I Made a Box

I made a box with four dovetailed corners from pallet wood in 21 minutes. I eyeballed the angles, no guides are sliding bevels, and the sizes, nothing measured, to take out any measuring and did the whole in front of an audience of two I had engaged in a discussion and demonstration on economy of movement in work. Glued up, the 21 minute box will last for a hundred years and maybe two. Oh, and the making included glue up and hand planing too.

Economy is a way of life. Of course no one would buy a softwood box like this, but it is an example if simplicity and minimalism. I own 25-30 of these boxes and use them for my things – to keep them safe. I like pine, spruce and the other softwoods too because softwood is so unpretentious. A pallet from softwoods holds up the worlds stored goods in transit and in stowage. It’s a remarkable wood.

If I made a box like this from hardwood as I have throughout my worklife it would mean no more than this box. Probably less, even. Pine boxes are remarkable things. Remarkable. I hate to think that people might so strongly dislike, no, even despise a wood that serves us so remarkably well.

Anyway, I enjoyed my making time. It was done in total silence. This too was magical.

63 Comments

  1. I have access to pallet wood wjere I work, since we use them a lot and aften there are lots of them “out of order”. Many times I ‘ve considered about use some of that wood… but the thing is that the wood doesn’t have that aspect at all. Normally it has cracks, is bent, with knots everywhere, twisted or stained with a-must-see products. It doesn’t looks like pine either. It’s softer, more irregular and definitively much less usable. In fact, normally I have only access to spruce, so badly dried that is absolutely twisted and bent, with knots on every arise and even fresh resin. Decent wood is becoming something very hard to find. Where I live, if you want to have access to decent wood you have to buy the whole lumber, wich is a problem if you dont have enough space fory storage it.

  2. Wow! Was waiting to see what you might do with pallet wood and in seeing these photos have determined where my skepticism came from. Obviously your pallets are made of better wood than around here. Ours are full of knots, nails, screws, staples and paint and finding a few boards long enough to be useful is a mini miracle. Beautiful straight grain wood into an equally beautiful box? Wow! Enjoy your homeland resource because it isn’t the same everywhere. Enjoy your postings – keep on keeping on Mister Sellers. You make using my dad’s tools a great enjoyment.

    1. Here in Midwest USA, Nebraska actually many of the pallets are made of Cottonwood. Here too people belittle the wood badly. I’ve heard lots of “how bad cottonwood is” stories. Yet, if a guy or gal looks for themselves, you can find usable wood, even among busted up pallets. Keep your eyes open with a fresh mind as you look at pallet wood. You will be surprised. You might have to cut off a bad end or resaw the stringers. The problem is disassembly (use pry bars, or a special made tool) and foreign matter (nails, little stones) when sawing. I have used it earlier, but don’t have the time now to do the work of savaging.
      Then again you will find the odd pallet made of some perfect wood.

  3. Hi Mr. Sellers,
    I love spruce. I think it’s hard to deal with, but i like to find out, what is possible. I like to find out, how to use the plane, the chisle and the scraper. I have done some boxes in spruce and I like the dovetails, the texture and the colour. The surface and touch after some shellac and wax.
    …but 21 minutes for a box?? great!! I need some hours for that.
    I enjoy working wood after my daily job.

    I started working with handtools, after I found your videos on youtube. The best inspiration at all.

    regards

  4. didn’t know you could draw a line with your knife without repeating the mantra: Lightly, then deeper and then as deep as you like. (I can’t)

    1. LOL Me too. I also often “hear” take your time and enjoy the process. Then there is the “Accuracy” that I hear before every swipe of the plan, saw, chisel and now when I’m baking bread….

  5. We have companies leave out pallets for people to take. It saves them money if people take them, mostly for burning. They are cut green and assembled at local Sawmill’s and/ or imported from other countries.
    I have found pine extremely tough and durable, sometimes they are made of Oak! When you think about it they are made of green wood, nailed to runners and a weight put on them. Then they are stored for several months until whatever is on them is shipped. So what you have is air dried wood for free!
    My pine boxes are still going strong, I love the fact I’m using wood that would end up in someone’s fireplace. I waste enough wood as it is so this doesn’t matter when I mess up and make uh….scrap to go in the fireplace!?

      1. Deal normally refered to what the cheapest wood that the woodyard has on offer that week hence the deal!

        1. Not really, Geoff. Remember you English language was derived from Europe much of the time. Deal is a Middle English word meaning a smaller section or part of the whole and an extended form of the root ‘da’, to divide.

