boxes – Nothing In It

Bento Box from Maple

Posted on 2025.11.142025.11.13 by Elliott Evans

A while back, probably a year or two ago, I bought six small-ish (4 inches across) “Black/Red” melamine dishes from one of the Asian markets here in Pittsburgh. See, the problem with most bento is that the tray inside is so big that you can’t actually fit it in the dishwasher. I figured that if I got a few small dishes, then made a box to hold them, I could use the collection as a bento box. Once I’d used the dishes to hold lunch “courses”, I could pull them out and line them up in the dishwasher rack.

Here is what the box and lid look like with the dishes inside. You can see that the lid has a little lip around it, but it is basically the same construction as the body, only slightly larger. The corners are mitered, and the surfaces (lid surface, body floor) are rabetted to fit into dadoes in the lip/sides. There are no fasteners in the box, just glue and finish. I did most of the cutting and mitering on the band saw, and did the rabbets and dadoes on the router table.

The body interior is just a little bit larger and deeper than the bowls themselves. The interior is about 12.125″ by 8.125″ and 2 inches deep. The maple is 0.375″ thick, so it is sturdy enough to hold the densest of lunches.

The panels that make up the floor and lid surface are actually “book matched”. I started with a 7/8″-thick rough board, then re-sawed it into two thinner boards using my band saw. Then, a few passes through the planer to smooth it out. That’s why the grain doesn’t match up exactly, because my wavy resaw cuts meant more grain was lost to the planer.

The entire box is finished with “General Finishes” brand ‘Wood Bowl Finish‘, which used to be marketed as ‘Salad Bowl Finish’. This is an oil-based urethane finish intended for food contact. They have taken care with the solvents so that once the finish is cured it is non-toxic and as safe as they can manage. It is much less stinky than the polyurethanes I tend to use, and it dries very hard like lacquer. Due to the (intentional) loose fit of the panels in the edges/walls, the box is not water-tight, but the wood is thoroughly sealed.

Box for Feast Gear

Posted on 2025.09.192025.09.18 by Elliott Evans

At Pennsic this past year, during the discussion of “things we need in camp” that led to the shelves project, a friend offered to barter for a wooden box in which they could carry around their feast gear. A few weeks later I was in one of the DIY stores and bought a piece of lauan plywood that I thought might make a nice box. Lauan plywood has two smooth faces of thin veneer, sandwiching a single core layer of lightweight wood. It’s basically the wood equivalent of corrugated cardboard. As such, it is lightweight, reasonably durable, and attractively priced.

The interior of this lidded box is roughly 24 inches long, by 12 inches wide, by 6 inches deep. The lid fits fairly snugly. I added some surplus maple strips to the joins to hopefully boost its durability. Everything is glued together and reinforced with 23-gauge pins, but I figured a little bracing could not hurt. I put a light coat of stain on the surface to give it a little bit of water resistance.

This was a quick project, and I was awfully glad to be able to just go out into the garage and make a thing that somebody I know needed. Maybe I’ll make a few of these to hide some of the plastic storage boxes and random items we have sitting around in camp.

Travel Crate for a Takedai

Posted on 2025.09.16 by Elliott Evans

So, the takedai I have actually comes apart into pieces, so you can travel without having this large loom-thing in your vehicle. It didn’t come with a box or anything, though, so I would be traveling with a pile of loose parts like this:

If only I knew how to make some kind of box… oh wait, I do! I calculated that I needed a box about 4.5″ deep, 30″ tall, and 22″ wide. I thought I would have to buy wider lumber and cut it down to 4.5″ wide, but the store I went into actually had 1-by-5 in stock for some reason. How weird is that? The large faces are “masonite” style hardboard. A couple of sheets of that are cheaper than a similar amount of plywood, and about as durable. The “rim” is some of the 1×5 that I actually did cut down to width in the band saw.

I cut the hardboard to size first, taking the thickness of the wood into account. I actually broke out the circular saw for that, since it was faster than getting the table saw set up. Then, I built the frame, gluing and nailing (with a nail gun) the frame pieces in place around one side. Screws at the corners secure the butt joints. Once that was done, I glued and nailed on the other side, completing the box. Next, I cut six inches off the top of the box, and built the two rims around the openings of the body and lid portions of the box. The rims are glued in place, and secured with screws.Finally, I added the latches to secure the lid during transport.

