Japanese Style Pencil Case Build Process

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In a bid to put off figuring out the final design for my in-progress garden table, I thought I'd make another box. This then, is yet another box WIP. It'll be what has become my usual approach: hand tools for almost everything: if all goes according to plan the only exception will be a bit of resawing on the bandsaw (as I don't really enjoy resawing by hand).

The box (which is probably going to be a pencil case) is going to be based extremely loosely on the traditional Japanese toolbox. I say loosely as those toolboxes were typically made with extremely simple construction, relying on nails to hold everything together. I'm not going to use nails: I'm going to try to do everything with hand-cut wood joints.

The wood I'm going to use for the project is probably going to be this:

The long plank is roughly 20 mm thick Ash and the short block is roughly 50 mm square Wenge. The reason I say "probably" is having planed some of the Ash I'm already getting a bit fed up of it: it smells lovely when you plane it but the grain is all over the place.

I started by chopping the Ash up into a few pieces:

I then planed two sides of the Wenge with a #4½ to get them flat and perpendicular to each other:

The Ash had previously been planed (it was an off-cut from the shelf unit I made recently), but it had moved a little since then and had a very, very slight bow, so I planed that out. After starting with the #4½ I decided to switch to the low-angle smoothing plane (with a blade with a 50° bevel giving a 62° cutting angle) as it was tearing out in a few places along the length:

Those pieces also got one edge planed square to the face and then they went over to the bandsaw to be chopped up. Before:

After:

The Wenge also got chopped up, but after each resawing cut, I took it back to the bench for a couple of passes with the #4½ to remove the saw marks before taking it back to the bandsaw for the next cut.

All that planing and bandsawing left me with a pile of wood with lots of pieces just over 10 mm thick and some thinner off-cuts:

That's it for now: I haven't got much to show so far, but one has to start somewhere!

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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