Dan Shapiro

First things first: aplogies for the long hiatus. I just took a new day job as group manager for realarcade, which is a sweet gig but has kept me busy for the last two weeks getting up to speed.
The good folks at Rockler have made plans for a walnut poker chip box available online, free. They’ll show you how to make the thing, and even have links to where you can order all the parts online. From Rockler’s website. They sell all the parts, in fact. Shocking, I know. Despite the merchandising tie-in, though, it’s pretty slick because it uses a piece of walnut molding, so you get a cool, difficult-looking profile without a lot of work.
Which brings me to a major pet peave of mine. Why do woodworking plans always go out of their way to make things difficult? I look at plans in magazines, and they’re five times as difficult as anything I’ve ever built, and they look half as good. More to the point, they look like something you’d buy at a store, where labor is done by giant robots or tiny children, but lumber is expensive. So they have tons of finely detailed parts holding together a big panel of plywood. Huh?
I don’t know about you, but if I’m planning to spend six months building a coffee table, I don’t mind spending $200 on some beautiful 5/4 FAS walnut boards. It’s worth spending twice as much to have the thing made out of solid wood instead of plywood or, heaven forbid, particle board. It’s going to last longer, and when you’re bragging… er, when your friends ask you about it, you can say, “Yeah, that bugger’s made out of solid wood. I mean 100%, SOLID gingko bilboa. In fact, I whittled it down from a tree trunk four feet in diameter, while the tree was still alive, deep in the heart of the brazilian rainforest. I was forty feet off the ground lashed to a branch, gnawing the legs out because my pocketknife had been stolen by a kukoburra, when the pygmies started firing blowdarts at me…” Your story is going to be a lot less convincing if they notice the place where you dropped your beer stein on the corner and dented the poplar veneer.
So why do plans have you marrying $25/bf spalted maple with sheets of plywood from the omeHay epotDay? Hell if I know. Which gets me back to the box design, and my original point, which has very little to do with my rant. Unlike most designs, this box doesn’t have a lot of froo-froo that makes the piece look more, not less, commercial, and quadruples the length of time you’re choking down sawdust for no appreciable benefit. The one piece of zizzybangness (the profile on the walnut) is done for you by the clever use of the walnut molding, and everything else is pretty much square cuts that your pet gerbil can do for you. Simple designs, snazzy result, lots of solid wood.
Note that I haven’t actually tried to build the thing (I’m learning to cut dovetails with this right now, so I’ll be damned if I’m going to make another box with mitered corners). It may wind up being a really clever plan for firewood for all I know. But one way or another it’s a really clever plan.
Take a look. You’ll thank me for it.

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