I went for a tall narrow box instead of a flat wide box because I felt it would be easier to slide the pieces in than to stack them up. I kind of feel I was right. Slide in the two big pieces, then put the long pieces long the side. It works pretty well, and it’s easier to carry vertically than horizontally especially after I messed up the tendons in my lower arms lifting tabletops five years ago.

Here’s another angle so you can see how neatly it all fits in.

Kitchen Drawer Organizer Boxes

Posted on 2025.08.30 by Elliott Evans

We’ve been using some of those little 3″x6″ bamboo boxes to keep measuring spoons and things organized in our kitchen drawers. The only problem is that some of the measuring spoons are too long to fit nicely in those boxes. Luckily, I still have some 1/4″ maple scants left over from something else. These new boxes are the same width, but they are 3/4″ longer and a little bit deeper to better hold our growing collection of measuring spoons and rubber vacuum stoppers.

Here is what they look like empty.
I’ve learned to always make one or two extra.

The joinery is just simple butt joins, glued together and then pinned. The floors of the boxes are applied to the bottom of the walls, and similarly attached. I put a some mineral oil on them just to protect the wood a little bit from kitchen spills and the like.

Here is what they look like in the drawer and filled with stuff.

Edo Suzuribako

Posted on 2025.08.27 by Elliott Evans

I wanted a toolbox to hold my kumihimo (Japanese braiding) tools and supplies when I go traveling, so I made this one based on a Japanese suzuribako (scribal toolbox) from the Edo period. I had already made a bunch of pine trays custom-sized to hold 32 tama (weighted bobbins), so I made one more tray as the drawer, then designed the rest of the box around it. I didn’t want to spend the money to get an authentic set of hardware. I just bought hinges, handle, and hasp from the orange store. I might still add some corner braces to the outside if I can find some for a good price. The completed toolbox is 13″ long x 8″ wide x 7″ tall.

I bought two 6-foot 1x10s from the orange store and then planed them both down to 1/2-inch thick. even after trimming off the planer snipe this was plenty of lumber for the whole thing. All the joinery was cut on the table saw with a regular all-purpose blade. The corners of the drawer are miter cut and glued. Also, the two full-height corners of the box body have mitered corners. The floor of the tray is joined to the sides with 1/4″ x 1/4″ rabbets into matching dadoes. The two floors of the body are similarly joined, though the “front” of the box is flush and flat.

Battens on the underside of the lib will hopefully keep the lid from warping, and they provide solid anchoring for the hinge screws. The drawer pull is actually a “footman’s loop” from strapworks.com. I mostly used brass screws to attach the hardware. I did not like how the contrasting metal and philips heads looked, so I covered over all of the screw heads with “steel stick” epoxy putty. I could have done a better job with that, but it still looks better than screw heads.

Plenty of room inside stuff. Even though I planned the whole thing around the drawer, I had to sand quite a bit off the sides and bottom before it would fit in the body. As I have noted previously, sashimono (close fitting joinery) is really difficult.

Small Boxes from Surplus Wood

Posted on 2024.07.022024.07.02 by Elliott Evans

I picked up some small-ish thin pieces of mystery tropical wood from a friend, and I had a pile of surplus from the Storage Trays for Tama project, so I decided to make some small lidded boxes to give away. I started this back last fall, but they sat in the garage waiting for another slice of time I could devote to completing them. The largest of these has an 8″ by 8″ lid on a 5″ tall body, so they are mostly too small for storage but a great size for gifts.

Three small lidded boxes from mystery wood

The mystery wood boxes are finished with salad bowl oil finish, so you could use them as bento boxes, but since I can’t guarantee that they are water-tight or that the wood is not poisonous, I would not recommend it. This wood is only about quarter-inch thick, so the proportions are attractive. I decided how to use the pieces by stacking up all the wood by size and then moving down through the stack making lids and then boxes to match. All the cutting was on the band saw, then glued and pinned together. Unless the pin deflects inside the wood and pokes out, this method is fast.

These are all made from half-inch pine, and finished with a variety of shellac techniques that I wanted to try. I think my favorite one is the rightmost one in the photo. I started with a really dilute cut of light amber shellac to give the wood a little more color, then top-coated with a thin coat of blonde shellac.

Anyway, I already have plans to fill one of the boxes with braids and add it to a gift basket that our SCA Kingdom is putting together for another Kingdom. In any case, the pile of surplus wood is a little bit smaller than it was, so success.

Storage Trays for Tama

Posted on 2023.10.152023.10.16 by Elliott Evans

Through a combination of gifts, purchases, and gift purchases, I have acquired 64 of the 100g tama from Braiders Hand. Right now, they are all in use, but eventually, I may have to put them in something for storage. Since boxes are easier to make than tama, I retreated to the garage to make these storage trays.

They are made from 1/2-inch thick pine boards, and each can hold 32 tama. My general rule for storage options is that you should always plan for twice as many whatevers as you have now. The corners are mitered, and the bottom is rabbeted and then set into a dado that goes all the way around. This lets the bottom expand and contract with humidity changes while still being 1/2-inch thick. There are no fasteners in the tray, just glue. I can make two trays from a single 6-foot 1-by-10.

It takes a while, though. Plus, it takes a planer (to turn 3/4-inch 1-by into 1/2-inch lumber), a table saw (to cut all the pieces and joinery), and a sander (so that everything looks nice and smooth). These trays might someday become become drawers in a kind of kotansu, but that day is probably far off.

Update: I realize that I did not do a very good job of describing how the bottoms of the trays are joined to the walls. I made a diagram –

the bottom is rabbeted and then set into a dado

Bento Refinishing

Posted on 2023.08.292023.08.29 by Elliott Evans

Eleven years ago, I made this hexagonal bento box in a class taught by Pittsburgh’s Tadao Arimoto. At the time, I did not know much about making bento lunches, so the box mostly sat on a shelf as a display piece. It waited patiently for me to expand my studies of Japanese culture to include food, and for me to start shopping at the Tokyo Japanese grocery enough to develop a menu for lunch. Back in 2019, I started making bento lunches to eat at work, and I discovered that the box was not sealed! I got salad dressing all over the tablecloth, and had to use plastic bento boxes for my lunch.

A year or two ago, I sanded the inside and outside of the box to smooth out the uneven epoxy surface. The box sat in this state for a couple of years, still waiting for me to make time for it. This summer, I finally cleared off the workbench for a couple of days so that I could mix up some epoxy and refinish the box.

These are the pieces of the box. One lid, one base, and two rhomboid containers that fit inside the base.

Here are the smaller containers inside the base, ready for filling.

Add the lid to close the box. It falls slowly because the tolerances are tight.

It’s completely sealed now. I could probably take soup in it. The lid edges are almost the full height of the box, so it might not even spill very much if tipped. Even though I don’t go into the office at all these days, I made lunch at home and served it to myself in this box because I believe you should always let things fulfill their purpose.

Hana Goshoku onigiri; pickles and salad; togarashi tofu, roasted mushrooms, and kamaboko; lotus root and roasted eggplant.

Utensil Box from Cherry Planks

Posted on 2023.07.04 by Elliott Evans

We had a plastic bin at the back of of kitchen utensil drawer that held chopsticks and other miscellaneous items. I got tired of having to dig for chopsticks, and my father had coincidentally gifted me with some cherry grilling planks. We love cherry wood here, and I wasn’t going to just set fire to it, so it’s projectin’ time.

I made a box that’s as wide as the utensil drawer, and a smaller tray to hold chopsticks so that they do not just fall to the bottom and have to be dug out. This construction turned out to be a little too tall, so I shaved some off the top and eventually cut the bottom completely off. Here are the pieces.

The tray slide back and forth, or it lifts right out for easy access to the utensils underneath. Of course we have more stuff than actually fits in the bin, but that can be moved elsewhere.

I finished the whole thing with some salad bowl oil finish, which only takes 3 days to dry, but makes the wood look attractive.

Learn to make things, because people who buy things are suckers.

Mark 2 14th Century Toolchest

Posted on 2022.09.282025.09.01 by Elliott Evans

Took a second swing at this project. Here it is up on sawhorses in my workshop/garage:

It’s huge! It’s 4.5 feet long and a foot wide. It fits in the trunk of my car ok if I fold the rear seats down, but it’s way too big. Probably at fault is my desire to use 1by8 for the sides. To keep the length in proportion to the height it’s just way too long. Maybe I’ll try again sometime with 1by6 instead. That would make it only about 40 inches long by my reckoning. Compare the image below with the original painting.

I’m also pretty sure I should be making my battens narrower, and probably from the full 3/4″ thickness of board instead of my 1/2″ planed-down thickness. As a bonus, here is an image of all the tools I needed to construct this Mark 2 chest, stored in the Mark 1:

There’s not much you need, really, to build a simple chest.