Wood: Boxes for my two new Set Cubes!

It's been ages since I've posted an update, but not for lack of activity! These two boxes actually came together a couple weeks ago, but finding the time to photograph and post them was the hard part.

A while back it got into my head to build set cubes, that is a draftable set of cards that re-creates the retail draft experience for a given set of Magic. In addition to prolonging the useful life of cards, it also saves time on sleeving every draft deck. You can read an excellent article on set cubes here. The ratio I ended up using is four of each common, two of each uncommon, and one of each rare and mythic (often shorted to just) 4/2/1/1, with the knowledge that either shuffling up the whole pile, or intentionally building packs, would result in reasonable versions of the experience. The cards themselves were double-sleeved in KMC perfect fits and KMC hyper mattes (a bit overkill, but I like having my cubes match so the lands can be used with any of them, and I wasn't about to single sleeve MM17).

The design for the boxes came about from a couple constraints. We've got two Ikea KALLAX shelves that are super convenient, and I wanted to make sure that the boxes would be able to fit side-by-side in a single Kallax cube, as well as made good use of the depth of the shelf. Next, the nicest dimesnional lumber I can easily get my hands on comes in 5" x 24" x 1/4" boards, so I wanted to limit each box to two of those. The lid and floor are retained by rabets, and the dividers by dadoes. All the corners are 45-degree miters done right on the saw. The poorly-drawn but accurate plans are in the first photo below, along with the cut-down and mitre'd panels. 

As for materials, the Unstable box is curly maple with a sapele pommele inlay, while the Kaladesh box is walnut with a quilted maple inlay. For the lids and floors I used some oak plywood I got on discount, the dividers in both are aromatic cedar. The veneer was incredibly thin, but the grain pattern was really striking. Both the inlay and the panels were laser cut to fit, but the wavy nature of the veneer made both of these tricker than usual. After the glue-up they got a couple coats of natural-tone Danish oil.

I'm really happy with how these turned out! They have a bit more space than I need for just the double-sleeved cards, but it means I can store the tokens, dice, and any other extras as well.

Having cracked out two of the same design in the same weekend, I'm comfortable saying I've got this design down. Now on to bigger and better things, new techniques and interesting challenges!