Building a toy box can be a rewarding woodworking project that combines creativity with craftsmanship. This toy box measures 36″ wide, 20″ deep and 16-3/4″ high, with a lid featuring an addi­tional 3/4″ overhang on the front and sides to minimize finger pinching. I used #2 SPF 1″ × 6″ × 8′ boards, which were relatively straight and flat. I needed six boards, plus a piece of 1/2″ plywood I had on hand mea­suring about 36″ × 20″ for the bottom.

Cutting and preparation

I started by cutting five of the boards, each yielding two pieces at 38″ and one piece at 20″. This gave me 10 pieces at 38″ plus five pieces at 20″, short one 20″ piece for a side wall that was cut from the sixth board. All of these measurements are long by at least 1″. Making strategic cuts at 38″ allowed me to choose any board for the front panel or the wider lid. This helped ensure optimal grain alignment, enhancing the toy box’s appeal. If your material has some splits at an end, you can either reduce the overall length or width of the toy box, or cut the splitting off the end first, and use another piece of lumber.

Securing and milling

Prior to milling, I addressed any weak­nesses in the wood by using black CA glue to secure the knots and cracks. This not only stabilizes the wood but also enhances its appearance, as the black CA glue high­lights rather than conceals the knots. I let the glue cure overnight, then levelled excess glue with a block plane. If you’re not concerned about filling the knots in your project, you can skip this step, though be aware of any loose knots as you build; because you don’t want any to come loose as you’re machining them.

Milling began by dressing one face and squaring one edge on a jointer, then plan­ing the boards to their finished thickness to achieve parallel faces. It’s easier to plane them to final thickness now, as the narrow parts will all fit through a thickness planer. Waiting until the planks are laminated into one wide panel means you need a wide thickness planer to dress them to final thick­ness. A note about the final thickness of the parts: you can leave these parts thicker if you’d like.

Panel assembly

Trimming the board edges for the box and lid panels came next. I arranged the 10 38″ boards to best highlight the lid and front panel. Any defects in the boards were hidden on the inside of the box, where pos­sible, so I didn’t have to mill all the defects out, thereby keeping the boards as thick as possible. Next, I drew a triangle on each panel and took pictures to aid in keeping the same position of each board through glue-up. I also wrote on opposing edges of each board alternating the word “up” or “down” to indicate which way the board would be final-trimmed. By alternating the face of the boards up and down on the table saw, any discrepancy in the blade being square to the table is negated when the boards are glued and the joints appear seamless.
Before gluing the boards, I used 3/8″ × 1-1/2″ diameter dowels to aid in edge align­ment. The dowels don’t add any strength to the joint unless you have a poorly fitting joint. My Dowelmax jig has served me well for a decade. Like any tool, a learning curve is required but the reduced stress when gluing is worth it to me. Other dowel jigs, or even dowel centres, could also be used.

Three dowels per joint were used on the shorter side panel boards and five dowels were used on the front, back and lid boards. Locate the dowels so they remain hidden in the panel, rather than become vis­ible when the panel ends are trimmed to length after glue-up.

Lid details

I glued only three of the four boards for the lid panel, as the fourth board is screwed on top of the box, flush with the rear of the box. This reduced the size of the lid so the hinges and hinge stay don’t have to carry as much weight. This also makes the lid smaller and lighter for little kids to lift, and gives about 4″ of room for the lid to open before hitting a wall behind the toy box. The hinge stay holds the lid open past 90° so it will not come down on a little kid. This slow-close hinge stay from Lee Valley is the best I have found. My grandkids’ toy box lid still closes slowly after five years.

Drill dowel joints

Once the individual panels were glued up, I trimmed the ends of each panel to width, taking into account any flaws that could be cut off. I then drilled more 3/8″ diam­eter dowel holes on the ends of the side panels and on the face of the mating front and back panels. These were drilled so they wouldn’t protrude past the outer faces of the front and back panels, yet would collectively accept a 1-1/2″ long dowel. These dow­els ensured the corner joints would be easy to position in the rush to glue and clamp the box square, as well as keep the corners secure for a long time. Just be sure not to bore the holes in the front and back panels so deep they protrude out the show face of the workpiece.

I used a card scraper to clean up any remaining glue where the clamps sat, as well as level the joints. It’s mainly the inner faces that need to be taken care of now, as the outer faces can be smoothed once the project is together. I then sanded the panels on my drum sander to level the faces. Most woodworkers don’t have a drum sander and if that’s the case for you, you could use a belt sander, a hand plane or a random orbital sander. You just want the faces of each panel as flat and smooth as possible.

After my drum sander, I followed with a 6″ ROS to clean up any surface marks from the drum sander.

A bit more machining

Before assembling the panels, I used a dado stack to cut the 3/8″ deep grooves for the 1/2″ oak plywood bottom. This leaves two square holes at either end of the box where the grooves in the front and back exit the sides. Though you can leave the holes as-is (which is what I did), two ways around this problem are to cut four small blocks of wood to glue in the holes after assembly, or to stop the groove in some way. This could mean stopping the groove on the table saw, then using a chisel to remove the rest of the material up to about 1/2″ from the ends of the fronts and backs, or to use a router equipped with an edge guide to machine the grooves, and make sure to stop machining the groove before the ends of the front and back panels.

Finally, use a router and bit to rout a 1/8″ round over to ease all exposed edges.

A word about adhesives

My glue of choice is regular wood glue, but the main challenge with it is its short open time. Depending on the type, it can start to dry in as little as 10 minutes. For most assemblies this isn’t a problem, but for assemblies that are larger or more complex I turn to Old Brown Glue, a hide glue, as it has a longer open time of up to 30 minutes. No heat or mixing required.

