thin is in

OK.... a 4" x 4" x 4" cube... what is the big deal?

There is no big deal.. unless you are a wood worker, if you are then you might be impressed by the fact that the box is made of a thin sheet of perfectly quarter sawn wood a sixteenth inch thick folded around as if it were paper.

There is always a story...
I was at the wooden boat show in Mystic CT last weekend, being a woodmizer owner I stopped and chatted with Dave, the wood mizer rep from NY. he was set up to demo the LT40, one of the top of the line saws they sell. Well he was cutting sycamore, a wood I have none of and have never used. He offered me a few boards which I greedily accepted. I had just gotten there and there was a lot to see so I told him I'd be back and wandered off into the wooden boat 'Mecca' that is Mystic.
The brain housing group can only hold so much raw unfiltered data.. so four hours later I stopped by to get the wood. The wood was too long to get in my car so we whacked the boards in half. He offered me true quarter sawn wood which is really the best cut of the tree in terms of structure and stability... some would say looks as well... i loaded the boards in the car, which they were nice enough to let me drive right up to the mill.. as an after thought, i was offered three sheet cuts... literally a 1/32" board>if you can call it that< and two 1'16" sheets. "can you do something with those?" He asked. I'll try I said as I gathered up the material. Now this was fresh cut wood and if anyone is interested wet sycamore has a musky horsy smell.. a bit like manure. I literally rolled the sheets up to a one foot roll. Took em to my shop and unrolled em and left them on the floor in the corner. The boards are standing with space all around waiting to be stickered and stacked.

A week passed and I noticed that these strips were dry to the touch and had stiffened up considerably. It was the holiday weekend and I left my real work aside to play with these strips of wood. I took one and simply bent it over and was surprised it didn't break... the outside layer did but enough wood fibre was intact to make it like a bent sheet of cardboard. "very interesting!" I thought. Being an ol packaging man, I wondered if scoring the material would help or have any effect on the bending so I grabbed an awl and scored the wood as deeply as I could and tried some new bends, the scoring helped. I formed up a small box and glued an overlapping 'glue flap'. It was enough of a success that I took a very nice piece and measured out a four by four box pattern and cut one for real, this time I used a 3" concrete floor chisel with a rounded edge.. I dressed the edge on a stone to round it over a little more evenly and then using that and a hammer I crushed the score line right into the wood with a hammer blow. I struck a test piece to see what would happen... when I thought I had the right touch I went for it. After scoring, I bent the box to shape and glued the overlapping side.. then to stiffen the crushed fibers I ran thin cyanoacrylate into the corners. The box case was formed and sturdy but not sturdy enough, I cut a piece of cherry and rabbeted it to a snug fit and glued that into the bottom... to reinforce the top I made a tiny 4 x 4 frame, morticed and tenoned and glued that just into the top to reinforce it there. I was amazed how stiff this 'too thin' box became! I glued some planetree veneer>european sycamore<to both sides of some baltic birch plywood.. then, when that was dry, I cut that to two squares for the top. These were glued to make up the rabbeted top and instead of covering the plywood edge as many would insist I left it plain as an edge detail. It is a snug drop in fit, this is the lightest weight box I have ever made and while I have heard of steaming wood and bending it.. and of skiving it, I have yet to hear of success at plain old cold forming. when I think of it I wonder if the fact that the wood was fresh cut a week ago meant that enough water was in the center of the board made it very much as if it had been steamed. anyways I wet sanded the corner edges to remove the torn fibers and gave the box a soak in penetrating oil. I have not listed it yet for sale but working wood that thin opened up a whole new approach for me to make a box. I am not the first to form a box by bending.. native americans did it for a thousand years, sewing the corners but it was sure new for me and looking at the full one inch boards drying I'm starting to consider re sawing it to 1/16".
Considering.... as 1/16 is a bit too thin for most uses but it sure looks neat. Whenever the argument arises over which corner joints are the best.. I of course insist on the virtues of box joints but I might have to now admit that the best joint is no joint! If you can pull it off.