New way of doing box joints without vertical

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

A more typical obsession is to want to hide endgrain — as more than one woodworker has opined:

Endgrain is like a belly button, you know everyone has one, but it’s pretty rare that you want to see one.

To me, this is an interesting example of how we are starved for anything genuine and truly well-made, for quality goods in general, so we fetishize things which exemplify quality, e.g., highly polished brass fittings which once upon a time were allowed to tarnish so as to fade into the background.

If you want to do box joints (or dovetails), it’s pretty simple to just make a vertical fixture:

Fixture for cutting vertical joints

and then cut traditional joints:

5-row storage box for MtG

CNC Box (Finger) Joint Box

Working up a tutorial on this for the wiki: but is now at: First step is to create the box itself: This is done in OpenSCAD using the parameters: length = 6; width = 3; height = 4; thickness = 0.375; bottomlidthickness=0.125; pins=13; partspacing=2; Next resolve the pin/joint size and spacing: [cnc_box_fingerjoint] Next step is to work out how to get from the above parameters to a file which may be easily cut using Carbide Create — probably using METAPOST.

or see:

Cutting boxes and a new toy

A traditional way to make boxes is to make them all of a piece, and then cut them apart — this can be made easier by cutting a slot, and cutting through at the corners, but this results in losing the width of the slot (or more when a saw is used to finish) in height. Couldn’t resist picking up a JointMaker Pro when they were recently on sale at Bridge City Tool Works: so have to try it for cutting apart a box: [20230803_2121241]