          1. I found a couple of really nice oak pallets behind the feed store for $2.25 each. From one I made keep sake boxes for our daughters. That wood is “bone hard”. I cheated, and used a home made box joint jig on the table saw and rough planed the boards on the thickness planner. Was stil a lot of hand work involved.
            The joy in giving them to my daughter’s, as a token of my love for them, in my late years, was, no less, by using some “help”.
            Thank you, for making available to the world, your skill and knowledge. Most of it free. I have learned a lot from you.
            Again, a big thank you!

          2. Wow a fine woodworker and etymologist too! I find that there’s actually much to be learned about how processes evolved by understanding how words developed. For example – planing wood -“plane (n.3): “tool for smoothing surfaces,” mid-14c., from Old French plane, earlier plaine (14c.), from Late Latin plana, back-formation from planare “make level,” from Latin planus “level, flat, smooth” (from PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread”). A proto-Indo European root means people have been working on flattening and smoothing surfaces for at least 4000 to 8000 years. Long journey!

            Great post BTW – and I’ve always been a big fan of pine – beautiful, forgiving wood. Pallet wood is extremely varied in quality and species – we even found a super hard one that we sent to a college for analysis and turned out to be Eucalyptus. The point is a great one though – whether it’s pine for rough construction, or pallets, or recycled wood at a home restore, pine is great stuff and often a good bargain. just got to keep your eyes open

  6. It would take me longer than 21 minutes to get the pieces to size before I even stared to think about the joinery!
    Matt

  7. I wish I could see a video of this. There’s something about watching a master work at his own pace where you see tricks you wouldn’t see at slower speeds.

  8. I’ve got access to loads of old reclaimed pine cabinet doors to play with and since I’ve been upgrading my various tools and doing a bit of saw making I naturally started experimenting with it for handles.

    Since it’s rather grumpy and old southern yellow pine it’s much stronger than something called a softwood should be (until you realize it just refers to the dicot vs gymnosperm leaf types and is essentially useless for actually determining what the mechanical properties of a given wood are suited for use as) and I enjoy fighting through the tougher bits of grain near some of the knots to get prettier ribbons and swirls in the finished piece.

    Never had one of my pine handles fail the same way I’ve had a similarly designed walnut one fail, good on ya for giving some lowly pine a bit more appreciation I say!

    1. The term softwood has nothing to do with the density per se but more to do with the way the tree grows. I’ve also worked extensively with SYP and I wouldn’t at all recommend it for saw handles. It’s a lot of work to have them break. Also, walnut is not the best for saw handles either. It’s brittle. I’m surprised that some makers use it. Apple is good.

      1. Oh I’d love some nice fruit woods to play with, apple, pear, apricot, and I’ve just got a soft spot for how pretty walnut finishes out.

        This pine though, I’ve actually gone out of my way to deliberately stretch and thin out and mess around with alignment on these handles, one of them ended up looking like a praying mantis due to how drawn out and strangely proportioned it was.

        For an abuse test I used it with a 10 inch dovetail blade at around 13 tpi rip for cutting a 5 foot long 4 inch wide pine board in half longways. Finally snapped the thinnest spot on the grip when I was pulling back and caught a hidden knot so the blade hung on it.

        By comparison the ones I’ve been making lately(like these: https://i.imgur.com/zvwflPl.jpg I just did today and yesterday) are way overbuilt for normal joinery despite being sized for lady hands (mom and the missus in this case, as the little things disappear in my mitts: https://i.imgur.com/GX4WkWI.jpg rawr manhand) though they will see very light use anyways, I’ve put tons of cutting on similarly proportioned pine handles without any issues.

        1. Whereas you may have “put tons of cutting” on them, when I look at beech handles 100-200 years of daily grind in all-day cutting there is a reason there are no pine handles until yours today. Just saying this because history does tell us a lot and why.

          1. Oh I’m not saying pine is the end all be all, but like you said yourself, it doesn’t get nearly enough love.

            Specifically I wouldn’t bother with some of the fluffy white or less sturdy yellow pines as they feel like they’d crumble while I was trying to shape them, never mind actual use.

            These crotchety and grumpy hunks of what I wanna say is probably longleaf pine are a different story entirely and show nearly the same hardness as some of the maples and cherry woods around the 900 lb/ft janka hardness range.

  9. How thin could be the walls for the box? From what I see you have 18mm thick, could it be half of that? In general how we calculate thickness?

  10. Wood is quite strong. French nailed wine crates for 12 bottles (capacity around 16 kg) are made out of “pin maritime” (pinus pinaster). The long sides are 10 mm thick , the short side are 12 mm thick and the bottom is 8 mm thick.
    The short side are thicker because there are two housing/dadoes in which to slide board with half round holes to keep bottles in place.
    Sylvain

    1. Of course, it can support 16 kg because it is a box; I would not use an 8 mm thick shelf to put 16 kg on it.
      Sylvain

  11. I have been trying to find the video where you patched a gap in a dovetail. I cut the dovetails this week for a new tool chest. They came out real nice except the side of one pin where I let my mind wonder and sawed the wrong side of the line.

  12. Thanks Paul. I’ve noticed in the past few MC classes you’ve done some activities working in the normal flow of things. In this post you talked about it taking 21 minutes. I think showing us working in the flow of things is helpful to us. One of the things that is difficult for me to learn by videos are the little things you do to keep things moving along steadily. I’m not in a rush to make anything per se. It’s a hobby and I have plenty of my day job pushing me to work fast so I don’t need or want that pressure in my hobby. I just want to become more efficient with my movements. If you can, I am sure some of us would like to see some more of this economy of movement or layout in future videos.

  13. Any plans for a 21 minute video on building a pine palletwood box?
    I built the base of my workbench with 3×5 timbers which started out as rough skids for some new, large food grade processing equipment. My jaw just about dropped when the rough extetior was planned down to reveal wonderfully figured solid oak certainly worthy of some rustic furniture. Granted it has a few beauty knots but the completed bench is solid as a rock and will outlive me and generations to come. The free woods are out there. Sometimes we need to think outside the box for alternate sources in addition to pallet wood.

    1. There are many good sources for wood, from eBay to direct supplies from timber companies and, if you can afford it, recycling centres.No,I won’t be making a box for online. I did that on YT years ago.

  14. In a strange coincidence, I built a dovetailed box out of pallet wood a couple of weeks ago. I also freehanded the dovetails and it looked good when all was said and done. I use it for my marking gauges and pencils and other layout stuff.

    1. Also, while I used the techniques I’ve learned from your videos, the quality of work wasn’t anywhere close to what you show in that box. It was still a nice box, though……and strong!

  15. I’m lucky enough to have a local company that leaves out the these 7ft x 20″ x 20″ pine crates. I can usually get a 42″ clear piece of 7/8″ with no nails. Width of the boards range from 1″ to 9″ on average and I managed to score 2 x 10 1/2″ wide boards. No planer, so I have been hand planing them down to 3/4″ or resawing on bandsaw thinner as needed. So I have been practicing dovetails on building small boxes as per your examples Paul. Thanks so much for your tutorials as I have learned a lot in the last few months. Just started to get back into woodworking after a number of years.

  16. Beautiful workmanship as always. In the third photo, the one showing the end grain of the tails, I noticed some chip-out where you planed the softer aspect of the pine end grain. I assume this is a utilitarian box, so that chip-out wouldn’t be consequential.
    In South Africa, the commercially available stuff is fast-grown radiata pine with equally wide areas of soft light-coloured grain. In the past I have achieved attractive end-grain surfaces by filing the end grain, but that doesn’t feel particularly time-efficient.
    Do you have advice for getting a smoother surface on the soft pine end-grain for more formal work?

  17. Nice, but not blindfolded standing on your left foot! Seriously that’s what comes from decades of experience and built up muscle memory.

    1. I watched you make a freehand dovetail box in Saratoga, New York many years back. It took you half an hour including the sizing of the boards. it started my love and use of hand tools – thanks for your teaching skills and your enthusiasm has certainly rubbed off. I also like pine for just about anything but have oak pallets that I use for making coat racks with the grandkids. I have taught them the fun of using handsaws and bench planes that I have restored and sharpened with your help! I have yet to do a dovetail but it on my bucket list this winter.

  18. I built my workbench out of sheet metal pallets. The wood was mostly maple with a touch of oak mixed in. The long rails were about 31/2-33/4 inches. The bench is about 4 feet long, 30 inches wide and 34 inches high, it has a Record Quick Release vise. I have enoughwood left for another bench of the same or larger size. I made it with power tools, if I build another it’ll be with handtools. I’m going to start looking for wood I can recycle, I happen to think knots, nail holes with the staining that goes with them and wild grain can be beautiful and quite interesting.

    1. Pine may be a utilitarian wood it can carry a beauty of it’s own, knots, cathedral grain, the patina of age and a finish like amber shellac can give a rustic warm look which many find appealing, me among them. I enjoy pieces made in hardwoods, especially when “defects” like wild grain, knots and pitch pockets, even the small holes from worms or rot can be lovely. Pine, pine has a quiet utilitaian look to it that while “humble” is dignified and in a hutch, a storage box, blanket chest, even a “simple” tool chest has it’s own beauty.

