The Woodworking Life

Coopering a box lid

Derek Cohen, member

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My brother’s birthday was coming up and this year I decided to make him a gift – a letter knife – and since it was his 50^th, I wanted a box in which to present it. Something a little unusual. I had not coopered a box lid before, but thought that the challenge would be fun.

Below I will take you through the steps I followed. It turned out to be fairly straight forward – just requiring attention to detail. What is a little different is that I did not use a jig to clamp the curved lid as the pieces were drying. Every article I read appeared to rely on a curved form to secure clamps. In fact, I did not use any clamps.

Setting it out

The diameter of the lid only needed to be wide enough for a knife, so I chose an old DVD as a model. To calculate the number of pieces and the angle at which they would join, I scribed the DVD thus .

From this I was able to determine that the sides required a 12° bevel on a 20mm wide section. I set the tablesaw for a 78° rip.

I had chosen Jarrah for the box, as it would present a nice contrast for the letter knife. Now the board was ripped ..

Gluing and clamping

The jigless/clampless method relies on plastic packing tape. I chose this over masking tape as it is unaffected by glue and will not stretch or break.

First lay out a couple of lines of tape sticky-side up ..

Onto this lay the wooden strips. Make sure that the grain is orientated the same way for later planing.

Turn this over and tape up the other side completely ..

You are now ready for gluing up..

Wipe off all the glue – I used water – as you will otherwise struggle to do so later.

Here is a look from the other side as it dries ..

The next step was to lap the lower side, which I chose to do on sandpaper (glued to a granite tile) since this is a quicker and more accurate method than using a handplane.

Completing the lid

I cut the lid to length on my tablesaw. The ends could now be used as a template to mark off the pieces that would cap the ends. I had decided that it would be too difficult to round the inside of the lid since it was too small to get a plane inside. Instead the cap would be chiseled to fit ..

The final pieces looked like this ..

Before they were glued on, the inside of the box – already planed from before the glue up – was given a final scraping to remove any vestiges of glue or any rough edges. I made up a custom scraper for this. No hook, just a sharp edge.

The easy part was to mark off a circle of waste on the lid and plane it off.

Moving on

The base was prepared …

And hinged together ..

The lid tilts back and rests in the same plain as the base. As a result, it lies flat and does not lift up the base.

The outside of the box

After oiling and waxing, the box looks like this ..

The inside of the box

Here is the letter knife lying on the base. A She-oak handle and a blade ground from a Stanley plane blade ..

A simple mitred frame was cut and glued to the base of the box. This was filled with a purple silk cloth (provided by my wife), and the letter knife (now engraved) was nestled on this …

Happy birthday Andrew!

Regards from Perth

Derek

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Comments (12)

icomba writes: how do i get intouch with philip marcou to get a price on a plane? the one u have is a nice style do u know if he makes shoulder planes? icombadaniels@yahoo.com
Posted: 2:21 pm on July 19th

Regards_from_Perth writes: Hi Chuck

The smoother is a Marcou. Philip Marcou is an active contributer on the Handtools forum. He makes spectactular dovetailed handplanes.

Regards from Perth

Derek
Posted: 2:10 pm on June 6th

pezeshki writes: Hey Derek -- nice box.

What kind of bronze plane is that?

Chuck
Posted: 7:45 pm on May 19th

lalo writes: WOW very simple and straight forward, you forget to mention the hinges, are they mortised or just screwed on top?
very nice and well prepared present.
Posted: 9:43 am on May 19th

knut writes: Very nice Derek! The finished box looks great.Your brother should be very pleased. It occurred to ms that with a lathe one could have made a round container and glued paper between the stave halves, which could then be smoothed on the outside and inside, and then slotted or rebated to accept easier to make round ends. After separating the paper joints there would be 2 tops instead of one. I guess the idea of shaping the top ends to fit the inside of the top scares me, and I'm not sure what I would do with the other top!
Posted: 11:39 am on May 7th

robertm348 writes: Very nice job, Derek! When will you post a blog of how you made the letter opener?
Posted: 5:29 am on May 7th

Aflafla writes: I kept looking at that DVD and something just wasn't right, the angles were all wrong, then it hit me: You must have wanted it taller than wide, so you didn't use the center of the DVD but below it on the bottom of the hole. Good Idea.
Posted: 11:02 pm on May 6th

woodrae writes: You Aussies crack me up!

A good writeup—and nice work, Derek.
Posted: 12:04 pm on May 6th

KiddervilleAcres writes: Derek, very nicely done follow up to the discussion on Knots. I do have one question though; Why the Wixey to set the tablesaw blade? I know you could have just eyeballed it! Gotta give ye a bit o' leg pullin ya know.

Best Regards,
Posted: 8:14 pm on May 5th

KiddervilleAcres writes: Derek, very nicely done follow up to the discussion on Knots. I do have one question though; Why the Wixey to set the tablesaw blade? I know you could have just eyeballed it! Gotta give ye a bit o' leg pullin ya know.

Bes Regards,
Posted: 8:13 pm on May 5th

Little_Joe writes: Derek, a fine straight forward method of getting that top curved!

Very good!

Thank you for sharing.

Posted: 5:26 pm on May 5th

Wingdoctor writes: Derek, a lovely box with a beautiful letter opener inside. A gift I am sure your brother will be proud to own. I love your construction methods, very simple and easy to follow with all the pictures.

Bruce
Posted: 12:15 pm on May 3rd

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