Extremely Average

I almost glued up the ikebana today.  But upon inspection found some imperfections.  Each level had one corner which had some bubbles dried into the shellac.  This is a little bit frustrating, as I really thought I had checked all around each piece, as I applied the last coat.  I even rememered finding some bubbles and going over them with the foam brush.

As I learn more, from doing, applying finish becomes less frightening.  But just like cutting dovetails, one must not be hasty during the process.  Bubbles aren’t a problem while wipping on tung oil, but they love shellac.  Those little buggers seem to want to pop up everywhere.  On the up side, bubbles are easy to fix.  I just need to sand them down and apply some more shellac.  So that is what I did.  I will glue it up tomorrow.

The Henry Wood goes well. I figured out how to write the NCX code, for the TOC (Table of Contents).  It is not terribly complex code, but I did have some troubles finding a good example.  Why is it important to have NCX code, instead of just typing up the TOC, one might ask.  The NCX code is what allows a Kindle user to click on the table of contents and jump immediately to the chapter they wish to read.  Now I assume that anyone starting Henry Wood, will, upon getting into the first chapter, be so enthralled, as to prefer death to stopping reading.  So it may never come up.

I still wanted to add it, because, like everything on this journey, I like to learn.  The next book may be about photography tips.  This would be a perfect example of a book, which a reader would want to jump to a specific chapter of interest.  Now I realize that most of you may not be interested in ever publishing to a Kindle or other epub format, but for those who are, let me show you the code I have for Henry Wood.

NCX Table of Contents Code

The first line is important.  I don’t know why, but I imagine it tells the Kindle something important.  The second line, h3 is a heading type, the alignment is to the center, and the the word ‘Contents’ is displayed, followed by the closed /h3 tag.  Then the 3rd line starts by aligning the chapter in the center too, adds the identifyer for the anchor, and then the portion which will be displayed ‘January 1955′

<div name=”toc”>
<h3 align=”center”>Contents</h3>
<p align=”center”>1 – <a href=”#chapter1″>January 1955</a></p>

After one has created a line for each chapter heading, one must then add the anchor to space before each chapter.  It looks like this. 
<div id=”chapter1″>

And I placed it right before the chapter heading  <p><b>Chapter 1</b></p>.

It all looks pretty confusing, but it is important to include.  I want Henry Wood to be of the best quality possible, much like I want the ikebana to be bubble free.  So now I need to create a jpg file for the Title Page, and figure out how to include a photo.  Then I will be ready to hit publish.  I would imagine that by the time I do figure this out, the repair coat will be dry, and I can glue up the ikebana.

When I started building the ikebana vase, I didn’t realize how much fun I would have using it.  Mom and I played with it a bunch yesterday.  The fun of ikebana was seeing how many different looks we could create with flowers and stuff we found outside.  When I say ‘stuff’, I mean weeds.  We did one arrangement entirely with weeds.  It looked pretty good too.

History is interesting.  The ikebana or “arranged flower” is the art of Japanese flower arrangement.  There are those who say that the art of ikebana is to bring nature and humanity together, and they would be correct…except for seven things.  Fine, they are right, and I don’t really have a list of seven other things, but I was feeling a bit silly.

My taste tends to run towards minimalism and ikebana is all about creating interest and beauty from just a few items.  Mom picked the flowers for the first few arrangements, as I set up the camera and lighting equipment.  Because it was easy, I only brought a couple of basic lights, with one white umbrella and one reflecting umbrella.  That was all I needed to add a small amount of highlights to the shots.

Here are the first few.  You will notice that the first image, which is probably my least favorite, is taken with the blank wall behind it.  Normally I like a simple background, so the subject really stands out, but I found that it didn’t look natural or humane.  It wasn’t the ikebana photography way.

I decided that a more interesting background would better suit the photo.

Mom and I were having a good time playing with the flowers and the ikebana, but I thought a different background might be nice.  So we move the equipment to the deck and took some more shots.

I liked the above photo, as we made it from weeds and a dead branch from a tree.

And then one more from inside.

From this experience a couple of things became obvious, one mom has a really cool kitchen island counter top.  The second revelation was that one is only limited by their imagination, when it comes to making ikebana art.

Planning is a skill which is closely associated with patience, and as such, is a virtue.  Sadly, patience and planning have not ever been virtues of mine.  I like grabbing a hunk of wood, looking at it, deeming it pretty, and making something with it.  This has not worked very well, and it seems like every time I take a moment, think about what I am doing, and make a few measurements, my results improve.

There is a woodworker who goes by the name of @Torch02 on twitter (See blog roll).  His blog is great!  He does lots of drawings for his designs and I always enjoy reading about his plans.  Today, while I was focused on football, I decided I wanted to do something woodworking related.  So I got out my father’s drawing stuff.  He has a degree in Aero E from ISU, who was crushed by iowa 35 – 7 today.  Fortunately he also has a Masters in Mathematics and a PHd in I.E. from Ohio State, who beat #12 Miami 36 – 24!  Go Buckeyes!

While building the tiny boxes I sort of stumbled across an idea for an Ikebana vase.  Ikebana is a Japanese form of flower arranging.  My mother has a really neat vase and she loves it.  Basically one has a tiny little bucket thingy (from the Japanese, meaning…thingy), with spikes on the bottom.  (Editor’s Note:  They are actually called kenzan.)  Then one takes flowers and sticks them onto the spikes, adds a bit of water, and shows them off to their neighbor, who may become green thumb with envy.

I am taking my inspiration from the tiny box lids.  My design is to create a 3 tiered vase, with each tier being thinner than the previous one.  Since I had graph paper, fun drawing stuff, and rulers, I decided to take it a bit seriously.  I drew the bottom piece, with 12 degree angled cuts, then calculated how much thinner the next piece should be.  The formula I used was original thickness/1.618.  To determine how much smaller the length and width would be, I simply calculated a 12 degree angle heading up from the first piece, and made sure the edge of the next piece started along that line.

The center portion of the bottom and second layer will be hollowed out for the thingy (kenzan).  The top piece will have a hole which corresponds to the opening in the thingy (kenzan), and will hide the lip of the thingy (kenzan).  I have two of these already, as I knew I wanted to try building one.  When I bought them I only had a vague idea of the design, and putting it down on paper was both fun and helped me arrive at a much more organized design.  I usually just think about something for days or weeks until I work it all out in my head.  I did this in about an hour.  So I think I learned one thing today…the Buckeyes are for real!

Plan for the Ikebana Vase

Some souls are old.  They are like time, flowing, unending, all seeing.  On a clear crisp day, as a glacier cuts into the earth, beginning work on a fjord, a tree falls.  This goes unnoticed by the glacier and time.  The soul of the tree, sensing that there was trouble afoot, quickly attached itself to a seed.  It burrowed into the ground, to wait out the ice age.

When it grew again, there were many more trees, and they were very talkative.  The old soul learned all about the world.  It learned about the Vikings which had lived in the forest where he now stood.  He was called Henry, by the other trees, though they never did tell him why.  He quite liked it and the old soul, now Henry would carry that with him throughout each cycle of life.

The time as a tree was enjoyable, but it was not where he would stay.  He was felled one day, and when he awoke he was a boat.  He belonged to Bjarni Herjolfsson.  One day Bjarni lent him to his friend Lief.  Leif Ericson and 35 men were heading off to explore the world which lay west of Greenland and they took him to Canada.

Some years later, in Louisville Kentucky, Henry found himself being branded with a logo.  They called him slugger, and he would play baseball.  He, and others who looked just like him, were shipped off to Minnesota.  It was the minor leagues and Henry was selected and cared for by a player from Norway.  Henry liked the player, and did his best to hit the ball as far as he could, each time he was swung.  His player was called Hank by the other players, but his name was Henry.  This made Henry the old soul feel good. He enjoyed his career as a bat, until the day he felt a sharp pain, and realized that he had been cracked.

Henry, the old soul, knew it was time to move on, and he found his way into a walnut tree, just south of Minnesota, in a place called Iowa.  Today he awoke again.  He looked around and there were lots of tiny boxes laughing and chatting.  One, who looked similar to him, greeted him and made him feel welcome.  He learned that the tiny boxes, most of whom had new souls, were eager to hear his stories.  So he spent the rest of the evening telling the tales of his long and interesting life.  All the tiny boxes liked Henry.

At 3 am today I started with rough cut walnut and my hand plane.  Yesterday I received my first commission, a box, similar to my first one.  The first one took 3 weeks, but that was 14 boxes ago.  Henry took around 9 hours, but he is finished, the blog is written, and tomorrow arrangements will be made for Henry to head to his new home.

