Another Dovetailed Candle Box

Now that Christmas is over, I can publish some pictures that were marked "Classified" by Santa's Workshop. I'm working my way slowly through a pile of box parts that I milled a few years ago, and I completed the third of these in time to send home with my parents. Every box teaches me something new, and gives me a chance to practice what I learned on the previous box. I'm happy to say the successes on this one were greater than the failures.

On the last box, finished about two years ago, I discovered how easily I could overshoot the correct lid size. On that box I had to invent and insert bushings to keep the lid from rattling around too much. It turns out that cutting polycarbonate with a jigsaw is difficult to do. I don't remember the final solution, but I did eventually create two guide bushings that fit in the slots of the box and solved the majority of the problem. You can see one of them clearly in the left slot of the picture below.

So this time through I carefully sneaked up on the correct width, and when I planed the bevels, I was again careful not to get too overeager. The result was a lid that slides nicely, but (at least in the winter) will not fall out when the box is turned sideways. I'm hoping I didn't leave it too snug, or it will become one with the box for the summer. We won't know until then.

On the last box, I also had trouble with the finger pull, which I planned to make triangular. I found to my chagrin that the finished pull appeared off center because I carved the pull before applying the bevels (which were off center). I had to fix the problem by modifying the pull, which turned out to be interesting and beautiful, but much more worry and work than I had originally planned:

Somehow I managed to perform these tasks in the correct order this time, and was extremely careful in carving out the pull. There was a moment when I almost panicked, because in "touching up" I managed to lengthen one corner of the triangle, but I managed to bring it back in balance by keeping my cool and carefully extending the other corner:

Lessons learned on this one:

• Leave the sides slightly proud so they can be made absolutely flush with the side rails after assembly (one corner was slightly below where I wanted it, and subtracting material is more easily done than adding it).
• Don't balance things to dry on the same surface you are using as a work table. There was a repair job involved, but I'm happy to say that steaming can work wonders and only someone who knows what they're looking for will discover exactly where all the damage was done.
  
• Scraping is a good thing on figured cherry. My eyes saw tear out after the balancing act that had been invisible before I started looking critically. I learned that I can get the scraper to cut shavings instead of sawdust—that never happened before—and I cleared up most of the tear out. I noticed some very slight remainders when it was too late to correct: my finishing preparations will be even better next time.
• Learn to cut to a line (see my last post). These dovetails were respectable, but had several problems, including a couple spots that had to be wedged to hid the gap (M&D: can you find the two wedges? It's a lot like playing "Where's Waldo" even for me, and I put the wedges in...) Next time I hope to cut closer to the line, and on the waste side.
• The bottom corners were not as snug as I wanted them, and I hope to figure out why there was a slight gap. That said, they still look good:
  

That's all for tonight. Tomorrow I'm on my way to Rockler to buy a $200 6" Delta jointer that is usually $400.