Home-made Box

What a year, and none of it good. The last seven months have been the worst in my life and I almost gave up on bookbinding. I've not done anything projectwise with book binding since November of 2019. I've read and bought some books and watched several videos on book binding but I just didn't have the desire to make anything.

Well I sort of got a workshop set up but it pales in comparison with my old set up.  The old VanHaus workbench, which I've had for about six years, is on it's last leg. It wobbles the wood is warped and I had to zip tie my metal pegboards to the workbench mdf pegboard to get something useable.  Maybe once the insanity wears down I can look at either building or looking for a used workbench that bette suits my needs.

My area is still unorganised and will probably take another day or two to figure everything out.

My youngest daughter asked for a memory box and instead of finding a shoe box I decided to build her one. I've never built a box with a lid before but I figured it was just the same as making a slip case.  I did make one mistake. I did add the thickness of the covering material when deciding the lid dimension but I should have doubled it so it is a tight fit.

Measure the boards then glue the decorative paper to it. I can't remember where I got this paper from as I still have not unpacked all my bookbinding information.  If you know where it is from please leave a comment!

I ended up not having enough material for the inside of the lid so I had to use some scraps to fill the gaps.

Since my workbench is so rubbish I bought a bench hook meant for Lino Cutting. It works really well but I wish the working surface was a bit larger. I don't have the tools to make anything with any accuracy when it comes to wood work.

The red and blue corner clamps are 3D printed tools form IBookBindingStore. They are strong enough to keep your box corners at 90° giving you a bit more time to do other things. I bought another type prior to getting the IBookBinding corner clamps but the magnets are weaker and don't work as well. Also on the other ones there was some gaps in the 3D printer indicating the seller didn't tram their machine properly. I won't be purchasing from them again and will continue to get more from IBookBinding if I require more. Looking at the 120° clamps to make hexagon boxes.  The clamps are also nice as I can just attach them to my metal pegboard

Light weight while the box lid dries

Now I start working on the main box.

The Red clamps are the IBookBinding clamps. There are more magnets in their then the other one. I much prefer it.

I decided to use artist canvas for the box covering so my daughter can paint the box herself and personalise it.  I've never worked with it before and it is very stretchy, a bit like working with Calico.

I love my stainless steel right angle tools

Well there it is. I'm quite pleased with it as I hadn't done anything like this in seven months. Hopefully I will get to the nine unfinished books I was working on before my world turned upside down.  The new work space isn't ideal, but it will suffice.