The experience of making Henry, from start to finish, was a joy.  Every step of the way, I knew what had to be done.  I understood the areas where I might go astray, and I avoided problems.  This is the first project I have undertaken, where learning wasn’t required.  I know how to make a tiny box!

It was enjoyable for another reason.  The client, a friend on twitter, who blogs too, is an architect.  Knowing this motivated me to achieve incredible precision in each stage of the box build.  I imagine Henry watching Bob carefully managing every detail of a project.  I am quite sure that Henry is going to like living with Bob and learning about architecture.

Last night I introduced Fred and he was quickly adopted by my twitter friend @eXapath.  He builds stuff too and runs http://www.homepathproducts.com/homepath/index.php. When I told Fred who had adopted him, he was thrilled.

I woke up at about 4:30 am and since it would be a while before the post office would open, I decided to give the shop a good cleaning.  All my tools got a good wiping off.  Everyone in the shop was very chatty and the atmosphere was a delight.   When it was done, I felt really good having a clean workspace again.  I immediately started messing it up with some practice hand plane work.  Then I cleaned up that mess.

With the cleaning done, I decided to apply some tung oil to a few more boxes.  It isn’t scary anymore.  This makes me happy and I am looking forward to trying out other types of finishing.

After a bit of breakfast it was time to get Fred ready for his journey to Connecticut.  Fred was made comfortable in the box with a bunch of bubble wrap and some bubble pillows.  I carefully taped the box up, made a lable, and then everyone said goodbye to Fred.  Some of the boxes were still drying, but all the others gathered around Freds box and wished him well.  Ginger was a little bit sad to see him go, but she was happy for him.  Edward said a few words and everyone was inspired.

Then Fred and I went off to the Martelle post office and got his journey started.

When I got home, the boxes were still hanging out, and the gaping hole in the middle of their congregation made me a little sad.  Alice, a very bright little maple and padauk box, notice my expression.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Oh nothing, It is just strange not seeing Fred hanging out with all of you.  I will miss talking with him.”

“Well we can give you messages and pass along anything you wish to say to him.”  she said with a smile.

All the boxes stopped talking and were looking at me.  I imagine my expression was either blank or confused, because Alice then explained.  “We only talk to you, because you can’t hear what we are thinking.  All of us can share our thoughts and conversations, with each other, without being in the same room.”

Edward added, “It is sort of like being psychic, though not really.  It is just the way we are, because we come from trees.  Alice can explain it better than me.”

Alice had a bit of blush to her when she said, “Yes, Edward is correct.  It dates back to the earliest crafts made from wood.  Most people don’t realize that trees have an incredible ability to chat with one another.  Their roots, digging deep into the earth, are almost like the internet.  They pass messages to one another and then the messages gets spread to all the trees.   Thousands of years ago, they could only communicate with the trees which were in the same forest.   Then as they evolved they became stronger and leaned how to communicate all over the planet.  Trees are exceptional real talkers.”

“That is incredible and really cool”,  I said, feeling much better.

“We are not as all reaching as the trees, but once one of us meets another box, or anything made from wood, then we can always talk to each other.  In fact, Fred just said to let you know he is doing fine.  He is going to take a nap.”

“Tell Fred that I think napping on a long journey is a great idea.  Also, could you tell him to let me know when he arrives at his new home.”

“Done”, Alice said with a smile.

I felt much better and all the boxes were in a great mood.  We had some donuts.

While we were snacking I asked if anyone else wanted to be put up for adoption.  Alice immediately volunteered.  She is very smart, loves history, books and chess.  She isn’t very good at holding an egg.  It just doesn’t quite fit.  Alice is made of hard maple and padauk.  She is quite lovely and would be a faithful and loyal tiny box.  If you would like to adopt her, and you promise to love her hand, you may find her at my Etsy Store. http://www.etsy.com/listing/55310422/alice-the-tiny-box

Alice the Tiny Box

Not good at holding an egg

Born on Aug 31, 2010

Alice loves books!!!

The spline cutting router table jig needed a slight adjustment.  It went awry and now I get an opportunity to redesign the jig.  The important part of the jig, the carriage which holds the box, was not damaged, so this set back wasn’t catastrophic.

I have always been a ‘bowl of noodles is half full’ sort of guy, and the jig, wasn’t the lest bit sexy.  It was functional, but not as pretty as I might have liked.   So tonight I will come up with something else.

