Worlds Most Useless Machine Build - Part 4

Building My Own Version of "The World's Most Useless Machine"

Design of the Wooden Box

Yay We're Talking Wood Again!

Since I am building the box from scratch I am free to design the dimensions as needed. The goal is to make it just the right size to fit the mechanism and in proportion. I choose to use 1/4" x 3 1/2" Red Oak stock to build the box with. Probably the best joinery technique for such thin stock is finger or box joints. Thinking it would be fast and easy to make a box joint jig for my table saw to cut out the parts. The ShopSmith show this week just happened to feature just such a jig. Well I made one up but it turns out you really need a special flat grounded box cutting blade to make nice tight joints. I don't happen to have one and at the price they are selling them for buying one is not on my short list.

But I do own a fabulous Incra Jig for my router table can can very easily make box joints. Again however you do need exact diameter straight bits to cut the proper joints and as luck had it my good 5/16" bit was a tad too big. My first test joint ended up fitting too loose. I did find an old 1/4" shaft bit from an economy set that was just a tad undersized. Because of the micro adjustments of the Incra Jig you can compensate for the slight under-size and this time my test joint came out really nice.

So I am confident I will be able to make some really nice finger joints for my box with my Incra Jig. It will be easy to cut some slots in the sides for the top and bottom on my table saw.

Now I just need to figure out what size the box needs to be...