52 Boxes in 52 Weeks
In view of the topic for our March meeting on Making Boxes, I invite you to check out Matt Kenney’s book on making boxes, “52 Boxes in 52 Weeks: Improve Your Design Skills One Box At A Time”. The book is available from Amazon using the link below.
Info on the book from Amazon reads as follows:
What do you get when an accomplished woodworker and senior editor of Fine Woodworking magazine sets himself the challenge of designing and building one box a week for a solid year? You get 52 Boxes in 52 Weeks, a book dedicated to making relatively simple―yet gracefully elegant―boxes that woodworkers of all skill levels will be eager to build.
Readers will begin by learning the fundamental box-making techniques that are applicable to almost every box in the book:
- how to match grain at corners
- how to cut miters
- how to make tops and bottoms
- how to finish a box with shellac, sometimes highlighted with milk paint ( a major trend in finishing right now).
Following that, Kenney reveals some universal design principles that can be used as guidance as readers develop their own design aesthetic. And then, of course, the book transitions to the 52 boxes themselves.
Another box maker to which I would like to introduce you is Doug Stowe. Doug is a teacher and maker who lives and works in Eureka Springs, AR. He has a 17-part box making series on YouTube that begins with this episode, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xlz9ekl3JE.