The tiny box building is intriguing in that the education has been invaluable.  Tonight for instance, before I exploded the jig, I cut a wenge lid to fit one of the hard maple boxes.  It fits snugly.   To get a tight fit, I sneak up on the proper cut, starting with the router table, then finishing by chiseling up to the line.

Then comes the sanding.  220, 320, 400, 600, 1500 are the grits I use.  When done, the wood being sanded looks lovely and feels even better.  The lid I cut tonight, has thus far, taken up about 2 hours of sanding.  It looks pretty after about 15 minutes, but if one takes off the lid and looks at the underside, there are scratches, and I just can’t have that.

I have put a lot of effort into these tiny boxes and when they are done, I want them to be as close to perfect as possible.  Philosophically there isn’t anything wrong with spending five or six hours sanding each tiny box, to get it where I want it to be.  Where my brain starts to get a strangle hold on my psyche is the thought of selling them.

Several people have expressed interest in buying a tiny box.  I hadn’t started building them to sell, but the further along I get, it does seems like I should let those who wish to buy them, have that chance.  I am not planning on selling my first tiny walnut box however, even though Alexandra and Bob have been battling about who has claim to it.  I am keeping it.  A box or three will likely go to Mom and Dad.  But when I get done with the dozen I am working on, I will have 14 boxes, and I suppose I could part with a couple of them.

The question then becomes the price.  This is where my brain starts to hurt.  There is a number, which I wouldn’t go below, because at that minimum price I would rather keep them.  I sort of love the tiny boxes.  I like seeing them sitting everywhere, keeping an eye on me, watching their brothers and sisters come to life.

It may not be widely know, but I have a degree in Economics.  This herd of boxes represents a textbook example of economic theory.  I could draw a graph, well maybe I couldn’t, college was a long time ago, but the point is this, at what point does supply equal demand.

In the picture, the box on top, with the splines is the only one which is nearly complete.  (It can’t be seen, but there is still some sanding which needs to be done on the underside of the lid)  Eventually they will all have splines, with the possible exception of the tiny walnut box.

So I would like to ask all of you folks a marketing research question.  What should be the price for a hand made, tiny wooden box, with a sparkling personality?  All of the boxes in question are both witty and charming.  They have been made with a considerable amount of love.

I want everyone to be honest, so don’t feel like you will hurt my feelings by saying, “$1.37 plus shipping and handling.”  Actually that would hurt a little, as I am sure they are worth at least a buck and a half.  I should also state that Mom doesn’t need to leave an answer, as you are horribly biased, and you will be getting some for free.

The day in woodworking was a short one.  Actually, I did quite a lot since yesterday’s post, but most of it was last night after the blog went up.  Today was a travel day, as I am once again heading to my parents for the weekend.  It has been 25 years since I graduated high school.  This weekend the Ames High Class of 1985 will gather to catch up.  Tonight there are a number of us gather at a local watering hole, which isn’t under water.  So the post will be a short one.

I took pictures of the first four boxes which have made it into box form.  The first two were destroyed during the side cutting phase.  Box one looks nice, but the lid is loose, the bottom is not so great.  Box two was slightly worse.  Box three is better by a long shot, but the lid seems a bit thin.  Box 4 ROCKS!  The lid is tight, the bottom is pretty good, the joints are tight, and the padauk looks good with the maple.

I have learned a good deal along the way.  I am better at cutting, thanks to Jeff.  The routing for the bottoms and the tops is smoother and more accurate.  I realized last night, that if I route the top and get close to the lines, but not all the way, I can quickly clean up the last tiny smidgeon with Manfred the chisel.  This worked much  better.  I also learned that I like the look of the lids a bit more, with some extra rounding on the edges, and the thickness seems better than box 3.

I have also gotten a much defter touch using Dusty the belt sander, while he is on his jig.  The key is to not press too hard, take three passes, then rotate the piece.  This seems to help avoid sanding too much off one end.  I still have 10 more boxes to complete through the lid fitting phase, and then it will be time for doing the splines.  That should be exciting.

For those who are curious, the piece of oak which I applied Danish Oil too, came out really nice.  I have to admit that I don’t really care too much for the look of this particular finish, but it covered evenly, and it appears to have done exactly what it was supposed to do.  I am very encouraged by the results, even if the look isn’t really to my taste.  I think the next test will be the tung oil.

