My colored pencils were uncontained, a really difficult situation. So I built them a box! I really did it the hard way- all the pieces except the locking pin were hand sawn in the corner of my apartment.


I made a few little fixtures and things along the way. My favorite was this maple cross-drilling jig for my lathe. From machining I'm used to working in tolerances e.g. +/- .010. Working to a cut line in wood and never even measuring it is sort of zen though. To make this little fixture, I started by roughing out the profile. Then I grabbed it in a tool holder and fly cut the face so it'd be normal to the spindle--still no measuring. Using that as the reference plane I chiseled out a vee and checked it with a square and ink. The hole in the lock pin is drilled/reamed for a taper pin which acts as the locking lever.

Here's a little video-

Pencil Box from Dylan Rathkamp on Vimeo.