Curly Maple Moravian Candle Box

[dkeller_nc]

Thought I'd post this to potentially encourage someone else to make one. It's based on an origianal in the collection of Old Salem, probably made late in the 18th century. The dimensions were graciously provided to me by Dan O'Sullivan of Durham, NC, who has built dozens.

The salient dimnsions here are 14-3/4" long, 8-3/4" wide, by 3-1/2" deep (that's outside measurements). The sides are 1/2" thick, the top is 3/8" thick, and the bottom is 1/4" thick. The woods in this example are curly maple from Irion Lumber Co, Birds-eye maple from a local woodworking store, and eastern white pine as the bottom. The finish is French Polish.

A couple of construction comments: The end grip of the top is, of course, long-grain attached to face grain. So it is attached with 5 tiny #2 brass screws from underneath the lid, with the 2 outside screws on each side having oblong holes in the underside of the lid to accomodate wood movement. The close-up of the dovetails is one way to accomodate the grooves for the lid and the bottom - one simply cuts the bottom and top tail short, and reduces the depth of the mating pins to match. Easy to do with handtools, not so easy to do with power tools.

There is one significant mistake I made with this box - the upper corners should be mitered, not a tail/pin combo (that's what happens when you get a too busy laying out the pins and tails!). The next couple will correct that issue.

And, as one might imagine, this one was done totally with hand tools - no tailed assistants. The tools used were the usual layout items (square, marking knife, 14 degree dovetail saddle square), a wooden plow plane to cut the grooves for the top and bottom, a wooden panel raising plane to cut the top and bottom bevels, a dovetail saw, a carcass saw, and a foreplane, a jointer and a smoother.

[dkeller_nc]

"I really want need a plough plane. Would be cool to make something like your box."

There are lots of solutions for a plow plane. Some of the more common ones are Lee Valley's small plow plane and the ubiquitous Stanley #45 on the antique market. I much prefer a wooden plow to the Stanley, so that's the one I use in the shop. Generally speaking, you can the Stanley 45s off of e-bay quite a bit cheaper than you can get a good wooden plow, where the threads aren't beat up, the stock's straight, and you've a full set of matching original irons. Replacement iron sets can be had for wooden plows, but they generally need to be fit to the plane. That might be as minor as filing the back of the front skate to provide clearance for the iron, or it may mean making a new wedge.

That said, the wooden ones provide a significantly greater grip surface on the fence, and are thus far more stable than the metal versions. They are also generally lighter and have much thicker blades, which reduces arm fatigue and iron chatter.

[nelsone]

Originally Posted by dkeller_nc

That's in progress. This next one will be mahogany. I've already taken a boat load of photos showing how to 4-square the stock with handplanes, cross-cut it to size, rip it to width, and shoot the end-grain. I must admit that I'm getting very tired of being slowed down by taking photos, so I may abbreviate the pics of the actual box construction to showing the panel-raising operation and the dovetail/mitered corner layouts.

That would exclude the actual dovetail sawing and chopping, planing down the tails, and planing the grooves with a plow. The dovetail thing has been done to death in videos and magazines, and plowing a groove with a wooden plow is so basic I doubt anyone would want to see it.

Great! The panel raising will be the part I'm interested in anyway! I appreciate you taking the time with the pics. I know it's a pain!