Project #1 - A New Box For Blocks - Hand Holes

In my last blog I mentioned that I hoped to be writing about cutting dovetail joints this time, but I was getting ahead of myself.  I decided it would be better to cut out the hand holes on the ends of the box and the grooves for the bottom panel before cutting the dovetails.  This should reduce the chance of me breaking off one of the dovetails before the box is finished.

Since I'm still waiting on a new 1/4" chisel to come in the mail so that I can cut my grooves, I decided to cut the hand holes today.  I was lucky enough to come across a brace and some auger  bits at an estate sale last month, so I had all the tools I needed.  However, once I tried to use the 1" auger bit, I realized that it wouldn't cut at all, so I tried sharpening it with a standard file.  This didn't help any, so I did some research (Thank you Google) and found that there is a special file for sharpening auger bits.  I ordered one of these from Lie-Nielsen and got it on Friday.  The file is flat and comes to a point for getting into the tight spaces on small bits.  Also, it doesn't have teeth on the sides so that you don't accidentaly tear into the bit.  The file seemed to work pretty well, but I still couldn't get my bit to cut.  Finally I thought that I should compare it to another bit and I realized that the cutting angle was way to small.  After filing a much steeper angle, I got the bit to cut.  In the picture on the left, I'm drilling out the material that will make the hand hole.

In these, you can see that I drilled three holes to make up the hand hole.  In the pictures on top I'm cutting out the remaining material with a chisel and in the lower left, I'm cleaning up the edges.  In the lower right, I'm smoothing the edges with a file.

When I was designing this box, I was worried about how I was going to make the handles and have them look good.  As it turned out, it was easier than I thought and I'm pretty happy with them.

Also, today I went to a brewery supply store and bought some citric acid.  I've read that it's good for removing the rust from old tools and I was going to use it to refurbish my drill bits.  As you can see from the picture above, I decided to hold off on that and rather do some work on my box.  If I don't get my new chisel in soon, then next time I might be blogging about cleaning up old drill bits.