This wood is for the first batch of beading toolboxes. I'm thinking of keeping a thread going to show the building process. Is anyone interested in following that?

Here's a look at my humble shop. It's small, unheated, and poorly lit. I'm happy to have it. Today I'm just cleaning and organizing.

Another thing I'm doing today is shopping. I've mentioned recent hand/wrist problems before. So I'm doing some tool upgrades, like blade and bit replacements, to get cleaner cuts so I won't have to do as much hand tool work or sanding to fix up machine marks.

I actually have a whole extra large size walnut box already built, but the router bit I used to cut the round grooves is not the best quality and it left a lot of burn marks. So I'm getting a better bit. It's worth spending more on a good router bit if you'll use it a lot.

So that box will sit unfinished until I get the motivation to sand out the burn marks. Or I'll just leave them and keep that one for myself.

Ugly ass burn marks in question

New saw! I've had my eye on this for a while. Big fan of Japanese hand saws. Also, Silky Woodboy is the best possible name for a saw.

Damn, she is a silky woodboy

Resawing some walnut, which means I'm cutting it through the thickness. Cutting can release internal tensions in the wood, making it warp, so I'll let it sit for a couple days before I mill it to final thicknesses.

I have most of the pieces cut. I'm making 1 extra in each type of wood in case I ruin one.

A lil knot in someone's lid. The wood can shimmer like that in areas where the grain changes direction. Pretty, but also a pain in the ass because it means you can't avoid cutting against the grain. This one turned out not to be a problem though.

A little pre-finish so the glue doesn't stick where it shouldn't when I glue up the lids

The rest of it involves a lot of router work, which is noisy

The tool compartments are all cut out with a router. These jigs hold the workpiece and a template. Each box size uses 4 different templates and 3 router bits.

I change a router bit, do all the cuts in all the pieces, then change to the next bit. But sometimes there are different depths with the same bit, and I don't want to change out the workpiece (i.e. each box) with every depth change. 1/2

So my solution to that is I have little blocks of mdf that are the depth of each cut. I set the bit so it's touching the surface of the wood, put the block in the depth stop, and that's my depth setting. It's quick and accurate.

I don't think anyone is following me for woodworking tips, but if anyone is, there's a good one

The hole as it's being cut is a closed space, so it gets full of shavings/dust as I'm cutting. So I cut a bit, vacuum it out, cut more, vacuum again, cut again, etc.

Dust getting trapped in there isn't as much of a problem for broader cuts, like the scissor compartment. The dust has room to fly out. I still increase the depth gradually, but I can do that without stopping to vacuum. I'll finish the narrower part of this with a smaller bit.

When I was deciding how to price these, I was trying to figure out how much time I spend on each box and it's impossible.

Making the jigs and templates took a long time. But I'm using them for a bunch of boxes, so dividing that time per box depends on how many boxes I ultimately make with those jigs.

The design time too - it's a lot for one box, less if I use it for a bunch of boxes

Then when I'm making a batch of boxes, there are a lot of tool adjustments. For every cut I set up a machine, test it, adjust it, test again, until it's right. But I do that once for the whole batch, so time per box depends how many boxes I'm doing at a time.

So I didn't try too hard to figure out the exact time involved, I just picked a price that felt like enough compensation for my work, and made it flexible for people who can't pay that much.

Melting down some wax for thread conditioner. Pure beeswax made in Alberta.

I've mentioned before, the wax has a smell. I'll make sure everyone's ok with that before I send their boxes out. https://twitter.com/BeadSpiller/status/1311405124401549312?s=19