woodworking – Alexander Miles

Big Project: Toastyhaus

TL;DR - Our big project for 2024 was building a Finnish-style sauna! It was a bigger and more expensive undertaking than expected, but we're thrilled with how it turned out. For anyone considering a Cedarbrook kit, as long as you're comfortable doing basic woodworking (measuring accurately, using a mitre saw, brad nailer) and already own / can borrow those tools, then they provide great quality for the price.

Last winter, while on travel, we stayed at an Air B&B with a stand-alone sauna. It was the first time in years that I’d been anywhere near one, and we were both excited to try it. Needless to say it was awesome, and I was hooked. Months went by and it didn’t really cross my mind, till one day in early January it popped up mid-conversation that we’d briefly talked about wanting to build one at home. That kicked off a multi-month arc of reading, planning, measuring, asking questions on Reddit, more reading, re-measuring, and finally budgeting. I’ll say off the bat; we definitely exceeded the budget I sketched out back when this whole process got started. For the sake of transparency, and since so many of these type of write-ups tend to gloss over how expensive a project like this can get, I’ll provide the costs for each phase of the project and a summary at the end. Still worth noting that I'm paying a Bay Area premium for the landscaping and electrical, in other parts of the country those could've been cheaper.

After reading and re-reading a copy of Lassi Liikkanen’s The Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design, as well as the Trumpkin’s Notes on Building a Sauna over on localmile.org (the two go-to English language resources on the topic), I eventually zeroed in on Cedarbrook at the best option in the western United States. Cedarbrook is a long-established business in the Seattle area, they were willing to customize the kit to my specifications (specifically height, bench width, and vent placement), and included heaters from recognized Finnish manufacturers. A lot of the alternatives I came across during my search turned out to be suspect. Just a little sleuthing turned up that a lot of fancy websites were selling the same handful of basic saunas one can buy through Ali Express, just with their logo laser etched onto it. We decided to go with a “kit” sauna in part because we hoped it would be less expensive than building a permanent structure, and if we ever do move, a kit could be taken down and shipped. Having put it together once, I’m not sure how realistic it would be to tear it down and ship it, but it’s at least in the realm of possibility.

Original yard, our defacto paint spraying booth. — Original yard, our ex-paint spraying booth.

The first big question to answer was “where do we put this thing?”, and the answer turned out to be a little expensive. We had an empty corner of our backyard, and an unused patch of front yard beyond the fence. After measuring the space, we decided to shift the fence forward about 16 feet, to convert roughly 200 square feet of front yard into backyard, and get this larger area leveled and set with pavers. Along the way I got to learn the term “hardscape”, which means “expensive” in colloquial English. The total bill for moving the fence, adding a new span of fence to bridge the gap, leveling and paving the space, using the nicer polymeric sand, and adding the curved profile we asked for came out to $8,500. On the upside, this portion was super fast; we’d begun scoping out the patio on January 24th, and by Feb 1st the project was complete.

It was during our annual outing to Seattle for Emerald City Conic Con that we took the opportunity to visit Cedarbrook’s showroom in person. They were super friendly, tons of information, and answered my numerous questions without any hesitation. While they told us they had a bit of a backlog, we went ahead and put in our order for sauna on February 29th, springing for an 8' x 8' x 8'8" model. With the 10.5kW Cilindro heater, a peaked metal roof kit, door with a tall window, and full floor duckboard the total came out to $18,280. We paid half the price up front with the second half due when they shipped it. About a month later they sent over engineering drawings for me to review, just a few minor edits and we got the ball got rolling. The delivery date did shift out a couple times, talking to them it sounded like the taller sauna kits needed to be shipped and handled separately, so tended to take longer. On July 15th it finally arrived! Unloading it was longer task than we anticipated, in part because the pallet it was on was wedged between other shipments on the delivery truck, meaning we only had access to one side of it.

Delivery day! The garage becomes a lumberyard.

