These are always fun to make.  I glue up the box first, then run it sideways thru the table saw to split the box into top cover and bottom.

More than 20 years ago, I bought a Sears dovetail attachment that allows you to use the router to make both dovetail and box joints. I used it back then, but I remember it took a long time to set-up.

I recently ran across a Woodsmith article and free plan for making wood boxes using just your table saw. I decided to try it out and see if it was easier than setting up the router attachment. This plan is for wood boxes with sliding lids.

Here is a photo of making the jig for the table saw:

 The index key is being glued into the cross-slide. I trimmed it down to size after the glued dried.

Using Google Sketchup and some other free software, I made up a crude animation to show how the jig works. I then put it on YouTube:

  Here is a picture of the first box I built, a pencil holder:

I had to glue up pieces to make the top and bottom of the biggest box:

I turned my belt sander upside down and placed it into the box to sand the excess joint stock:

And here are 4 boxes glued up, ready for final sanding and finishing:

 Here is photo of boxes drying after 1st coat of polyurethane:

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 Closing Thoughts on This Project:

I was attracted to this project because I thought it might be a faster way of making wooden boxes (on the table saw) versus all the time involved with setting up the router and its jig.  It turned out to take as long with the table saw.

It is mentally tough not to make a mistake with regards to how many slots to cut in each piece, since the front of the box has 1 less than the back.

At the Indiana Covered Bridge festival in the Fall of 2010, I saw some neat wood boxes for sale at a craft booth. They were about 1 foot cube. The guy that made them let the corner joint stick out versus sanding them flush.........and they looked good that way.

I had to make a new jig for the table saw, to cut corner joints 3/4" high. Here is photo of making the jig:

I had to buy a dado blade set because the larger box needs joints around 3/4" thick and my table saw blade is only 1/8".  I bought this set from Harbor Freight: 

I had to glue up the 5 pieces required to make the big box, using 1x4's which are 3/4" thick.  Below is photo of the 5 pieces glued up.  As I keep telling my wife, a woodworker can never have too many clamps!

Here is my sliding jig for the table saw to cut the corner joints:

I decided to make an animation to show how the jig is used to cut the corner box joints:

When I assembled the big box, I found it was too tall.....this is one time that Google Sketchup's image did not really match the item when built (it looked in proportion in Sketchup).... 

I decided to take this tall box and make 2 different boxes from it. Here they are shown in Sketchup:

And here is how they looked when I made 2 boxes out of the one tall one:

I also made one small box from 3/4" stock just to see what it would look like:

Here are the finished big boxes. I did fill in the exposed 1/4x1/4 inch dado joints with 1/4x1/4x1/4 wood plugs which were glued in:

And here are the latest bigger boxes compared to the smaller boxes with sliding lids:

Closing Thoughts on This Project

My 1968 Sears 10" table saw had a worn 2.5 inch aluminum pulley with 5/8" bore and 3/16" woodruff key.  Several times, the high load from the 8 inch diameter 3/4" wide dada set caused the pulley on the saw blade shaft to fly off.  I finally bought a new pulley at Ace hardware. I did not use the new pulley with the 3/4" wide dado set, but I did use it with the 1/2" wide dado set....and it did not come off.

I operated the saw without a throat guard with the dado set. Since I had a sliding jig, there was little probability of dropping something into the big gap around the blade. If one was doing a lot of dado work, a modified throat guard should probably be used.

I did have one safety close call with the 1/4" dado set. I placed a 1x4 piece about 10" long against the fence, then ran a box bottom along it to cut the 1/4" groove on the box bottom piece. I left the dummy piece in place between cuts like I did when using a regular saw blade. Apparently the saw vibrated enough that the dummy piece caught on the blade, and it threw the piece at me..........bounced off my stomach, and ended up about 12 feet back from the saw. Since I was not standing directly behind the piece, it bounced off of my body.  The moral of the story is never stand behind the piece you are cutting and never leave a dummy piece in place while the saw is running.

My saw could just barely cut the 3/4" wide dados 3/4" deep on the big box I made. The blade speed almost went to zero. I made a sound recording of the drop in saw RPM:

When I made one box with 3/4" thick wood, I dado cut 3/4" wide and 1" deep. I had to cut each dado with about 4 passes to keep the blade speed going.  One should probably cut these using increments of 1/4" inch depth to keep the blade speed more constant.  When I cut 1/8" wide dados 3/8" deep using regular saw blade, there was no drop in speed.

These boxes require a lot of sanding time:

-rip 3/4" standard stock vertically on table saw, finish cut on bandsaw, plane to
  finished dimension, belt sand.  This works to make 1/4" thick boards max.
-Rotary plane 3/4" stock to 1/2" on drill press using Wagner saf-t-plane, belt sand.

-with either of these 2 methods, the finishing process is the same.
--sand to 220
-polyurethane
--sand to 220
-polyurethane
-sand to 220
-polurethane

Two things that could reduce labor time is use my old Sears 12 inch wide planer to plane to 1/2" and then use milk paint versus polyurethane to finish.

More to come..............

I decided to make a bunch of the shorter and taller boxes as Christmas gifts. This would also give me a chance to try out milk paint as a finish.

Milk paint was used in the 1800's until the advent of oil based paints in the early 1900's. All you needed was milk, hydrated lime, and some powder pigment for color. You can buy milk paint as a powder where all you do is add warm water: