Tea Box with Spline Joints

Here is a project that I just posted of a little box with spline joints.

I was needing something to hold tea bags and this does the trick and looks good doing it.

Take a look and see what you think:

7 Likes

Beautiful work. I like it. Are all 4 sides identical?

1 Like

Very nice. I’m looking at making a pie carrying box before the holidays and I was going to just use traditional CNC finger joints, but I might have to give that another thought after seeing this… :slight_smile:

1 Like

Thanks @ErikJenkins

Yep, all four sides are the same. I originally has one with the divot and the others were straight across the top, but changed my mind in favor of simplicity and symmetry.

I love how the grain wraps around the box!

1 Like

@sketch42, Thank you for the project plan! I made a Tea Box this weekend out of Oak. It does not have the same great colors as yours, but I like the way it turned out.

How did you get such a nice color contrast for your splines? Did you cut them out of a different wood?

3 Likes

Thanks! The same set up can be stretched or scaled for different size boxes.

Yep, I used a bit of kindling for the main box parts because it is cheap, but more importantly untreated pine. The splines were a different wood called Rimu but any contrasting type would work, or you could stain them before putting them in as long as it isn’t a stain that messes with the glue. Something like a coffee/tea stain or other water based stain.

Yours looks great BTW!

I thought about staining the splines first with a contrasting stain, but then figured I would just be sanding all the stain off when I sanded them flush.

1 Like

Yeah you’d have to soak them in stain for a good while to get that kind of penetration… better off going with a different wood for a contrast.

ooo, similar interests. I made these about a year ago. Will have to revisit the idea now that I have X-Carve.

4 Likes