Eventually it was all unpacked and piled up in our garage, what felt like an infinity of panels, boards, and bits. The following weekend we dug out the directions packet and tools and got assembling. The base plate, walls, and even ceiling went together in one day. The benches took an additional afternoon. I will say we called Cedarbrook several times during the build and they were ready with answers and info every single time. The difficult step we hadn’t thought much about during ordering was the roof; we opted for the peaked metal roof, and working at 8.5 feet off the ground got a little spooky at times. When our contractor came out to run the electrical to the sauna, I asked if they’d help put the roof together and they were happy to bill a couple extra hours and have their team of guys get it done. There were a couple questions about wiring that came up, but after scrutinizing the diagrams in the manual we eventually got everything set. Finally by July 31st the electrical and roof were complete, and the sauna was ready for its first heating! I did find that one of the heater legs got bent, either in shipping or during the install, but Harvia was kind enough to ship me a replacement kit for no charge.

The walls go up easily, the ceiling was a little tricky.

The three remaining steps, namely putting up the heater guardrail, installing the duckboard flooring, and applying a protective oil to the outside of the sauna, would end up taking longer due to travel. After a bit of reading we ended up going with two gallons of transparent Penofin red-label, which was enough for the sauna exterior, as well short duckboard walk we made for the outdoor shower. But now, about a month after initial delivery, it’s finally finished and working very well. It seems to reach temperature (185-195 F) in about 45-50 minutes, which matches with predictions.

Three lessons we learned along the way:

First: we should have spent more effort keeping the base plate perfectly square. We did square it up before adding the wall panels, but the act of mounting the panels exerted enough wobbly forces that the final structure didn't stay perfectly square. It still works, but a few bits don't meet as cleanly as they could have.

Second: We should have applied the Penofin oil to the exterior faces of the wall panels before assembly, it would've been far easier than painting them from ladders post-assembly.

Third: We probably should have asked Cedarbrook to provide a conduit for the exhaust fan. The Xenio control box has hookups for fan power, which would've allowed us to control (just on/off, no variable speed) from the same panel that controls the heater and lights, but without a conduit built into the wall panel it's going to take some additional work before we can get to the cleanest setup. For now the fan is just run off it's own outlet.

I’m planning another write-up discussing the design specifics (bench heights, vent placement, heater sizing, etc.) heating performance and some detailed measurements I’ve got planned (namely temperature vs height & time, humidity and CO2 concentration decay rates, impact of ventilation flow rate), but that will take a little longer to pull together. Suffice to say, I’m incredibly happy with our sauna, and have already used it about a dozen times.

Step/Item	Cost
Moving Fence + Leveling + Paving	$8,250
Cedarbrook Kit	$18,280
Electrical upgrade	$2,600
Outdoor Shower + Walkway	$235
Lights, Screws, Nails, Penofin Oil	~$250
Total	~$29,615

That is really expensive, particularly since when I started down this road I was looking at much smaller units for around $8k. Would I rather have a used car or a swanky month-long cruise? Honestly no, I've already gotten so much enjoyment out of the sauna, and with a little care it ought to last many years.

Wood: Home Library Complete!

The project that we kicked off way back in October of 2021 is finally coming to completion! We now have a full home library, eight full bookcases and five extra shelves in retrofitted closet-nook. Was it more expensive than buying eight higher-end bookcases? Yes. Did it take longer than just buying them? Also yes. I’m glad we did it though, we learned a ton about woodworking, project planning, HVLP spraying of paint and lacquer, and gained a ton of confidence for tackling big projects in the future. At the moment only a fraction of the library is catalogued, something I’ll address in the weeks and months to come, but it’s already our favorite room in the house. One detail not captured in the photos; the lighting has been upgraded to Philips Hue bulbs and a light strip is recessed in the nook to keep the books legible and looking good even after dusk.

As with any project, I have to force myself not to pick up on all the wonky mistakes made along the way, but I’m genuinely happy with how it all turned out.

A little section here for important things we learned along the way.

"Brushing lacquer" can be sprayed in an HVLP gun by diluting 1 part of it to 2 parts lacquer thinner, and 40 psi is a good pressure. We saved a ton of money just buying the tool rather than using dozens of aerosol cans.
That same HVLP sprayer can do paint, incredibly even layers of it, just clean it thoroughly afterwards.
Don't trust that your router bit is at the center of it's base plate - measure that!
3/4" thick plywood isn't precisely 0.750", don't make it a critical dimension when designing. Same for the width and length, you usually get slightly more than 4' x 8' in a sheet.
Think about the direction of gravity during the glue-up, this is where you can accumulate skew across a large piece depending on how you orient it.
Keep track of your measurements; are they center-to-center, inner-edge to inner-edge, something else? Be clear in sketches.
If you're making more than one of something, build a jig, but really make sure its the right jig before you get cutting.
Don't stress the small stuff, wood filler can work some real magic, and big mistakes teach you something important (make scrap for the next project).

