Sunday, February 22, 2015

Portable wooden tack box

Before leaving for the sea last time, Gustav started making a tack box for his grooming supplies for the horse.
He wanted to try his hands out on dovetailing, so the design is like a small dovetailed chest with a skirt and there will be a hinged lid.

We wanted to keep the weight as low as possible, so I found some of boards I made out of Sitka spruce a some years ago. I had a single 12" board left, so we used that for the sides.
The bottom is made out of ship-lapped larch boards, since larch is harder and more rot resistant than spruce. I figured that since the box will sit on the floor in a stable for most of the time, this was a sensible choice.

I showed Gustav how to make the dovetails, and the sides were made with tails first, and a small rabbet on the inside.
It was nice to see him being so serious about it, and he quickly became used to using the dovetail saw and a chisel.

Today we helped each other making the skirt, but due to the temperature in the workshop we moved it inside for the glue up.

Gustav still has to decide on the design of the interior of the box. he has talked about some tills for the smaller stuff, so that will probably be the way we go.

boards for the sides and ends.

Concentration.

Chopping out waste.

More chopping. 

End view.

Tack box before mounting the skirt.

Sawing a part for the skirt to the correct length.

6 comments:

  1. I'll bet this makes you feel really good.

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  2. That's fantastic! Glad to see the young man taking an interest. Good looking box so far too.

    Greg

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    1. Thanks Greg.
      I know that Gustav will be proud of that you like the box.
      Brgds
      Jonas

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  3. Awesome job! He should be very proud of his work!!

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    1. Hi Bill.
      He is very proud of it, last week he told the father of one of my friends (he is a retired carpenter), that he made a box that was dovetailed together. This old guy was really amazed since he didn't believe they learned how to do that at school any more.
      Gustav told him that he had learned it a home, so I was really proud too.
      The progress is halted a bit due to Gustav's high level of activity, he is training with his gymnastics team and the entire weekend was devoted to a horse jumping course. But we are slowly heading in the right direction.

      I on the other hand is not making anything fancy at the moment. I am just trying to mill stock for the porch, and that just look like a bunch of raw boards :-)
      Brgds
      Jonas

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