Woodworking - IC Box
Introduction
Since I've started doing woodworking, I wanted to try my hand at making something nice. I started with some peruvian walnut and some birch plywood. I decided that since this is a utilitarian piece, it would make a good project to practice my hand tool skills. I used power tools only for rough cutting, and did almost everything else with hand tools.
I roughed the dovetails out with a bandsaw but did all the precision cuts with chisels. I roughed out the rabbet for the plywood covers with my router table, and cleaned them up with a card scraper and chisels. I should have used a router plane, but I didn't have one at the time. I cut the hinge mortises by hand with an exacto knife and chisels, and drilled all the pilot holes with a pin vise.
I finished it with a couple coats of Minwax Tung Oil Finish (which may or may not contain any actual tung oil), but decided that the close-to-the-wood look wasn't right for this project. I followed that up with a half dozen coats of wiping varnish (polyurethane diluted with mineral spirits).
After the finish was dry, I glued in some premium high density antistatic foam. This stuff is surprisingly expensive, but also surprisingly difficult to cut. I tried a rotary cutter and an exacto knife, both of which resulted in very rough cuts. Finally I took the sheet out to the shop and ran it through the bandsaw, which resulted in a very clean cut. Cutting foam on a bandsaw is a bit of a cognitive rift, though.
The result isn't perfect. I ended up having to use a bunch of wood filler to tighten up my joinery, and due to some mistakes in the fitting I ended up using a hand plane on the sides after assembly to get the size of the trays consistent. Still, overall I'm pretty happy with it, especially considering how much of the project was outside my comfort zone.
