I’m sort of in between projects right now, plotting out my course for the next couple pieces of furniture, so I’m not working on anything particularly big. But something in the background was bugging me.

A few months ago, Lee Valley sent out a promotion for a box for their router plane. There were two sides to this. First, they were offering a pretty good option for someone who wanted a box for their router plane. Second, they were trolling us, because they talked about how it might seem questionable to offer a wooden box to woodworkers, and that, hey, if you want to make your own, maybe this will get things started.

I have to admit that I did like a few things about the design of the box, so I decided that I would make my own and rip off elements of the design. So I started by making a dovetailed box out of eastern white pine (haven’t smoothed off the ends yet):

This is what I was sawing in the latter part of my lame epic video on restoring a saw.

For better or worse, I fitted a shiplapped panel bottom in grooves around the bottom. I can’t seem to resist panels.

Then I had to start working on the blade storage rack. I decided to just cut a bunch of square holes on a shelf with a glued-on bracket:

This will cause the blades to point to the back at a 45-degree angle. I only did it this way because it was easier to cut holes in this orientation. (Doing square holes like this in white pine is relatively easy.) Later, I added holes for the hex wrenches and the sharpening aid bar thing.

Now, I need to:

1. Make the bracket for the fence.
2. Make brackets to keep the plane in its spot (and probably the medium router plane, as I just bought one of those).
3. Deal with the lid.

I’m hoping that I’m not spending too long on this, but on the other hand, ever since I got that router plane, I haven’t had a good place to put it.