2022: Year in Review

Despite best intentions, I effectively stopped updating this site for the entirety of 2022. I've got a pile of projects and personal updates to share; let's take a look month by month.

January: Mostly goal setting, one of the big ones for this year was to cycle at least 1,000 miles before the year was up, which I actually managed to polish off in October! A marked improvement from the previous year, but still leaves plenty of room for improvement in 2023.

February: I spent some time re-playing Morrowind, my favorite of the Elder Scrolls games, but this time with the Morrowind Overall Improvement Suite Enhanced (MOISE) through Wabbajack. It was my first time using Wabbajack and I was surprised at how easy it made deploying the wild number of mods in the package. Have to say, it still holds up all these years later. This month I also polished off Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, which I didn't find as compelling as Platinum, but fun enough, and Kentucky Route Zero, which my friends had been pushing to the top of my queue for months. KRZ was amazing, and quite unique.

March: A significant amount of time in March went into organizing my unwieldy Magic collection. I threw together two shelves sized to wedge perfectly into my office closet, sorted everything, and printed labels for long boxes. Now that I'm writing this, I'm actually thinking to have another go with an eye toward spring cleaning, since I've absolutely accumulated more copies / variants of cards than I'm ever realistically going to use. I sped through Pokemon Legends: Arceus in March, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was the first really fresh take on the formula in ages, and I absolutely devoured it.

April: A big month work-wise, so not a ton happened home-side. This was the month were the rough sketch for our library finally became a CAD model. It was also when I first began really digging into Elden Ring, a game which eventually became my big obsession for the year.

The pile of fancy plywood that inhabited the living room for most of the year

May: A busy month! A playlist was sent out for my long-running disk exchange, I found a much safer bike route to work that I began using regularly, and we finally began cutting wood for the library. There were a few false starts and errors to sort out (always be clear if you’re measuring shelves center-to-center or inner-face to inner-face, material sold as 3/4” thick can be off by 1/16” and no one will tell you, etc), but real progress was made. Our group of magic-playing friends finally met up again, and I built new EDH decks for Ouliana and myself for the occasion (Jolene treasures and Kotori vehicles) which worked well. In less fun news, the water heater that came with the house finally gave out, after a bit of research we replaced it was a heat-exchanger based electric heater, which has performed beautifully and keeps the garage cool and dry as a bonus.

June: Rather than risk the expensive walnut plywood, we built the same design in bargain priced maple plywood; this first prototype bookshelf was glued up and put in my office! The other notable project in June was finally putting up mirrors in the garage gym, which required us to learn how to cut thicker glass. The methods for handling stained glass still work in principal, but we had to upgrade to some beefier “grozing” pliers to get consistent breaks.

July: I made a trip out to Arizona to see family, which was a fun time. We hosted one of Ouliana’s friends for bit, and began lacquering the bookshelves. The details of HVLP spraying were a little intimidating at first, but once we’d getting the mix ratio correct (and remembered to clean the spray gun!) it was an absurdly easy way to apply multiple coats of lacquer to large projects. This was the month were most of the library got built.

After a few design tweaks, the first walnut shelf is complete

August: A month of travel! I joined Ouliana on a road trip that took us to Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, and attended Siggraph for the first time, which was an absolute blast. It'd been years since I'd gotten to travel with my sister, which was a real treat. We even managed to hop over to Victoria for a day via seaplane, which was fun!

While it's basically a fancy ferry, the novelty can't be denied

September: Another busy month at work, not a ton of projects got attention. I did start experimenting a bit with fasting, with some success with 8-36 hour long fasts. Success meaning I felt good, wasn’t hungry the entire time, and could easily focus on tasks. Going forward I’ll likely only fast for 8 hours or so a day, since the pattern of biking in, working, and biking home before breaking my fast felt quite good, and still gave me the energy and protein intake to support lifting. This was also the month I started a rune level 1 run of Elden Ring, and started recording videos of the notable fights. This run would continue through the end of the year, and still has two fights left to close out. This was both an excuse to practice my video editing skills, engage more deeply with a game I really enjoyed, but also to take part in the /r/OneBros subreddit of challenge runners, which has generally proved to be a bit more friendly and open than the /r/EldenRing community.

First three shelves down, randomly populated with books

October: Another year, another Spooky Movie Month! This year we fell off the wagon a bit, and only a handful of the selections actually got watched, but it remains a fun tradition I’ll no doubt return to. In October we also made a trip out to Las Vegas for Magic’s 30th anniversary event! After playing the game on and off since 1995, I finally obtained a piece of power, a NM Unlimited Mox Jet. Not a major life event for most, but still a big day for me. I also picked up the last few cards for another deck (Nebuchadnezzar old cards) While in Vegas we also visited OmegaMart, which was amazing, and caught Tom Segura live, which was a treat. We got back just before Halloween hit, and went big on our halloween decorations, including the now-infamous 12 foot skeleton.

I got to meet Mark Rosewater at Magic 30th!

November: Given holiday travel, this was the month a lot of the end-of-year work had to be done, plus all the planning for the trip in December. The one project I did find time for this month was attempting to improve the fog machine we used at Halloween. The fog everyone wants is a spooky layer, hovering about ankle-high, obscuring the ground. Unfortunately, the fog most machines produce is hot and light, and mostly floats away in large clouds. We did grab something advertising itself as a low-lying fog machine that passes the hot fog through a chamber you load with ice, but it was hardly any better. Searching around surfaced this video demonstrating an ice-less solution. The guy postulates that it’s not the temperature of the fog that dominates it’s behavior, but it’s water content, which tracks since loading with water will change the density a lot more than a few degrees of temperature change. I went ahead and hunted down the parts, between Amazon for the transducers, and Lowes for the containers and couplers, and built a significantly improved fog generator! The other notable event was the acquisition of a wood lathe through The Crucible's annual garage sale! We haven't turned anything yet, but absolutely will soon.

December: With travel fast approaching, I had to batch out a lot of Christmas gifts in just a few days, so I defaulted to the things I know people will enjoy: jerky, cookies, and books. Unfortunately the dehydrator I’ve been using for close to a decade now finally gave up the magic smoke, and had to be replaced. The BeefBot 9000 (not it’s actual name, but rather a bestowed title) proved itself by working through 6 lbs of marinated meat in just two long sessions. After a frantic weekend of baking, dehydrating, and packing boxes, I got all the Christmas treats sent off before my flight. In January I should have an update to share, at present I’m in France, making use of my very-limited French and taking in the sights.

Wood: First furniture project, a bed!

The Ikea bed (a queen-sized Malm), after being dutifully moved around over the last six or so years, had begun to display symptoms of the dreaded "wiggles". The slats had also picked up the bad habit of unceremoniously dropping between the (now distended) supports and causing all sorts of frustration, back pain, a mid-sleep surprises. I'd been tempted by the idea of trying to build a bed since I bought the table saw, and finally decided April was the month. The design was pretty constrained though; not only would it need to be easy to get up (and eventually down) a spiral staircase, it also had to be something that we could cut on our 4' x 6' balcony. The standard queen bed dimensions are 60" x 80", which astute observers will notice does not at all fit on the balcony. Thankfully, I came across a handful of designs that were essentially platform beds composed of boxes with drawers and supports added on.

While it's true I did tweak some of the dimensions and details, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this video, which not only provided the fundamental design, also helped me dodge some snags along the way. One of the first big learnings of this project: nicer plywood gets super expensive, and long drawers do too. The four 8' x 4' sheets this project required ran about $300, the drawer slides about another $100, and roughly another $100 for the miscellaneous bits (edge banding, dowel stock, drawer pulls, fasteners, etc).

This was also my first project using pocket-hole screws, which, I know, some people view as cheating. Clearly this project wasn't meant to be fine woodworking, but rather functional furniture that I dearly wanted to have done within the time of a month (mostly evenings and weekend mornings). I did not, however, have a brad nailer / pin nailer, some glue and clamps ended up doing a lot more work than I anticipated. Rather than run through the entire process step-by-step, I'm just providing a few photos I snapped along the way (skip to the end to see the final result). For the finish we just sanded with 320 git with an orbital sander and put on two coats of wipe-on oil-based polyurethane, with a hand-sanding at 400 git in between coats.

All lined up and ready to sand and finish

Clearly the next project is building a new headboard. It's been a few days already and I'm still incredibly stoked to have more storage as well as a better night's sleep! The biggest part of this for me has been getting a bit of practice on a larger-scale project; now basic furniture projects don't seem quite so intimidating!

Big update: More boxes, more shirts, and beer!

It's been a good while since I've set aside time to scratch out an update, but not for lack of activity. Rather than split all the projects across several posts, I'm opting for one big one! On the woodworking side, I pulled two boxes together: one to house the awkwardly large Planechase planes, and a tea-box as a mother's day gift.

While planning out the Planechase box, I stuck to the philosophy that each new project needs to have at least one element I haven't wrestled with before. This time: hinges, felt lining, and one-piece box construction! For materials I went with a plank of bubinga that I picked up a few weeks ago, with curly maple and blue paua shell for the inlays. The lid and bottom were attached with rabbets and the corners 45-degree mitered. A small riser was added to the dice-holding compartment to make it easier to get at them.

The planeswalker symbol in curly maple inlay

Loaded with all the sleeved planes and dice!

Planechase anthology symbol inlaid in blue paua shell

It was my sister's idea to whip up something together for mother's day, and we hit upon the idea of a tea box. She provided the graphics for the lid, helped select materials, and provided plenty of encouragement. Ribbon sapele and bird's-eye maple were picked for the box and top/bottom respectively. For the joinery I decided to make it as fancy as possible, and ended up building a dead-simple box-joint jig for the table saw. After a few tests, I was able to make nice tight-fitting box joints in the fancy wood! The patterns were laser'd on, and a small inlay of niove was glued in.

Ribbon sapele showing off the finger joints

While digging through my closet I came across an early attempt at a megaman shirt and decided that it'd make a good target for a re-do. I hunted down a suitable graphic and went through what, at this point, is a tried and true process. I'm much happier with the result!

Lastly, I got bit by the home-brew bug a week or two ago! I dug out and inventoried my equipment, and picked up an ingredient kit at the local brew shop. When thinking about the trajectory, I realized I don't really have a group of thirsty grad-student friends to conscript for bottling day any more, so I took the next logical step: a kegging setup!

With that set up, current dispensing sparkling water, we got started on the brewing. A scotch ale was the order of the month. The brewing was briefly put on hold while the fittings on our new kettle got a few wraps of plumbers tape, but after that there were no issues during the boiling, cooling, or moving it to the sanitized carboy. A couple days after pitching the yeast, some drama struck!

The fermentation was a bit over-zealous! We quickly ran out for some 1/2" tubing, and fitted it as a blow-off tube, the far end submerged in dilute sanitizer. By the next evening it was done pushing out krausen, and has settled into a slow and study bubbling. In retrospect, a fairly surgery brew in a smaller-sized carboy; I should've expected this and fitted the tube right off the bat, but learning is fine too. Bottling went smoothly, with half going into about 20 bottles, the rest going into the keg.

Woodworking: Inlaid Box for Cube

This is a project I've had in the back of my head for more than a year now. Every few months it'd resurface and I'd jot down some dimensions, look into materials, and inevitably get distracted by life. A week ago I had totally open weekend and decided that it was time. Unfortunately I didn't pause to take progress shots, but the vast majority of the techniques are the same as I used in the deckbox and land station. The corners are miter joints, the "floor" and lid are set into 1/8" deep rabbets all the way around, and the dividers simply slot into 1/8" deep dados on both sides.

Materials-wise, I stuck with maple for the frame, with bird's eye figure this time, ceder for the dividers, and baltic birch plywood for the lid and floor. The ceder was a lot softer than I anticipated, but I don't expect much wear on the dividers, and the smell is amazing. The inlay materials are cherry veneer, three colors of paua shell veneer, and five semi-precious stones (being pearl, blue onyx, onyx, carnelian, and malachite).

After sanding to 600 grit the maple and cherry got a coat of danish oil, producing a lovely warm and deep look, but I found in testing that the plywood looked miserable and blotchy with that approach. I ended up going with a few layers of spray varnish and a final sanding with 600 grit and ultra fine steel wool on the plywood, giving it a satin feel and slightly warming up the color without any of the blotching.

Laser cutting the lotus pieces (sorry for the vertical video, I know)

The veneers and lid-inset were all laser cut, requiring six different cutting patterns to get everything matched up and at the right burn-depth. Needless to say, some experimentation went into this process. An additional mini-project came out of this testing as well, which I'll post later on!

The veneers were attached with a thin later of Titebond I (I know there are better glues, even just TB III, but I didn't want to put off this project for another week) and clamped with wax paper for an hour. The same spray vanish and rub-out procedure was used on both sides of the lid, giving it a wonderful feel. Finally the stones were secured with a drop of cyanoacrylate super glue each.

While this project was only a marginal step up in complexity, I still learned a ton while working through it. While every small mistake and blemish that ended up in the final piece stand out a lot to me, I'm still really happy with the result!

Woodworking: Curly Maple Deckbox

My second real project in wood, a commander-sized deckbox, represented a step up in joint complexity and wood quality. I also had to deal with an unexpected issue, namely wood movement. The board of curly maple was purchased months ahead of time, with a couple different ideas in mind, and during that interval it went from a beautifully flat and square board, to a pringles-chip shaped board with slightly off-true edges. Had I been more motivated, I suppose I could have use a hand plane and pared it down to flat. With time at a premium, and a deep conviction that clamping and gluing can do amazing things, I did my best to roll with it.

I also tried to remember to take process photos as I went, not only to share here, but also for my own benefit the next time I kick off a project. The basic design was pretty simple: rabbet joints, rabbet joints everywhere. The four vertical walls of the box all get an eighth-inch deep 3/4 inch tall rabbet along their bottom edge to accommodate a beefy cheery base, and additional rabbets along the vertical edge for the left and right sides. One concern from the outset was the stability of cutting an eighth inch of material away from panels only a quarter inch thick, but going slowly, it did work out. Additionally, an eighth inch deep, quarter inch tall, slot was cut into the back and side panels to allow for a side-in lid. It's worth noting here that the lid had to be subtly tapered by sanding the edges meant to mate with the slots to allow for easy movement.

The raw materials were a 24" x 5" x 0.25" board of curly maple, and a 3/4" thick board of cherry (which I'd previously been using as a backstop to prevent tear-out when sawing). Both boards were wider than my miter box would allow, so I ended up using clamps and the straight edge of other boards to establish the cuts. In the photo below, the saw is neatly guided by straight-edged stock on both sides.

With all the pieces cut, the front panel (notably 0.25" shorter than the others, to permit the lid to slide out) was off to the laser cutter. I should also note, the design is not mine, it was found here, and was simply too cool to pass up. Maple takes laser engraving very well, and even grey-scale depth features were rendered very well.

Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos during the routing step, but they were all executed with a 0.25" flat router bit at medium-low speed. For the finish, I wanted the grain to really pop, so I used the remainder of the board as a test piece (seen far left in the photo below). The top portion of the test piece got two coats of diluted anoline dye, then two coats of Danish oil, while the bottom simply got the oil. I settled on dye+oil again, but in retrospect should probably have gone darker (less dilute) on the dye. The blue-taped areas, aside from the test piece, were to exclude oiling the gluing surfaces.

After a brief dry-fit, gluing and clamping went on for two days. I did have to make a second pass, as a small gap opened up in one of the corners, but after that it looked good.

Finally, here are some photos of the final product!

I probably won't rely so heavily on rabbet joints in the future, but this was super instructive in the difficulties and details of executing them. Also, this came together more quickly than the first project! As I get my basic skills in line, things go a bit faster and smoother, but there's still seemingly infinite room still to grow.

