Wood-fired!

Making a tea caddy

January 31st, 2009

An earlier post showed the tea caddies I made for Xmas presents. This post describes some of the techniques used.

The cross section shows the overall construction. The lid and base are made as floating panels to allow for movement of the wood. The main feature is the use of an insert to create the flange for holding the lid in place.

The project started when I tried to find a way to use some very highly rippled eucalypt. This is difficult to machine - or indeed to hand plane - and is so striking that it asks to be used as a highlight rather than the main timber. I decided to try harness the strong linear figure by quartering it and arranging the ripples in a square. The wood was thicknessed to about 2.5mm using a drum sander¹.

Four quarters of a square were cut on a bandsaw with the ripple running slightly off parallel to the outside edge (the hypotenuse). These were squared up on the shooting board, glued and held together with my favourite clamp - blue painter’s tape. The completed lid was then sanded to about 2mm. Because the lid was so thin it could be fitted directly into a 2mm slot in the walls of the box. No rebate was necessary.

The base was constructed in the same way but using 5mm padauk. The edges were rebated to fit the 2mm slot.

The box walls were made from 8mm padauk stock. The edges were mitred roughly on the table saw and then hand-planed using my mitring jig. The 2mm slots were routed at the top and bottom to accommodate the lid and base.

Glue-up starts by laying out the sides on the blue clamping tape. The top and base are inserted as the mitres are glued and the box sides effectively rolled up.
Additional tape is stretched around the box to pull the mitres tight.

Once the box is dry, the tape is removed and the four faces cleaned up with a plane. The box is then cut in two on the bandsaw. Notice the tape used internally to prevent the glue from marring the inside faces. Once this is removed the sawn edges are planed smooth and flat.

The pic at right shows the lid and base reconnected after the join is tidied up. With a tiny amount of pressure from the cute clamps, the join is effectively invisible. The black dot shows where the lid joins the base.

A 4×4mm deep rebate was cut into the outside edge of where the lid and base meet as shown in the cross-section. An 8×4mm (plus a little to allow for cleanup) piece of the same rippled eucalypt was cut to fill the rebate. The piece is oriented so that the grain and ripple direction match the lid as if they were continuous. This provides a side view of the ripple where you can see the waves of grain direction. (Check out the side view in the cross-section image at top and the finished box at the end.)

The inserts are mitred and glued into the rebate in the base of the tea caddy. Blue clamps are used again.

The lid is tuned so that it slides easily but firmly into the insert. The insert is then planed flush with the base and lid.

A 5mm mother-of-pearl dot was inlaid on the base and the lid to show the correct orientation of the lid. The boxes were finished on the outside only with nitrocellulose lacquer rubbed back to about 6000 grit.

1. This is a classic role for a drum sander. The ripple is caused by waves in the grain direction. This means that there is no direction in which you can plane with the grain. Even with a super sharp blade and a high blade angle, it is near impossible to plane without some tear-out [↩]

Entry Filed under: Wood