A reader pointed out something, which I think is very interesting.  Since my tiny boxes aren’t really going to be abused, they probably don’t need a finish which will protect the wood.  This seems incredibly logical to me.  So it begs the question, why finish it wish something to make the wood shiny, when I could just polish the wood to 1500 grit, and leave it bare?

I would love to hear any thoughts on this subject.  And now here are some pictures of the tiny boxes that I have made thus far.

Box 1

Box 2

Box 3

Box 4

The progress made today was both satisfying and revealing.  Yesterday I succeeded in cutting six box bottoms and today I needed to cut the other six.  Two of the boxes will be padauk, two will be wenge, and two of them will be morado.

Last week I went to Hill Hardwood Supply Inc, in Iowa City.  They gave me a bunch of scraps which have made several jigs and been wonderful practice wood for hand planing.  I wanted to buy something from them, though I didn’t know what.  They have a section with a bunch of tiny pieces which were just crying out to be part of my latest tiny box building.  I picked up two pieces of wenge, one long piece of morado, which I had never heard of before, two pieces of bubinga, and they gave me a small piece of padauk.

These should make the current batch of boxes sing.  Before any songs could be sung, I needed to figure out a way to sand the bottoms, after I have resawed the pieces.   I realized that the belt sander didn’t have a name, when I said “Hey…”, followed by a short period of silence.  I continued, “Mr. Belt sander, you need a name.  Do you have any names that you are partial too?”

The belt sander, which has generally been pretty reserved, perked up and said, “I do!  I have always thought of myself as a ‘Dusty’.  It is a good name and it seems very fitting.”

“It is fitting!  Dusty it is.”, I said and turned around to the shop, “Everyone, may I have your attention please.  I would like to let everyone know that our friend the belt sander is now named Dusty.  Please say ‘Hi’ to Dusty.”

Everyone said Hi, Hello, or something similar.  I could tell that Dusty was happy to be included with the other tools which have names.

“Dusty, we need to figure out a way to use your considerable sanding skills to work with smaller pieces.”

Dusty thought for a while, as did I.  After a few minutes of walking around the shop, me not Dusty, I was stumped.  Then Dusty said, “I think the problem is that if you hold me, I can get carried away and sand off too much.”

“Yes, that is a concern.”  I said with a nod.

“What if you built me a bed where I could lay on my back, and you could then gently sand the pieces against my belly?”

“That is a great idea!”

“Thanks…and I do love a good belly rub.” he said with a smile.

“Everyone loves a good belly rub!”  I responded with a chuckle.

Then the router table spoke up, “You know, if you clamped the jig to my top, and used my safety on/off button, you could lock down Dusty’s on switch, and control his power more easily.”

“That is a brilliant idea!”

There was some clapping from other tools, as everyone gets excited when we solve a problem.  While the tools talked among themselves, I got some wood from my practice wood pile.  There were two pieces of oak and a piece of maple that needed only a little bit of sizing and sanding.

Dusty smoothed out the faces of the maple and then I used the No. 5 to clean up the edges, as they volunteered to help.  Hand planes are always eager to help and they really do clean up an edge well.  The pieces of oak just needed to be cut to size, and Jeff was more than up to the task.

I then sketched the basic opening I needed for Dusty to lay comfortable on his back.  I enjoyed using Jeff to carve out the shape in the oak pieces.  A little touching up with my micro planes and I was ready to screw them into the base.  I used (3) 1 3/4 inch wood screws to connect each piece.  This stage of the jig building wouldn’t normally be note worthy, but I took great care to drill pilot holes in the base, using my drilling jig, and all six screws went in without incident.

When I clamped the jig to the router table, plugged in the cord to the safety on/off switch, and fired Dusty up, I was again filled with a sense of victory.  My confidence continues to improve each day.  Each time I try something new and succeed I feel like I have one more ‘skill’ in my woodworking arsenal.

I can only think of one more hurdle in completing my current batch of boxes.  I will need to design a jig to allow me to cut across the corners of each box.  Since there isn’t a table saw among the tools in the shop, I will need to rely on the router table.

That is all for today’s rambling.  Now back to the drawing board, not because I need to start over, but because a new jig needs to be designed.  I love this woodworking stuff.

This morning I was excited to spend the day in the shop.  My twelve tiny boxes were patiently waiting to be given bottoms.  In the previous tiny box building, I had done a rather poor job on this aspect.  Having lots of box bottoms to cut gave me many opportunities to get better at it.

