Simple wooden box.

[jg]

I want to make a simple wooden box to store a collection of CDs in plastic wallets. It doesn't have to be very fancy, just practical and strong.

I was not sure how to go about making it. My rough idea is to make a rectangle from some 150mm wide 18mm think board I have in the garage. Was planning to just do Butt joints, but this means i'll have to screw into the end grain. Front and back it with some MDF sheet and then cut it in half (using a circular saw to go round the four sides) to make a lid and base. Then i'd fit some hinges, catches and a handle.

For strength, I was thinking of putting a brace piece between the two longer sides to prevent any bowing.

It's going to be about 380mm wide (just enough to fit into a filling cabinet.

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something like this.

Any comments/ideas welcome Any links to guides for similar wooden boxes woudl be great. particularly thinking about the butt joints.

Thanks

[andrewpreece]

If you glue it together as well as pinning/screwing it, I think you'll find it will be reasonably stiff and strong.

Andy

[Rob Morley]

Stick a bit of timber down the inside of each corner, and screw from each side into that. That way you don't have to screw into end grain and you get lots more area for the glue.

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[jg]

I had thought of this idea, but didn't want to loose too much space in the box due to corner blocks. I was going to try using those little plastic blocks on the insode and screw outwards into the wood.

Any tips on what type of glue to use, I've got some of the white wood glue in the green bottle (possibley PVA)

Maybe I'll just make the box a bit bigger, i'll have to make sure it'll fit in the filling cabinet still.

Thanks

[Rob Morley]

You can do it on the outside instead if you want then you'll only lose a bit off the length, and the inside will be nice and square :-) | | | | | |-- | | \ | | \

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That'll do.

[andrewpreece]

Seconded.

Andy.

[Mark]

Not DIY, but for this price, is it worth making one?

[AlexW]

IMO not ... I mean, how much are you looking to save?

Unless you really want to do it of course ;)

Alex

[jg]

I'd thought about these things, but decided against them because:

- I have already bought 500 wallets and these things come with their own wallets so those 500 would be wasted. (You could argue that i'm throwing good money after bad)

- I already have the wood in the garage, so wouldn't cost me anything. althought this could be used on something else.

- I want something that will fit neatly into a filling cabinet, so a custom made one seems to make sense here.

- The ones that come with the wallets have individually numbered wallets, which would be really annoying for me. You organise your collection of 500 discs and then you get a new one that should really go at position 250 so you have to shuffle the rest along. (or just ignore the numbers, but its still annnoying.

- It seems like a nice fairly simple project that I could well have done at school. (which is the last time I did anything like this) so would be a good way of practicing some of these techniques for other projects

- Admittadly, the sh>> andrewpreece wrote: