Dovetail Boxes

Now that school has been out for one day, at least for me, (sorry Jen) I have time to show you what I have been up to in the Carle's Workshop.

My grandfather-in-law (John) gave me some pine that he wasn't going to use.  I was very grateful and decided to put it to use.  John is a very skilled carpenter.  He is always being asked to make something or other for people in his town or his family.  One of the things he makes regularly free of charge are flag boxes for fallen veterans that are buried in the Iowa Veterans Cemetery, which he lives only a few miles from.  So I wanted to make sure that I didn't disappoint by wasting the pine on something I wouldn't use. 
Starting back in January I started making wooden boxes using dovetails as joints.  Dovetails are supposed to be the strongest joint you can have. You can make dovetails using a router, but I wanted to try it the old fashion way using a dovetail saw.

A while back John also gave me  an orbital sander which uses discs for sandpaper.  I decided to make  boxes in order to hold the different grit sandpaper.

Orbital Sander

 Box Number 1

Here is the first box I made. Don't judge.  The number represents the girt sandpaper each box will be holding.

Box Number 2

This was probably the easiest one I made with the big pins.

Box Number 3

This box was going great until I made a mistake and routed the wrong side for the bottom of the box.  To fix it I did some inlay work and placed a piece of walnut inside the mistake and it came out pretty well.

Box Number 4

This isn't really a dovetail box.  It has finger joints that I made using my Uncle Bob's table saw.

Box Number 5

This was the last box I made.  It was easily my best.  The pins are narrow and the tails are different widths on purpose.

Here they are all in a row.  I'm thinking about building a little cabinet for them to sit in two rows of six, which means I'll need to make one more box.