Box!

[gchpaco]

I made a box tonight! As of, about 12 hours ago, it was a board, and now it is gluing up. It is not a pretty box, nor does it serve any particular purpose in mind save education, but it is my box and it is the first object I have ever done dovetails in (as opposed to practicing them on scrap wood). Naturally, there are many important lessons I have learned today. But the most important one is this:

• Just because it came off a power panel saw does not mean that it is square.
• Keep thine tools sharp, for it will save you much consternation and agony.
• Keep thine waterstones flat, lest the previous step take much, much more time than it ought.
• Try to avoid planing grooves for the box's bottom to rest in on the outside of the box. It doth make thee look like a complete moron.
• Rejoice when feeling the need to work all night on a project—this is the sound of thine muse returning. Hesitate, however, before chopping dovetails at 2 am.
• Learn to saw straight the first time; it saves much agony later.
• Just because Frank Klausz can do it in three minutes does not mean it will not take thee three hours.
• If the box looks trapezoidal, it may be. Or it may be a trick of the eye due to the bottom being a trapezoid. Do not automatically assume that thee hast managed to dovetail four sides of a "box" somehow without noticing that no two are the same length.

I have no idea what I am going to do with my new box when it finishes gluing. It is not the prettiest thing in the world and I am tempted to burn it, but perhaps I can find something less pyromaniacal to do with it, like store my waterstones in it or something. I do like working with poplar, though; pity it's so ugly.