How to Construct a Bandsaw Box

One of my favorite things to use a bandsaw for is to make a bandsaw box. They're great gifts. They're very fast and easy to make, once you get the secret. The secret is there are distinct steps you have to go through in order in order to get the bandsaw box out of that chunk of wood. This piece of funky looking walnut has been sitting around my place since I don't know when waiting for just the right application, and I think this is it. It's very cool looking. I don't really know what we're gonna find once we cut inside here, but we're gonna find out and I think it's got a chance to make a beautiful bandsawn box. The first step on the bandsawn box is to create the outside shape. You can do this a couple of different ways. You might find a shape that you like in the kitchen or something you have in the shop that you can trace on there. You can draw something free hand. I actually like to just make the whole cut free hand and I just sort of figure it out as I go some organic shape that I like the look of. So that's where we'll go first, we'll get the outside shape of the box cut out of this chunk here. With the first cut done, let's talk about my blade selection. This is a pretty smooth surface on here. Now, eventually we're gonna have to do some sanding. I wanna do as little as I possibly can. So I'm using 1/8th inch 14 tooth per inch blade. Gives me a couple of benefits. The small blade allows me to turn very, very tight so I can get some nice detail in here some small radiuses. The fine tooth 14 TPI means that my surface is pretty smooth, that also means I got to cut fairly slowly so that I don't overfeed the blade and break it. But there's going to be very little sanding to do on the outside. Next step, we need to make a back. In order to cut the back from our bandsawn box, what I need to do is define the back. So usually what I do is simply take my pencil and I'm gonna use this like a marking gauge, set this to about a quarter of an inch or so and strike a line just like that. Now you could measure and do that with a straight edge, you can do it with a marking gauge. But again, the whole bandsawn box thing is fairly casual and relaxed, so don't pull your hair out trying to make it absolutely perfect. Next step is we'll cut that back off and set that aside for using later. So that gets our back off the box, we wanna set this aside. Now, part of the reason that we use this fine tooth blade is because we don't wanna do any sanding here and here before we glue these back together later. So we have a nice, fine surface on there. What we'll end up doing is simply gluing these parts back together and that'll become fairly seamless thanks to the fine tooth blade we have. Next, we can make a drawer. In order to create the drawer what we're gonna do is now cut a section out of the center of this. Remember the back is already gone, so we can go ahead and cut all the way through. So again, using my finger in the pencil, I'm gonna define a wall thickness as much as I can. So there across the bottom. I can get something going over here. And then here over the legs I'm just gonna kind of freehand that as I make the cut. So that those transition together. Now to make this look seamless, here's an important part. In order to enter this, I wanna look for a spot where the grain lends itself to it. In this chunk of Walnut, the grain is kind of all over the place. In a typical piece of wood, where the grain is probably running this way what I would normally do is cut in here, right in line with the grain. And the reason for that is that then you've got a bandsaw line and a grain line and when you put them back together, they're gonna kind of melt together and be fairly invisible. On this one, look at this big piece of substantial grain right there. I'm gonna cut in on this in order to enter then start making my curve, come all the way back around, and then just blend back into that first cut in order to get the drawer excavated out of this. That relieves the drawer, and then that small seam it'll get glued back together after our box is complete. In order to make the drawer, we do work that we've already done. I'm gonna use my pencil as a marking gauge and define the front of the drawer and the back of the drawer. So remember when we started on the box, you only cut off a back. When we do the drawer, we cut off a front and a back. Once these two parts have gone away, then we're gonna hollow out an inside. And that's really, our only piece of waste is the inside of the drawer. And then we'll be ready to do a little bit of sanding, start putting everything back together. Now, the inside of the drawer comes out. That's just gonna go away. Then eventually, the drawer front and the drawer back are gonna get put back on. Now, one thing is depending on the material you're working with you may wanna take the time to mark the pieces beforehand so you can remember the orientation so you get the parts back together the right way. On this piece, the grain is so wild that all you've got to really do is look at the grain, there's pretty much only one distinct way it's gonna go back together. So that takes care of our drawer. And with just a little bit of sanding on the drawer interior, we'll be able to start putting the whole bandsawn box back together. Let's talk through the rules of the road now for sanding 'cause there are spots you wanna sand, spots you don't wanna sand and a method to the madness, the sequence to the events. I'm gonna sand the inside of the drawer. Now remember, there's no mating part that goes back in here. We leave that hollow. So we can sand this as much as you want to get all the bandsaw marks out and of course, it's a surface that people are gonna see a lot so you want that nice and clean. Don't sand any of the flat areas that parts have to mate back up against, because sanding this or this is gonna affect how those parts go back together, It's gonna mess up the fit that you have by just leaving them alone. So we don't wanna sand those. And we do wanna sand the interior of the box here to get any little stray bandsaw marks off. But that needs to be done after this assembly is done and that seam is glued back closed again. So that is gonna get sanded lightly but first we have to glue this part back together. So I'll start by sanding the inside of the drawer then we can get the front and the back glued on the drawer and start gluing the seam back together on the main box. Bandsaw boxes can take some creative clamping sometimes. The drawer box here that's pretty easy. Front, back, glued everything together with wood glue. Very easy to clamp. The case is gonna be just a little bit touchier, but I found on these curved surfaces oftentimes masking tape is a great answer for this. That masking tape will pull that together let me get some glue in there so that I can hold that seam nice and close, this will be pretty seamless when it's done. So always do a test fit first, that's what I'm doing with the masking tape here. Now I'll be ready to pull that off, get my glue inside the seam, close it up for good. Once that's dry, we can sand on the inside. Just a little bit of sanding here on the back to even everything up because we took a soft carve out of the body of the box and then squeezed it closed, that means that your back is gonna be just a little bit oversized. So here at this sander now I'm working on the outside refining the shape just a little bit, getting all the bandsaw marks out. Of course, everybody's gonna see the outside so we wanna get that nicely cleaned up. So I'll sand that right down to a finished grit of sandpaper. The drawer is all put together. I add a little piece of antler and I made a small pull out of that for the front of the drawer. I glued that on with a CA, with a cyanoacrylate glue. That's a great glue choice for holding those parts together. The outside of my drawer can still get just a little bit of sanding to get those band saw marks out. But because of the way we made the box, it's a perfect fit for the inside of the drawer box. That piece has some beautiful grain on it. Once we get this finish sanded and some finish on here it's really gonna pop the grain from that funky looking piece of walnut. So bandsaw box, great very fast project. Making the outside shape, I've traced stuff out of the kitchen. I've traced kids toys. I've used a variety of different things for the outside shapes on these boxes. Try it out, you're gonna have a blast.