The other advantage of needing so many bottoms is the desire to come up with a plan to not only improve but to be able to duplicate the results.  The first step was to ‘do the math’.   I approached it differently than the last time.  Starting with a blank piece of typing paper and a compass,  I drew a line and then used the compass to measure the distance of the inside of one of my boxes.  From starting point A on the line I drew an arc across the line.  This became point B.   I then drew the arc all the way past 90 degrees. Next the point of the compass is place on point B and an arc drawn past 90 degrees.

Now I needed to draw a perfectly perpendicular line from both of my points.  The beauty of using a compass is that one is able to construct perfect angles.   I needed to create two additional points along the original line and it was easiest to make them the same distance as my original line from point A to point B.  So now I have four points along the line.

To get the first perpendicular line, I place the point of the compass on the point to the left of point A.  I then extend the compass degrees to beyond point A, by a good bit.   Next I draw an arc above point A.  After this, I simply put the point of the compass on point B and draw another arch above point A, passing through the arc I just drew.  When I draw a line from point A to the intersection of the two arcs (using a straight edge), the results is a perfectly perpendicular line.  By repeating these steps with point B, a second perpendicular line is created.

The precision of my drawn box makes me happy.  I place one of the boxes down on top of the piece of paper and it is dead on.   It is important to know how deep the groove is, so I measure and found them to be 4 mm.  I then measured and drew an additional box around the box I had just derived using my compass. These are my notes. Having this map really helped with my next step.

I want to do six of the boxes with walnut tops and bottoms, but  having a few extra bottoms is probably a good idea. My little map let me figure out exactly how big a piece of walnut to cut.  The piece is rough cut, so I planed it flat with my 5 and 4 1/2 and used Jeff to resaw the piece to the thickness I wanted.   Lastly I took it to the router table and used the ‘map’ I had created to calculate how to run the piece across the 3/8 ” down spiral Freud bit.

I would estimate that it took about as long to cut six bottoms as it had previously taken to cut one.  Each of the bottoms cut today were much better than the previous two, so there was much joy in my secret bunker in Martelle.  I celebrated the success by using the key hole bit purchased yesterday, to cut holes in my rare earth magnet tool holding thingy, which I had built earlier this year.  When it was hung on the wall, there was another wave of satisfaction.

All in all, I would have to give today a 34 on a scale of 1 to 37.

It was about 10 years ago when I spent a month working at an injection molding plant.  I had about 6 weeks before my new job started with GEICO and this gave me something to do while I waited.  The shift was from 11 pm – 7 am and I rather enjoyed it.  Most nights I was on a machine which made screens which were part of a Maytag dryer.  There were about 7 steps in the process and if done correctly it took less than a minute to make 1 batch.

The plant posted daily production results and also had top volume for each machine by hour.  The machine I was on had a record of 71 batches per hour, though the average was around 58.  My love of Theory of Constraints came into play and I beat the record on the second night, putting up 73 batches in one hour.  For the shift I averaged around 70, and I knew I could do better.  The next night I was on a different machine, which disappointed me greatly, but the following night I was back on my favorite.

It was amazing how quickly the shifts went.  I was so completely focused on beating my own record that each hour was like starting a video game.  Shaving just one second per batch would get me a whole extra batch in that hour.  The machine had a kill switch and if one opened the door too quickly it would stop things in their tracks and I would need to wait for a supervisor to reset it.  This would ruin the hour for me.  I tuned my mental clock to know exactly how long I had to wait before I could pop the door.  That night I had pushed the new record to 75.  I averaged 72 per hour.

Over the remainder of my time there I was only able to have one more record breaking hour, when I got it to 76, but I was able to average 74 per hour.  The other two shifts during the day and afternoon stayed at 58.  I crushed them.  I calculated the excess value by producing an additional 16 per hour.  If all three shifts did this, over one year, it would generate more than $750,000 in profit, with no additional expenditures.  (Note to TOC enthusiasts:  I was able to find out the totally variable costs and included that in my calculations)

I was saddened when after 6 weeks, when my time was up, not a single person at the plant was curious as to how I was doing it.  They tracked the numbers with microscopic precision and yet my complete domination of the other two shifts didn’t warrant so much as a ‘Hey, I was curious if you could show us how you are so efficient.’

I love efficiency, for efficiencies sake.  When I first started making tiny boxes I spent close to a week trying to get my first set of 4 box sides done.  I had to create a jig for my router table, as I didn’t have Jeff the bandsaw yet, and screwed up my first two attempts.  The third attempt was successful, but far from perfect.

