Everyone starts somewhere.
Everyone starts somewhere. My first box. Approximately 4” L x 2” W x 2” H. Pine.
I got into woodworking as a hobby. My workshop was a one-car garage that had been turned into a family room/storage area. It had blue shag carpet, great to stand on for hours on end at the workbench, not so much for sawdust management. Equipment consisted of a DIY workbench made from 2x6’s and part of a sheet of MDF, a benchtop bandsaw, an inexpensive router and a few hand tools.
As for woodworking education, these were the days B.I. (Before Internet) so books, magazines and trial and error were my teachers. Boxes have always interested me, so making small boxes seemed like a reasonable place to start. I came across a book about making bandsaw boxes and so my first project would be a bandsaw box.
Lessons learned while making my first box:
“Glue is slippery. Until it’s not.” I didn’t have any chunks of solid wood, so I glued up three layers of 1x3 pine. I didn’t clamp it correctly, and the layers shifted a bit while it was drying. Sanding took care of the slightly misaligned layers, but that also meant my block was a bit smaller than I’d intended it to be.
Corollary: “Don’t leave your glue-up unattended until the glue sets.”“Pine is a soft wood.” Every mark I made - sandpaper, chisel, saw, dropping something on the board - was exaggerated by the softness of the pine. So, in the end I couldn’t sand all the saw marks off the walls because I didn’t allow enough extra material when I made the cuts.
Corollary: “Leave a little extra material for final fitting.”“Wood has grain.” I hand-carved the rabbet on the lid. I managed to do it without stabbing myself, but I was carving against the grain at times and that caused tear out. And, again, I hadn’t allowed enough material for cleanup, so I couldn’t sand it away. The rabbet is a bit lumpy and the lid wobbles a bit rather than seating perfectly.
Corollary: “Sigh.”
Making the first box definitely had its frustrating moments, but I was already thinking about how to do things differently on the second box.
For the second box, I bought a small block of cherry. Cherry is harder than pine, but not as hard as maple. I cut the box parts a bit oversized and so could sand off the saw marks more cleanly than in the pine box. I still had trouble cleaning up the box floor, but that was easily managed (i.e., hidden) with some felt. As for the lid, I got a little router table attachment and some tiny router bits for my Dremel tool and used that to cut the rabbets. Much better, though I could have matched up the end-grain on the lid and box better. Which I would do in my third box…
In other words, I was hooked.
Eventually, the desire to make spaceships to buying a lathe and my first woodturning project. This was completely outside of my comfort zone, but I was an experienced woodworker by that point and knew with absolute certainty that, if all else failed, I could bludgeon anything into shape with enough 60-grit sandpaper, even on the lathe. (BTW, I didn’t need the 60 grit.)
That was about one hundred spaceships ago, not to mention dozens of turned boxes, vessels, multi-axis turned sculptures, etc.
So what’s my point? It’s a “first project” every time we’re staring at a new tool, learning a new technique or trying to figure out how to make something look like it was intentional instead of a mistake. Some first projects are “only” projects for one reason or another, but some end up taking us places we never imagined when we started them. My pine bandsaw box with the saw marks and wobbly lid led me to a full-time woodworking/wood art career and introduced me to people I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet otherwise.
Which is why it makes me sad when I hear about someone who’s hidden or even destroyed their early work because they feel it distracts from what they’re capable of doing now. Not only can having a reminder of where you started be helpful when you need a little push to get out of a mental rut, it can give someone else the confidence to start their own first project. I’m told that little pine box has, at least indirectly, inspired others to pursue their own dreams. Saw marks and wobbly lid for the win.