day I was buying my wood.

The first thing I did was use my planer on all the long pieces. This works out pretty good because I normally have leftover material and I label each piece letting me know it's been planned for future items I might make.

Now the height of this box will be 14 1/2" tall by 5 3/4" wide, and will have three drawers in it. The overall height was determined by the tea packet size which is, 3" tall X 2 1/2" wide. I had to make sure I had enough material after cutting out each drawer which dictated my box height.
 

Here are all my pieces rough sanded and ready to be glued together. However, this gluing process is going to consist of two parts: first I'll only glue each piece of the same species together; e.g. both black walnut pieces together, both maple pieces, etc.
 

Before I ever printed anything out, I used a tape measure and showed my wife just how tall the finished box would be. She thought that would be fine so I started working.

Now originally I drew this project on my CAD system to give me all my sizes. Once I knew what I needed size wise, I proceeded up to this point. Then a few days later I printed out the picture that you see to the right. However, after my wife looked at how tall it was going to be, she didn't like it because now it was too tall. So it was back to the drawing board to remove one of the drawers, which reduced the overall height from 14 1/2" to roughly 11.0" now. At this point she was happy so it's time to move ahead and get busy again.

I'm using some 3M spray adhesive to attach my pattern to my block of wood. All you need is a light coat of adhesive on the wood surface, then place your paper template where you want it and apply some hand pressure. A minute later you're good to go.

Notice the paper template is two pieces below. This was necessary because printer paper is 11" long and I needed a small amount extra at both ends. No big deal, just hold the paper up to the light, align your lines up and tape it together before gluing it to the wood. Also, notice I'll have some extra material now that my project is smaller. Oh well....
 

I cut out the periphery which went pretty good for a few of reasons. First, I'm using a different blade than last time, with this one being a 4 tooth per inch blade compared to the other that was 14 TPI, but both are 3/16" wide. Second, I'm using a smoother working surface so my work piece slides easier compared to the cast iron table. Third, I'm using a 'blade stabilizer' in place of the normal blade guide rollers that came with the saw. To learn more about these last two upgrades and others you can check them out here, called Bandsaw Upgrades.