  19. Imagine what it must have been like 200 years ago when boxes, barrels and such were made to ship product! I suspect it wasn’t fun, dark shops, high quotas, minimal pay and the boss trying to get the most boxes for the money. etc. This is where economy of motion was part of the job along with economy of material.

    The craftsmen of the time had a tough environment too. At the phenomenal Winterthur Museum http://www.winterthur.org I saw a shop from the 1700’s – dark, narrow, cramped and utilitarian. (If you have a chance, it’s one of the largest collections of antique furniture in the US).

    Even today the professional wood worker is under the time=money reality.

    I’m lucky, wood working is a hobby, but I do have a big debt to pay to those who did it for a living.

  20. I used to use a lot of pallet wood when I had access to it. It’s wood.

  21. most pallets around here are oak,only thing I would worry about is what was spilled on them ( leaking HazMat )
    Friend used to bring it camping, lots of nice smells and colors.

  22. Here in southern California we get a lot of pallets that come from Mexico and China.

    The mexican ones often have VERY hard Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) and the chinese pallets have a softer Hardwood that is possibly Balau (Lauan).

    For these thin width slats I will usually just take a handsaw, start at the top and saw down between the nailed sections, yielding a dozen or more 10 inch sections that are 3 inches wide and about 1/2 inch thick, planed up. These can be glued up to make wider boards and then joined into little boxes.

    Great Stuff!

  23. It’s the length and width that seems to be a problem in the UK. Recently had a steel door delivered ,standing upright on a pallet with an upright support. The nail gun must have been on piece rates as the were over 30 annular nails in one piece of wood. Hence not very long sections and exceptionally hard to dismantle.

  24. I am a big big fan of recycling materials. Especially wood. I make a good number of projects from recycled materials. A Child’s Easel made from an old wooden baby crib. A coffee table and end table from someones discarded oak headboard. Granted Some wood is best left to heat the shop, but a lot is salvageable with tons of character and saving our resources. I find here in the Midwest US that crate wood is often better than some pallet wood. However I did find some Heat Treated Oak Pallets designed for international shipping that were completely bug free, and once planed down, the grain an finish looked fantastic. Nail holes… yes in some, adds character. Some I was able to just trim around. I find you just have to deal with it like you wood rough sawn lumber. checks, cracks knots etc. Rarely do I find enough for say a table top, or the like, but it’s fantastic for drawer runners, or supports inside a piece. And many times it’s completely free. I think it brings out the craftsman in me when I use recycled materials as such. I like the no measure no mark dovetails too. I’ve become a fan of them after meeting Frank Klausz who also subscribes to that method. Sometimes you need to mark, Sometimes you don’t need to. Sometimes you have to do TAILS first other times PINS first works best. Whatever works for you and your project is the right way. Paul does a good job of that in all his projects and videos. Thanks for posting the story on the box.. I enjoyed the comments as much as the article.

    1. But tails last will always be a back to front method in my view and you will never change my mind nor my teaching nor the reality of it.

  25. I’ve seen some of your work I like it. Great comments. Just wish Mr. Sellers would show us some of his NOT so Perfect cuts at times to show it’s now always perfect

    1. Not boasting now, but I would have to intentionally make miscuts just to make that happen for you.

  26. Ah, pine…the mere mention causes me to yearn (see what I did there?) for a more desirable species out of which to create my next offering. But wait, not so fast, our dear friend Paul is spot on with this post! Though we may, many, outwardly dismiss pine as an inferior, less-worthy grade of lumber, I suspect many, as I, hoard a more secretive appreciation for it due to its utility, resilience, and affordability! I, for one, am quite likely to use pine for many implements in my shop due, primarily, to one or a combination of those very qualities. The odor of it when sawn or planed is reason enough to keep a healthy supply on hand!

  27. This is an excellent post and reminds me of why I am so fond of pallet wood.
    The quality can vary as can the type of wood but, like timber I rescue from skips etc it has the advantage of being FREE!
    Sure, there is some effort in breaking down a pallet without wrecking the timber one is after. Some pallet wood can also be a pain to prepare for a project – I just regard that as a challenge to improve my planing techniques.
    I find it great for many projects but, on the rare occasion when results are disappointing, I just regard it as ‘prototype’ timber.

    Buying timber in the UK is expensive- even for ‘cheap’ wood. Pallets are usually free (I’ve never paid for one).

