Cool Upcycled Wood Boxes Using Salvaged Wood

One of our contributing editors AJ Moses is in the shop with us today. And first AJ let's talk a little bit about your company Castaway Woodworks. What's the, what's the deal with-- where's the name come from? Because I think it's going to kind of speak to what we're going to talk about next. It sure is. I give forest products a second chance. A lot of the small projects that I do are made out of lumber that otherwise may have been cast off. I deal with a cabinet shop locally and get quite a bit of material from them. Scraps that they're maybe looking to throw away. Too too small for their use. Yeah. And I get it very reasonably priced. And make some cool stuff out of it. Oh yeah. Like the boxes you have here today. There you go. So it's cool that AJ brought these boxes in actually for a completely different purpose and we thought we'd take some time and talk about it. So a variety of materials are represented here. Is everything here, did everything here come as a-- what are we calling this today? Upcycle? Recycle? Is everything here made from salvaged wood you got someplace? Every one of these boxes yes. Nice cool. And we've got a broad strokes two different construction methods going. One is where we've got finger joints on them. And then on others you've mitered the corners and you've splined them. And you're working with a specific jig for that. Right? Right. Two different jigs? Yes. Both of them come from Rockler. And the finger joint jig is very very precise. The set up is a little time consuming, not terrible you know four five minutes you've got this thing ready to go. Router table or table saw? Router table. And it uses an Upcut router bit. Which I found reduces the chip out around the finger joints quite a bit. Okay. Even right after sharpening my Dado set on harder woods, would always chip out just a little bit. So the Router table's giving you better cut quality than your-- Oh much much better. And then the spline jig that's also Router table? It sure is yeah. Okay. And construction method it's kind of neat on some of the-- or on the lids what you've done to get the lids to capture in the box is just applied a second piece. Yeah. Which is smart instead of, an alternative would be a rabbit on all four edges and that's a little bit persnickety because the lid has to be dimensioned just right, the rabbit's got to be cut just right, and then sanding the machine marks off the inside of that rabbit is a pain. So this is a nice-- I like this approach. You can sand this nice and smooth. Sand that insert nice and smooth. And then apply it and it seems like a faster way to do this. 'Cause you-- you sell these right? I do. You've got these in retail stores and I use this project also for woodworking classes at the Oakdale Discovery Center. And doing this rather than bringing in a lot of power tools and doing a lot of precision work is a lot better for non-woodworkers who come to my classes. Nice. Well let's, and then let's bring this one out cause it's cool. Little bit of birdseye maple and the lid on that one. And it's-- the boxes have a nice proportion are you keeping something in mind on the-- whoa look at that it's AJ Moses Honey that's hiding inside. Makes a nice gift box George. AJ is also a beekeeper. Proportions on the box? Or is it just kind of whatever the material lends itself to? Yeah the golden ratio. Oh you are? Okay. Yeah is about five by eight. Okay so you can look that up on other videos of ours the golden proportion, the golden ratio that AJ's talking about in order to incorporate that into your projects. Well these are cool AJ! Thanks for sharing them. Thanks for bringing them in. And we're looking at possibly a product review on those two products right? Coming from you? In the future? You betcha! You bet. Okay great.