Finger Jointed Box Page 1 of 3

Simple box with finger joints cut on a router table.




I wanted to make a simple but strong box to cover some trip fuses on my fuse box, following an accidental tripping of the freezer whilst hanging up my coat in the cupboard under the stairs. It was to be made from 6mm ply following the advice in my web page Finger Joint Trick"


Preparation is to rip and edge plane a strip of the plywood to make the sides and ends. It helps if these are made from a single parallel piece. The finished box will have a perspex top in a groove, and no bottom.
More important is that the cut ends are square! Plane them square on a shooting board made for "end-grain".
Cut the sides and ends to length and plane each end neat and square on the shooting board as before.
Lay the pieces out in exploded form, that is with the insides of the box uppermost as if they had fallen outwards. Number the ends 1 through 8 in sequence - starting with the lower end of the left hand end piece then anticlockwise. This will correspond with my Finger Joint Trick" page.
Set a router table depth gauge to the thickness of the ply plus 1mm for trimming.

In this particular case with 6mm ply the minimum depth was 1/4 inch so the joints were made 7mm deep anyway.