Will this box design work ?


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Hello all , first timer here.   I want to make a toy box with 2x2  “posts” on each corner and the front/sides/back  doweled into the posts. Will this be OK ?
 Using  reclaimed cherry moulding. Thinking of leaving the “posts” a little taller than the walls so the lid floats some. 
 

thx, mike 

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Walls will be glued up panels of solid cherry. A heavy 5/8 thick.  Box will be 17 “ tall. I’ll put 5or6 dowels in each end. 
how about a dado in each post to seat the wall panel in ?  Should help stiffen things up and give a little more gluing surface ?

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19 hours ago, Chet said:

I don't see any reason that it wouldn't work.  You just need to make sure you front/side/back material is thick enough so that under use the dowels don't blow out the sides.

Mike, Chet's advice is very good. I used dowel joinry on a project where the boards receiving the dows were 3/4. I used 3/8 inch dowels, and as I was tapping one of them, blew out one of the surfaces. I was using a shop made jig to drill the holes (wood, also 3/4 inch thick), but things still wandered off center likely through repetitive use of the wooden jig or wondering forced by the grain. Either way, perhaps a dowel size less than 1/2 of the thickness would leave more room for error or using a non wood hole slightly larger than three quarters of an inch to better control the dissent of the drill boring the holes. BTW, although my piece won't have the heavy duty use yours will, I fixed the blowout by grinding around the edges to give it a smoother appearance and filling it with epoxy. Now it just looks like a knot. Good luck and I hope my mistakes are a help.

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1 hour ago, Mikericks said:

Walls will be glued up panels of solid cherry. A heavy 5/8 thick.  Box will be 17 “ tall. I’ll put 5or6 dowels in each end. 
how about a dado in each post to seat the wall panel in ?  Should help stiffen things up and give a little more gluing surface ?

I like the dado idea.   With 2" x 2" corner posts, you could easily make the dadoes 3/8" or 1/2" deep, and I'm not sure you'd need the dowels.  If you want more structural integrity than just the dadoes, another option would be to insert screws through the posts into the sides, counterbore and plug with a contrasting wood, for decorative effect.  Seems like that would be simpler than getting the alignment perfect for the dowels.

I assume the side panels will have vertical grain orientation - else, seasonal wood movement could cause you problems.

The "floating" lid also sounds like a good idea - especially if there's the possibility of little fingers getting pinched under the lid.  I'm not sure what this does to your options for hinges for the lid (assuming it's going to be hinged).

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I will second what G Ragatz said regarding grain orientation. If you try to make the front, back, and end panels with the grain horizontal, you will create a cross grain situation between these panels and the corner posts. This could cause splitting sometime in the future. To do it that way, you will need to build these components as frames with floating panels. Look up "frame and panel construction" and you will find lots of info on how to do it.

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