Wise people will tell you that good humans don’t wake up one day and become criminals; they move toward a life of crime one small step at a time. Cutting a corner here, fibbing a little here, then one day they’re Bernie friggin’ Madoff. The same is true for success, they say: you don’t one day wake up having achieved all of your life goals. You get up and move toward them every day and make steady progress in the right direction. .
What’s that got to do with woodworking? Glad you asked.
Ever since I was a kid, small boxes appealed to me. My dad kept one on his dresser that held all kinds of treasures (a nice watch, old coins, etc.). Maybe that was part of it, but it’s something that’s been true for me for a long time. I’ve made lots of boxes too…part of my attraction to dovetails.
To the outside observer, making a small box probably seems easy—it IS small, after all. But size does matter and sometimes getting results with a small piece is more challenging…so they say.
Most woodworking tools, especially machines, are meant for larger things, so you have be clever in using your tools. This is true for everything from cutting tools to vises and work holding in general .
Any small mistake will be immediately apparent to every one. While every tiny mistake always haunts the maker’s mind for years (even if they are not visible to anyone else), a small gap on a small box seems to really jump out at every one. It’s almost as if the smallness of the object magnifies mistakes.
From a professional stand point, it’s hard to charge enough money for a small box to make it worth it. The box pictured here is generally going to take me about two full work days (plus a bit more time designing and a bit of time worrying about it not coming out as well as I’d like).
So, with all of this in mind, I was truly overjoyed when I had a customer inquire about a box commission: it was a gift for her husband for their anniversary. It was to be made in walnut with hand cut dovetails. My heart was singing.
Like life, woodworking is a lot about avoiding and fixing mistakes. You have to know your medium well enough to predict when the wood might do something goofy and approach it in a way that prevents said goofiness. Or, should it be goofy despite your best efforts, know how to fix it. This bit of wisdom is especially important when starting a small project (see point above). You can apply this analogy to other parts of life as you see fit.
Most projects begin with “milling” the wood. If you’re not in the know, hardwoods generally come to the woodworker “rough” straight from the sawmill and they need to be made flat and smooth so they can be properly worked. This milling process (jointing and planing) is incredibly important because everything follows from it: it is the foundation of the project. If the foundation of house is built improperly, you really shouldn’t proceed; if you do, you should expect more problems.
For a box, typically we will also re-saw the milled wood (essentially slice the board in half by its thickness, so a 1” board becomes 1/2”). In version 1 of this box, my re-saw work was a little sloppy. By the time I cleaned it up, rather than having 1/2” stock, it was somewhere around 5/16” or maybe skinny 3/8”. It was thinner than I wanted. But I thought it would work (shaky foundation, not a good idea).
I cut the dovetails with this stock and things were going well: joints were looking tight and everything was cool. I then set about cutting the rabbet (a 90 degree recess that receives the bottom panel of the box). When I did this, the router bit grabbed the work piece and tore off a corner (remember above: machines are typically intended for larger work and the craftsperson needs to be clever…I was not clever ). Sometimes, this kind of chip can be glued back on. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the piece was chewed up and not something I could easily repair.
I was not too disappointed with this outcome. I had already made the stock too thin to begin with, and this router incident only highlighted that fact. It was, however, time to start over.
The wood for box #2 was milled perfectly. I skipped res-awing and just milled it to 1/2 inch thickness. This time, somehow, my dovetail cutting was just off. I’ve cut thousands of dovetails—I used to practice daily and I am pretty confident in my hand-cut dovetail capabilities. BUT, this time, something was off and they were a bit gappy in spots. As this was already my second effort I was less than eager to start over again, so I glued the thing together and planned to fill the gaps using the myriad tricks I’ve learned for this over the years. These tricks are kinda like a an Instagram filter—the piece looks good, but you can kinda tell something is up. Crisply cut joints sing; joints with filled gaps kind of hum.
As I glued the piece together, however, a chip broke out right on the top piece—the part that would become the lid. This happens from time to time, and typically we just glue them back on. I did this, and that glue attempt failed. I stared at the piece. It stared back at me. I looked at the gaps in the dovetails…not terrible, but not great. I knew I could do it better. I left the piece on my bench, still in clamps, and decided to look at it the next day and then decide. Knowing that at this step, things always look worse than they really are.
You can still see where the glue just didn’t take.
When I came back to the piece and cleaned it up I found myself in the place of, “if you have to ask the question, you already know the answer.” Like a dog that is not going to walk another step and lays down on the sidewalk to make its point, this box was telling me: “I’m done”. The joints were gappy, there was an unsightly chip that didn’t want to glue back into place; the dimensions were a bit off. And…and this is hard to describe, but it didn’t have the right feel…it had no energy…it wanted to be put aside, not picked up and looked at.
These gaps were just not tolerable. Chip above stayed there, mocking me.
I went back to the lumber rack.
Third time was the charm, thank you baby Jesus.
Making a small item is kinda like working under a microscope. Every detail is put into relief. At the end of the day, a small gap in a dovetail joint doesn’t mean that much: the joint would be plenty strong enough and the box would hold everything securely. It would have looked good to anyone who wasn’t an over-caffeinated woodworker. But I wanted to do it better and with several mistakes already in place, I knew they were only going to compound as I went forward.
Similarly, cutting a small corner in any aspect of life isn’t going to immediately disrupt the universe. But keep cutting those small corners and things start to get really off course. Something in us as humans makes us want to persist—to keep moving forward even when the best thing to do might be to stop, to start over, to press pause. When I had that first box milled too thin, the proper thing to do would have been to put that wood aside, use it for something else later, and start over. It would have been faster in the long run. Similarly, when I saw that the joints were not great in box #2, I should have addressed that: either modified them before gluing, if possible, or started over right there. That would have been the proper thing to do. The human thing (and honestly, the motivated business-owner move), was to try to make it work.
Wood, like life, is tricky. You can learn all there is to learn about wood and it can still surprise you. You do not fully control it. It will sometimes, literally, take turns you could not have predicted and you will have to try to make it work, or start over. You can do everything right and it may not turn out the way you wanted. Sometimes you won’t have all the tools or knowledge you need to get through a project and you may need some help; sometimes that won’t be enough. You’re always trying to make things as perfectly as possible knowing that both you and the material are imperfect. My conclusion, recently, is that you may be disappointed in your outcome, but you have to recognize you’re not fully in control of it. You try to get better every day. You can only control your efforts and do what you can to look back and be proud of them.
I was disappointed with how long it took me to get it right. But I am proud of this box.
