Man In A Box

I’m a creator, by now I think that’s been defined, although the title reads Luthier, I find myself with my hands in many more projects than just guitars, and this post is all about one of those projects.

Around November/December 2021 I was offered a project which involve making boxes, I love making Boxes so I thought hell yes pass it on I'll do it. Oh boy! I was in for a challenge.

I should’ve called this project 300, yes like the movie 300, where Spartans battled Persians with an army of only 300 warriors. Now the analogy is because in this case, I was the only Spartan going to battle against 300 wooden boxes, death awaits yes, but is more about the sacrifice in this tale, and the inspiration to carry on.

We are talking about 300 wooden boxes, that have the purpose of carrying 13 Vinyl LPs, and a book. After taking a look at the prototype brought by the client I started to imagine how can I push this project forward. The prototype was made with solid birch wood with finger joints, nothing complicated, but making 300 of them is tricky.

The budget was limited, therefore processing solid wood was going to get too expensive for this project. The solution for me was to use plywood and substitute the finger joints with mitered glued corners, the Top and Botton of the Box create enough support/rigidity, and the process is straightforward.

As the main material decided to go for high top quality Plywood, in theory, this material should be free of knots, patches, imperfections, and defects, to be honest, I don't find that this was the case, because there were plenty of patches and knots, so high-quality plywood doesn’t mean flawless material. The material was bought in January 2022, winter, oh Finnish winter indeed, this is important to remember, it’s a piece of very important information used later on.

My workshop is set up for musical instruments fabrication mainly, which means that I don't have a big table s