In my continuing learning process in making my wife’s mah jong box, I came up with a couple of ideas that I would like to share and see if anyone can foresee problems with what I have planned.

1. When I cut the carcass of the box apart(top from botttom) on the tablesaw, I used a tip from someone here to use 2-sided tape to stick small blocks on the inside that would span the cutline so that the cut can be made through the thickness rather than leaving a thin strip to be cut with knife afterward.  That worked great.

2. I discovered that the new cut edges were not exactly in one plane (flat) so I glued a couple of sheets of 150 grit paper to my really flat work surface and laying the cut edge of the two carcass pieces down (one at a time),sanded them flat so the edges of the 4 sides of each carcass piece were sanded at the same time (just like you would flatten a sharpening stone).  I had scribbled wavy pencil line on all edges prior to sanding and that verified that the 4 edges in the assy were not planar and showed me when to stop sanding.  This worked really well.

3. I had predrilled two holes in the edge of the back side of the carcass prior to cutting it apart.  These holes are for hidden barrel hinges.  I had predrilled these holes to make sure that once the top was separated from the bottom, that the holes woul be perfectly aligned.

4. Now I discovered that the bottom of the carcass is bowing out a little on the front face  so that it is not flush with the top.  So I plan to insert a couple of dowels in the hinge holes(don’t want to install hinges until after finishing) and clamp the top/bottom together and then use card scraper to make the front face of the bottom level with the front face of the top.  Then I plan to sand the whole assembly while clamped together.

5. I am going to make a bent lamination handle that I intend to glue to the front face using a short plug into both the underside of the handle at each end and into the face of the carcass.  I will do a trial plugfit into hole in scrap to make sure I can locate hole spacing accurately.

6.  Trickiest part is that I will fabricate a sliding dovetail latch mechanism where there will be two half-tails(one on the carcass top and one on the carcass bottom that are captured together by an outer sliding piece with a dovetail-shaped slot.  The tail pieces will be finished with Watco Danish oil along with the rest of the carcass.  The sliding piece will be finished on the outside only before it is installed. 

Anyone foresee any difficulties with the plans in 4-6?