I’ve been picking away at pieces of the router plane box and finally glued in the last bracket (the one for the fence) yesterday:

I took off the clamp today and did a test-fit of the tools:

That went surprisingly well. Both planes fit in there with no problems; I have room for a few more blades as well as the small router plane (if I ever get it). I could also fit the miniature router plane inside.

During this project, I also added a wooden lining to the fence. It’s the same privet that I used for the new mallet, which should be fairly hard-wearing.

For whatever reason, I made a lid consisting of a frame and a floating shiplapped panel. After gluing that up, I cut a rabbet along the bottom so that it can fit onto the top of the box:

After trimming the dovetails and such, I had a finished box:

Or rather, I had a complete, unfinished box. I normally leave shop projects unfinished, but for whatever reason, I decided that I wanted to apply tung oil to this thing. That turned out to be a messy affair, because I couldn’t get the cap of the bottle open, pried it off, and ended up splattering some of it around. Oh well, the bench now has a slight oil reapplication.

That takes some time to cure, but at least I don’t have to do anything else. Time to move on to the next thing. And no, it will not be a box for my plow plane, tempting as that may be.

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.