An Efficient Day

When I finished my 5th attempt I had Jeff the bandsaw and a digital level.  This made a world of difference.  I could get dead on 45 degree angles, now I just needed to come up with a method to better control the feeding of the wood past Jeff’s hungry teeth.  The problem with cutting a piece of wood on a table which is tilted at a 45 degree angle is that pesky gravity stuff.  Try as I might to hold the piece steady against the miter gauge, I would still let it slip south slightly, and thus create a curved cut.  I could then make another pass, but this led to varying lengths of the sides.

To gain the approval of the sharpening monks, which I so dearly covet, I feel I must be able to develop a methodology which is repeatable and accurate.  The first problem which had to be solved was the issue with the gravity.  Naturally I first started by trying to convert my anti-gravity super ray gun (originally designed for world domination), into an anti-gravity super band saw jig, which could also kill alien predators from a thousand yards.  Sadly, removing gravity from the equation turned out to be more challenging than I had hoped.

I decided to let gravity to continue to do its ‘pulling’ thing, and I would simply construct a barrier which would hold the piece as I slid it past Jeff’s razor sharp teeth.  I like to build stuff using Rockler products, it makes me happy because they are so shinny.  I took a 3 inch multi track and checked to see if it would fit in the miter slot.  It did!  This would make a perfect rail to support the pieces.

I tried several practice pieces of scrap and it worked beautifully.  I could feel a plan forming in my mind, and though it had nothing to do with taking over the world, I was still very excited about it.  I had purchased two pieces of 6 x 36 x 3/8 inch wood, one oak and one hard maple, and they would be perfect for trying out my new method.  With a desire to be efficient, I decided that I wanted to get 6 boxes out of each piece.  This would require precision and an adjustment to the rail.  Since each piece could not exceed 3 inches and I needed to factor in the thickness of the blade for each cut, I decided to cut each piece at 2 and 31/32 in length.  The angled cut would need to be slightly shorter still, so I added a piece of wood and another track which I had laying around.   This raised the rail up so that each piece after the miter cut would be exactly 2 15/16th in length.

The set up was ready.  I started my timer on my iphone and begun working.  I ripped the two boards into four, then routed out the groove for the bottom piece.  The tools in the shop cheered as I moved on to step two, the cutting of 48 box side pieces.  To keep everything straight, I carefully labeled each piece, and after all 48 were cut, I set Jeff’s table to 45 degrees.  Each cut box set was carefully laid out on my workbench and I took great care in making the miter cuts.

Because the goal is to have the grain wrap around the box, I discovered a pattern to cutting which would yield the best results.  It is hard to explain in words, so I want everyone who cares, to get a piece of paper and draw four squares in a horizontal line.  Then number them, starting with the first square, in the top left corner, with a one, then put a two in the top right corner.  In the next square number it two and three, then three and four, and finally four and one.  These are the corners which need to match up when the box is assembled.  One could certainly figure it out by looking at the grain, but with the numbering system, it saves time.

Because the corner left side of piece one and the right side of piece four come together, the grain will never match on that corner.  This is important to consider.  Each piece is slightly larger than it will be after being cut down.  The first cut on the piece reduces it to 2 15/16, while the second cut lands perfectly on the wood as to not remove any additional length, but just cuts a 45 degree angle.  This may not make much sense, but the point is that I cut each piece the same way, for all of the boxes.  The first cut is piece one, side 1, then side 2.  Then piece two is done in the opposite order, cutting side 3 then side 2.  Piece three is side 4 then side three, and finally, piece 4 is side one, then side 4.  This methodology results in the best match up for the grain as it crosses from one side to the next.

There is one additional benefit of having such a specific order, it requires focus.  The need for focus, in my opinion, keeps one from making mistakes, and may help prevent injury.  It was not mindlessly making cuts, but really watching how I did each one.  In the end, I ended up getting 12 boxes cut, in 1 hour and 24 minutes.  Compared to the 1 week it took me to get the first successful set cut, this is a marked improvement.

Now that I have a dozen boxes which are exactly the same dimensions, I will be able to focus on creating a process for efficiently cutting the bottoms and lids.  I love efficiency and today was a festival of box making, which brought me much joy.  And like any good festival, I choose to celebrate my triumph with a cookie!