Woodworking: MTG Land Station

I've been playing around with the idea of woodworking for pretty much the whole year now, watching videos on YouTube and tearing through a few books on the topic. I did a few simple projects leaning heavily on the laser cutter to do all the operations, but that isn't really woodworking. I finally decided to put together a land station, that is, a box for people to grab basic lands on those rare times a draft comes together!

The design is fairly simple, four planks of wood for the sides of the box, with 45 degree mitred edges, and four dados (slots) for dividers, plus a flat plank as a bottom. The dimenions of a card are (roughly) 3.5 inches tall, but 2.5 inches wide, and I ran with those for my first attempt. Trying to put a 45 degree miter along a 3.5 inch edge with a hand saw was a losing battle, and the prospect of putting in eight dados with a router plane (something like this) sounded frustrating. After quite a bit of hemming and hawing, I eventually bit the bullet and bought a router, some bits, and a table for it. While there was a sale going on at the time, I certainly had to convince myself that I'm excited for more than this one project.

The dimensions were driven in part by the cheap wood I had access to, namely long planks of quarter-inch thick, 3.5 inch wide pine. I kept the height and stuck with a single thickness to simplify the sawing operations, which are harder than they look. I ended up using a cheap clamping mitre box to establish a perpendicular cut line, and then clamped the piece to a heavy piece of scrap for the remainder of the cut to prevent tear-out (an issue that frustrated me enormously at first.)

My initial design had tolerances that ended up being too tight, and it was going to be impossible to get the cards in and out. The final dimensions of each piece are laid out below. The critical number turned out to be 2.75 inches - the width of the empty space (measured from divider edge to divider edge, not centers) for each card "lane". If that sounds a little too big, it's because it is, but a small error one way or the other won't prevent cards from getting into or out of the box. In the future I'll probably shave 1/8th inch off that value to reduce card "jiggle" in something like a deck box.

2x sides (L/R) - 3.5" x 5.5" x 0.25"
2x sides (F/B) - 3.5" x 15.25" x 0.25"
1x bottom - 5.5" x 15.25" x 0.25"
4x dividers - 3.5" x 5.25" x 0.25"

The dados to retain the dividers are 1/8th (0.125) inch deep on the front and the back, and were cut with the fence fixed to ensure they ended up aligned. I had to make up a 90 degree jig by clamping some heavy blocks to cut the furthest-in dados, as the fence can only move about 5 inches back from the bit, but it worked well enough. The mitres were put on with a 45 degree router bit, over many passes to carefully creep up on the proper depth. Once all the cuts were done, the front panel was off to the laser.

The pattern was generated using the vector mana symbols generously posted by Goblin Hero over at Slightly Magic, they had just to be scaled and moved around to fit the panel. I put down some masking tape to prevent resin deposition on the wood, but it also seems to have caused some line-artifacts in the final cut, likely due to "thick" overlaps attenuating the beam. In the future I'll probably avoid using tape and just sand the surface clean afterward, as the residual adhesive also looked to interfere with the dye and oil in a few places. For reference, it was cut on an Epilog Ext36 150W in raster mode at 600 DPI, 100% speed, 70% power, in a single pass.

After sanding all the sides with a ~250 git sanding sponge, the sides and panels were glued together using titebond and a 90 degree clamp, something I didn't even know existed before needing one. I was able to snugly fit in the divider into the back without glue, and press the front panel on for gluing.

Gluing the front panel (bottom is not attached)

After letting it dry over night, I was ready to dye and finish it. I'd experimented with some scrap wood from the same boards to see how the dye and oil finishes would look, and settled on Transtint golden brown diluted in water, and a Danish Oil finish. I applied the dye carefully, given all the warnings it comes with, and gave it plenty of time to dry. Then the oil finish went on and took all night to set, I opted for a single layer as I wasn't looking for a shiny or silky appearance, just sealed. At this point I finally glued on the bottom and gave it a few hours to set.

It definitely took a lot more time, effort, and learning to finish this than I anticipated, but I am happy with how it came out. I've already gotten a lot of good suggestions for improving it (e.g. cutting semi-circular access holes at the front of each row so you can always get at the cards, also adding a lid isn't a bad idea), but will probably move on to other projects for the time being. The next on my list is a commander deck box, and after that, a substantially more intricate box for my cube to live in. I've got to spread out that tooling cost somehow!