コンテンツへスキップ

Tea Box – Build

keyaki tea box with removeable inner trays

Continuing on from last weeks post about the design of a tea box, here we have the actual fabrication. I’m going to try and pack everything into this one post, so I may omit certain details, but feel free to comment or ask questions if there’s anything that remains unclear.

The wood for the box is keyaki throughout. The client ordered 1 box, but hinted at the fact that he might like a second some day, so I milled enough stock for two boxes out of one board of keyaki. I rough milled the stock, leaving all parts plenty fat, several weeks in advance. I wanted to gradually bring things down to final thickness, with several sessions of jointing/planing, with plenty of time to settle and move between sessions, before reaching the final desired thickness. Milling stock that way usually leads to flat stable material, but it’s not a fool proof method. In this case most of the stock came out beautifully flat, particularly the quartersawn parts that I used for the inner trays, but the flat sawn stock that I used for the box sides and top panels unfortunately continued to move a bit.

Here’s my little stack of lumber, stacked and stickered.

tea box milled keyaki parts

Once I did final mill the stock one of the first things I did was to glue up the bottoms of the inner trays, which were made up of 4 rips of nice quartersawn material. I planned to glue these panels directly onto the bottom of the trays, so I wanted quartersawn stock to reduce movement as much as possible.

gluing bottom of tea box trays with hide glue

I should also mention that for this box, I used liquid hide glue for the first time in a very long time. Last time I used hide glue was in lutherie school almost 20 years ago, but I’ve been thinking about using hide glue for a while as an alternative to the regular Titebond II and III that I usually use. My main reason for switching to hide glue has been in the interest of future repairability (mainly for my furniture work), and after giving it a try on this project I have to say I’m really digging it. The possibility of repairability is great, but I’m also in love with the fact that I can easily clean up squeeze out AFTER the glue has dried in the event that I miss a spot. On a few occasions I have struggled with PVA glues, particularly Titebond III, which I find tricky to clean up. In my experience it tends to soak into the wood, such that if you don’t wipe it up immediately, it can leave a film or stain in the wood. So not having to worry about that with hide glue is a blessing. Also the main reason I usually reach for Titebond III is to give myself a bit more working time, but liquid hide glue wins in that area as well, with a really generous open time before the glue starts to set and grab.

Below you can see one of the box sides. You can see I milled a groove for housing the bottom panel, as well as a rabbet for locating the lid. From there I cut the miters using the sliding table saw. The final task before gluing up the box was to hand plane the inside of each part. I’ve experimented with a few different planing stops for miters in the past, and this time I gave a simple screw a try and it worked out great. It’s far enough below the surface that there was no risk of hitting it with my plane, and it did a fantastic job of holding the piece without risking any damage to the thin edges of the miter.

planing mitered tea box sides using screw stop

Here’s a look at the fit of the bottom panel with the sides of the box before gluing.

tea box side and rabbeted bottom

And here is the box glue-up. Lately when I’ve been doing mitered glue-ups I’ve been making clamping cauls like these. Essentially the cauls are thin sheets of mdf with mitered blocks glued to the ends to more effectively direct the clamping pressure.

gluing up the tea box with mitered clamping cauls

I find I have way more control when using cauls like these. It’s pretty simple to dial in the pressure on each corner ensuring that the joints close up tight, but you can also pretty easily shift and move things if a corner gets out of alignment.

mitered clamping cauls and tight joint
inside of tea box during glue-up

Here is the layout for the box joints on the sides of the inset trays.

box joint layout on tea box tray parts

And here are the same joints after cutting and fitting. I cut these joints on the sliding table saw follow by a little bit of chisel work to clear out the waste.

box joints cut on tea box trays

The next task on the list was to cut and fit the tray dividers. I decided to put one of my ha-ganna (kumiko planes) to use for this task. I like dividers that meet with a miter, versus being let it with a simple dado cut. To my eye mitered dividers look much cleaner. So to make use of the ha-ganna, I setup a simple jig to guide the plane while cutting across the grain of the tray parts. Below you can see the jig as well as a few test pieces I used to dial in the depth of cut.

ha-ganna jig for tray divider joinery

Here are the long sides for the two trays, with the locations for the dividers laid out.

tray divider layout

Using the jig was as simple as lining up my layout lines with the v-cut in the jig.

lining up tray divider in ha-ganna jig for cutting

With one pull of the plane the cut was made. This process was super simple, clean, and fast. Definitely an occasion where hand tools shine.

One of the great things about using ha-ganna for this task, was that I was able to make a shallower cut using a 30 degree ha-ganna that produced a 120 degree v-cut in the stock. A shallower cut means not having to take as much meat out of the stock, and it also makes it possible to cut a v-notch on both sides of the stock as you can see in a few of the pieces below.

tray dividers with joinery cut

I cut the mitered ends on the tablesaw. Below you can see the overall arrangement as I dry fit the pieces.

dry fitting tray dividers

Here’s phase one of the tray glue-ups, using liquid hide glue once again.

tray dividers glue-up

Once all the dividers were glued, the last step for the trays was to glue on the quartersawn keyaki bottom panels.

gluing bottoms on tea box trays

Here’s another area where the longer open time and ease of cleanup of hide glue really shined. I could take my time with this glue-up, ensuring things came together nicely, and then work on cleaning up the glue with no worries about staining or having to deal with glue drying before I had a chance to hit it with a rag.

