Make a bandsaw style box without a bandsaw

 

 

 

It all started with a piece of pine log I had.

 

I cut a piece of the log by eye.

 

Then I remove the bark of the wood. First I used a chisel to remove big chunks. Then I scraped some bark with a knife and lastly I used my block plane to smoothly remove the last bits of bark.

 

I cut the bottom and top cap from my clean log using a saw. To do that I clamp the piece on my bench.

 

Then I cut the the cylinder that remained in half to be able to hollow it easily.

 

Here comes the trickiest part of the project. To hollow the inside of the box, I traced the line I want to cut, clamped the piece on my bench and used my scroll saw to cut out the inside really really slow. This is the part that a bandsaw would be really helpful. This is a test my little scroll saw blade.

 Time to glue the body o the box. I used some scrap pieces of plywood to avoid clamp marks.

 

I used my scroll saw to  cut a lip for the boxe's top.

 Time to glue the top to it's lip and the bottom to the body.

 

I decided to add dowels to the top which fit to holes on the body, so that the box will close tight.

 

I also added a few dowels to the bottom to increase it's strength. After the glue dried I trim flush the dowels with a flexible flush saw.

 

I trimmed flush the side with the top with a chisel.

 

I finish the piece with water based wood stain in the color of Oregon pine. I applied two coats and light sanded between them. I applied the stain along the grain.

For a video of a similar project go here.