    Do not overlook old furniture dumped in skips. If it is made from ‘proper’ wood, you can usually be sure it has been well seasoned and probably acclimatised to a centrally heated home.
    Mr Sellers’ boxes should keep us busy for a while – every one of us probably needs at least 50 for starters. Thereafter there is an endless list of other pallet projects constrained only by our imaginations – maybe also by a sudden and sustained shortage if the ‘Sellers effect’ does to pallets what it has done to tools from time to time!

  28. Please note that some pallet wood has been chemically treated.

    For example, methyl bromide [MB] fumigation, kills invasive all kinds of insects and rodents.

    It is toxic to humans, as well. Breathing it and touching it can cause serious issues.

  29. I visited a company that makes cabinets/lockers. Most of the employees’ work was moving sheet goods from one machine to another. There was a guy in the finish room that did spray on two coats of lacquer though.

    I guess this is not much different:
    I do volunteer work at a shop that makes tables for people coming out of homelessness. Last week, we cut parts for 138 tables with three people for 3.5 hours, including time to store the parts and do some resetting of fences and stops. We lead other volunteer groups to do the assembly work.

  30. I think everyone is missing he big point: 21 minutes of wonderful, blissful peace. What more could there be?

  31. I just got finished making a small dovetailed box, but it took me way way longer then 21 minutes to make the dovetails.

  32. I am in the process of tearing apart 40 + palettes that I picked up. Lots of good hardwood, pine, cottonwood etc. I shouldn’t be wanting for small project wood for the rest of my days. I have so enjoyed watching you approach some complex projects with confident simplicity. You put the tool sellers to shame. Hope to meet you someday. Oh. If you ever would like some Texas Mesquite, let me know. I live in the heart of south central Texas. Best regards.

  33. Not like he needs seconding, but seconding the pins first comment, it’s always going to be easier to mark from the narrow to wide gap between pins than trying to mark between tails.

    Plus when you’re transferring a pin mark you know your kerf just has to be inside the marks by a little, and any flaws introduced by removing the waste between pins is easy to account for as long as you have the pin cheeks square to the end.

    A mark transferred over from a tail is where the kerf needs to be and checking that the tail cheeks are square to the front/back with square (or concave) bottoms between them just adds in another chance to compound an error ASSUMING you did a perfect marking transfer in the first place.

    I never got a snug cleanly fitting dovetail until I tried pins first, and while I’m sure I //could// do tails first fine now, as our dear host Mr. Sellers could… the question arises of why exactly one would do that?

  34. Hello Paul. Happy to see you love and champion pine. I thought I was alone sin my love for this humble wood, which is the only wood available at an inexpensive rate, here in India for me.

  35. As a teenager in the 60’s I worked in a lumber yard where we started getting paneling from the Orient. One of the guys used those pallets to make beautiful furniture, this was in a little mill town in California. At that time the shipping pallets were made from Mahogany and other woods from the rain forest we’d never seen before! Woods we were familiar with was more like Redwood, Douglas Fir, Pine, and Oak.

  36. I like pine, as you say, Paul, an under-appreciated wood. Most of my furniture is made from ex-pallet and scaffolding plank timber, assorted pine types with a few oddities thrown in. It has its issues but I like the aesthetic of recycled wood, transforming “rubbish” into something both useful and, I hope, with a style, even beauty, of its own. Thank you for the inspiration Paul.

  37. Paul et al,

    Hope you are still reading comments even though this post is a bit older. I’d like to add my name to the list of folks interested in seeing you work full speed. It might require different video commentary style. I think watching you work and perhaps with your voice over on what you are thinking and watching for would be a big help.

    I can think of a lot of utility boxes that I’d love to make that I’d ordinarily make with butt joints and pin nails that work just fine but whenever possible I like to practice my hand tool skills and free cut dovetails and utility boxes would really fit the bill for practical practice and developing muscle memory.

  38. Paul, I watched one of your videos not long ago on making a box the quick way. I believe you said you could do a corner of the box in 8 minutes. While I can’t do it that fast, I have made a lot of boxes out of pine, not just for myself but for gifts as well using your technique. I grew up in the southeast USA where pine is abundant. I love working with it and it makes the shop smell so nice.

Comments are closed.

Privacy Notice

You must enter certain information to submit the form on this page. We take the handling of personal information seriously and appreciate your trust in us. Our Privacy Policy sets out important information about us and how we use and protect your personal data and it also explains your legal rights in respect of it. Please click here to read it before you provide any information on this form.