The final task for this box was the lid. The following drawing shows a cross-section view of the box and lid details, which I discussed in some detail in last weeks post.

Box with framed lid cross section drawing

I started with the frame pieces, and cut a groove for the top panel using a slot cutter in the router table.

cutting groove in tea box lid parts using slot cutter

After the slot was cut I continued on at the router table and cut the rabbet on the bottom side of each frame piece. And from there I could cut the miters at the table saw. The thin strip of walnut that is glued on to the bottom edge of these pieces was glued on before all the joinery work.

mitered tea box lid frame

The top panels for the lids were troublesome pieces. Despite my attempts to mill these pieces gradually over a few weeks, they still kept moving a bit after I had reach the final thickness. So taking a hint from Chris Hall, I decided to make some relief cuts on the underside of these panels with the hope that I could effectively weaken them such that they would stay flat in their respective frames. For the relief cuts I used a skinny little spiral router bit (2mm diameter) and routed about 6 mm deep.

routing relief cuts in bottom of tea box lid panel

For the most part these relief cuts worked out, and overall the panels became much more pliable. I probably could have had these cuts flow all the way through, rather than stopping them short like I did here, and the panels would have become even more flexible. But I thought it would look nice if the relief cuts stopped short of the frames, though you will only see that detail when you open the lid and look underneath.

The final joinery for the panels involved cutting a set of tongues to mate with the previously cut groove in the frame pieces.

tea box lid panel tongues

Here’s a shot of the frame and panel fit together.

tea box lid joinery

After gluing up the lid frames, one of the final details to complete was cutting and gluing in a set of walnut keys to reinforce the miter joints. I used the router table and 1.5 mm slot cutter for these cuts. One the glue was dry and the keys trimmed flush I spent some time hand planing the the outside of the boxes. I also used a plane to fine tune the fit of the trays.

gluing in miter keys

And here’s the final product, finished with a coat of liquid glass.

Finished keyaki tea box

The color of the keyaki is pretty light at the moment, but it should darken over time which will create a milder contrast with the walnut accents. One thing I would like to do slightly differently next time is to adze the raised panel of the lid. The clean look of the flat hand planed panel is nice, but I think a hewn texture would really add a nice level of contrast, and on a wood like this flat sawn keyaki, a scalloped, hewn texture can really look beautiful. Next time perhaps.

Well that wraps up this project. Thanks for following along.

Finished keyaki tea box end
underside of tea box lid
tea box trays and lid
tea box trays
tea box tray box joints
tea box mitered dividers
tea box with one tray inserted
tea box both trays inserted
keyaki tea box with removeable inner trays

「Tea Box – Build」への4件のフィードバック

  1. I love this piece, its so simple and beautiful, it reminds me of what i love Japanese woodworking so much. I’ve worked with hide glue for over 2 years now and I love it. it’s strong as hell and it’s nice you can work back from errors without restarting.

    For the insert tray, how do you keep any access glue from showing on the bottom of the box or where the miters connect? I have made a similar style of dividers for a jewelry box but I just covered the mess in velvet.

    Keep up the amazing work

    1. Thank you!

      I did have lots of squeeze out to deal with after gluing the bottom on to the trays. Essentially I just took my time and wiped up all the glue with a damp rag using a sharpened stick to really work the rag into the corners to clean up the glue. In a few areas some glue remained, and I hit those areas with a chisel once the glue had dried, follow by a touch more cleanup with a damp rag. Definitely a bit tedious, but using hide glue made the process overall much less stressful.

  2. Hi, Jon
    Currently reading your blog. Wants to thank you for your time to describe the process, share photos and your experience. Impressive, lots of time behind I guess.
    As for the tea box, below are couple of questions/remarks
    – your clamping approach. I am using Japanise hint from this video to clamp 7:55
    https://youtu.be/P50VtDfQa1g. Find this more fast and convenient
    – timber used here by you was Keyaki. Is it similar to Zelkova and/or Pavlovian?
    – I am quite far from East tea culture. Could you please explain how this box with many small departments expected to be used? If to keep different teas, the odour will be mixed, no?
    Thank you
    Alexander

    1. Hi Alexander,
      Thanks for the comment.
      Yes keyaki is the common name for zelkova serrata. When I lived in NY there were lots of zelkova street trees and I got a few pieces of wood from one that was cut down. It was identical to keyaki, as far as I could tell.

      The customer who ordered this box specializes in making chai tea, which is made up of a variety of different spices. I’m far from an expert on chai, but from what he explained to me, depending on the type of chai, there are a lot of spices that one can choose from.

      Thanks for sharing the video. I’ve seen a lot of people who clamp small mitered pieces the way the person in the video does. There’s another woodworker in my shop who does uses the same method. I think that approach is great for certain situations, especially when the parts are thin and narrow like the piece in the video. But I personally like the control you get using clamping cauls. I also like to be able to see the outside edge of the joint after everything is clamped to ensure that it’s tight, which is something you can’t do with the wrap method. But I do love the simplicity of using a cord to wrap and clamp a piece, and it can definitely be effective in the right situation.

      Best,
      Jon

コメントを残す