Another option is to assemble the project in sub-assemblies. This involves only apply­ing glue to some of the joints, then bringing some, or even all, of the project together to dry. Then, when the glue has dried, you can remove the non-glued parts, apply glue and re-assemble them. Just be sure that you glue the first group of parts up so the non-glued joints can be dis-assembled and have glue applied to them.

In the case of this toy box, you could glue the back panel to either one or both of the sides first, then let those joints dry before finishing up with the other parts. If you glue up both the front panel, back panel and one side panel, you can’t flex the front and back panel away from each other to remove the non-glued side panel in order to add glue to it. Just think through the process before starting a sub-assembly.

Box glue-up

It’s helpful to clamp the box through a dry run before glue is applied to figure out the best process for assembling the box, determine which clamps go where and to make sure the box can be clamped square.

When glue is put into the dowel holes, I use a 3/8″ bolt to squish the excess glue out of the hole so there is little to no squeeze-out when the dowel is inserted. This also helps to spread the glue on the inner sur­faces of the dowel hole. Although this works very well to ensure full glue contact, it does take a bit more time which slows down assembly.

Once you have all the things you’ll need nearby, proceed with applying glue into the dowel holes, as well as adding some glue to the ends of the panels. Bring the parts together and apply clamps. Cauls between the clamp pads and the workpieces will pre­vent denting the wood surface. Check the box for square and let the glue dry. Once dry, remove the clamps, scrape off any glue squeeze-out and, if you opted to glue the toy box up in sub-assemblies, glue up the rest of the parts.

Attaching the hardware 

Once the clamps are removed, the back board for the lid needs two brass hinges installed. I used a high-quality pair of hinges from Lee Valley, but this lid would function just as well with a much simpler and more cost-effective butt hinge. With the lid in place, I used a pencil to mark the location of the hinges on painter’s tape so there was no chance the pencil marks would remain on the wood, as all surfaces are mostly sanded. A marking knife cut next to the edge of the hinge makes it eas­ier to use a pull saw to cut the depth of the hinge plate. I then used a trim router with a straight bit to remove most of the waste, then cleaned it up with a chisel.

Use a downcut spiral bit in a router to remove most of the waste, then use a chisel to clean up to the saw line. Drill all hinge screw holes with a self-centring bit.

Drill 1/2″ diameter holes on the sides with a Forstner bit to anchor white nylon rope for the handles. To prevent tear-out as the Forstner bit drilled through, I held a scrap board on the inside and stopped drill­ing when I could feel the centre point contact the scrap board. You can also stop drilling to check on your depth. I then drilled from the inside out to complete the hole.

I also used a 1/8″ round over bit in the holes to ease the edges to reduce stress on the rope and to avoid splintering. To pre­vent the end of the rope from fraying when cutting the rope, place a piece of painter’s tape snuggly on the cut line and cut through the tape. Use a small flame to melt the ends of the rope before removing the tape.

Final adjustments

I made the front and back panels slightly proud of the sides and used a combination spiral trim bit to flush up the ends to the side panels. You could also do this with a sharp hand plane or a belt sander.

It’s also time to fill the four square holes in the sides with filler blocks, if you choose to take that route. Cut a length to the cor­rect width and height, then trim the blocks to length from that strip and glue them in.

For some added visual detail, I included brass-coloured GRK low profile #8 × 1-1/2″ long screws in the box corners and to secure the top lid board. I don’t think the box corners need the screws for strength, but it doesn’t hurt. I predrilled the holes with a drill jig to ensure I didn’t angle the hole and have a screw blow out the side. A final sand­ing with the Festool edge sander to clean up marks left from the trim bit bearing, and a quick hand sanding with the grain to remove any clamp marks, sharp edges or scratches will prep the project for a finish.

Finishing 

I sprayed four coats of shellac on the inside and six coats on the outside. I pre­fer to mix shellac flakes in alcohol so I know the product is fresh. For this project, I mixed 1/3 dark garnet and 2/3 ultra blonde flakes in the appropriate amount of alco­hol. I use a spray tent, complete with the proper filters and ventilation fan, to ensure a safe spraying environment for me and my workshop.

There’s also nothing wrong with apply­ing a few coats of water-based or oil-based polyurethane to this toy box, depending on what you have on hand and prefer.

Add letters

The 5″ MDF letters on the box were ordered from Amazon, though there’s always the option of making your own from plywood, MDF or solid wood. I sanded the letters and brushed on Target Coatings HSF5000 surface filler before re-sanding and spraying on three coats of blue enamel paint. I attached the letters to the box front using LePage No More Nails double-sided tape for a permanent fix. I first arranged the letters, then used painter’s tape to mark the location of each letter, then applied the double-sided tape to the back of each letter and repositioned them on the box.

When the finish had cured, I applied a coat of Renaissance paste wax to the outside of the box (after the letters were attached) with #0000 steel wool to improve the appearance and provide a bit of pro­tection. I didn’t apply wax to the inside to avoid residual odor.

I really like the natural look of the fin­ished project without any stain or heavy colour, though everyone has their own thoughts on this. Some bold colours could fit very nicely with this toy box theme. If you’re very adventurous, you could get your kids or grandkids to paint the outside of the box, though you have to be ready to say “yes” to painting it white and adding a rain­bow of polka dots.

Bring this toy box upstairs and invite your kids or grandkids to start loading it up with their toys. If you can trick them into think­ing that this is the most fun part, you’ll never trip over another toy again.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of many 2×4 projects we will be including in our pages. If you have any 2×4 projects you feel would fit nicely in a future issue, contact Rob Brown at [email protected].