Until now, I've stored the irons for my wooden plow plane in a roll that gets put in a drawer. The roll wasn't some multiple-compartment, fancy leather gizmo; it was nothing more than an old kitchen towel. The irons deserved better, so I made a box for them.
For whatever reason, I often get stuck on design. I looked online and found a few images of plow plane iron boxes. They typically were vertical boxes with a lid that hinged to the side and each iron stands on end in its own slot. While I liked that, I was having a tough time in my head with grain direction of the parts as well as methods of construction. In the end I decided on a flat-ish box with a horizontal compartment for each iron. The box has a sliding lid. It's got 9 compartments; 8 for the set of irons I bought for the plane and an extra for the iron that came with the plane.
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| Two 10" long sides and a 6" long front and back |
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| Dovetailed and dry fit |
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| 1/8" grooves were made top and bottom, starting 1/8" from the edges |
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| Then (8) 1/8" dadoes were cut into the front and back |
Cutting dadoes this small can be a real challenge, but it went much quicker after gaining some experience. I used my homemade mini router plane to get the bottoms to depth.
The bottom of the box fits into the grooves in the sides, front and back. It's just shy of 1/4" thick, so I rabbeted the edges to fit the grooves.
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| Getting ready to rabbet using the moving fillister |
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| Here's the box's bottom rabbeted |
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| Here's dry-fitting the bottom |
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| 1/8" hardboard dividers in the dry-fitted box |
In this picture, you can see that I've cut down the box's front piece to allow the sliding lid to get in its grooves. It started out the same width as the back for easier marking and cutting during the dovetailing and grooving stages.
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| Sliding lid |
Two more details: the dividers were shaped to allow easier grabbing of the irons, and a thumb catch was carved into the lid to make the box easier to open.
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| The shaped dividers, with irons in place |
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| Thumb catch on the lid |
The glue-up was OK, though I initially messed up - even after a few dry-fits. The order of putting the components together was key to get it glued up properly. I gave the box a few coats of shellac on all outside surfaces, with none on the inside.
Here's one last detail. The front edge of the box's top has a piece of wood glued to its end grain. This hides the entry grooves and makes the front of the box look nicer. I realize it a cross grained glue-up, but I've done this before on a similar box which has held up for about five years now.
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| Glamour shot |
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| And with the lid partially open |
Good little project. The plow plane irons deserved a home of their own. Now I just have to figure out where the box will live in my cramped shop.
