Turning a pill box — pt. 1

Little boxes are quick and easy to make, but they offer some interesting challenges in the work holding department. Here’s how to turn one.

This box is about 1.5″ in diameter, so I started with a scrap of mahogany a little larger than that, and longer than needed. I mounted it on the lathe between centers and turned it round.

Here I’ve grabbed a Stebb drive center in the jaws of a chuck so I didn’t have to unscrew the chuck, then screw it back on later. I get a little runout (off-centeredness) this way, but not enough to make any difference with this kind of turning. (I wouldn’t do if for a competition top, however). Once I turned the blank round, I cut a tenon on each end.

Parting off the lid

With tenons cut, I could put away the Stebb center and grab the piece in a chuck—a necessity for hollowing out the insides of the box. The tenon gives me something to grab onto, and the tenon shoulder serves as an accurate reference against the top of the jaws. This latter part is critical. If I just grabbed the rough blank in the chuck without referencing the shoulders, it would almost certainly move under the stress of turning. And when I unchucked one end and grabbed the other, the two turning axes would almost certainly not line up. An extra minute now saves endless headache later (a lot like the rest of life, I think).

I wanted to preserve the grain match where the top and bottom would come together, so I used my narrowest parting tool—a 1/16″ Chris Stott design (rather like this one), to cut a fine kerf at the dividing line. Here you see it almost cut through.

The box base

The last steps before unmounting this piece were to hollow the inside to a depth of about 3/8″, and to turn a lip on the edge, so the top of the box would have something to grab. An easy way to hollow end-grain boxes such as this is to use Soren Berger’s Berger tool, which he designed for just such work. After turning, I sanded the inside and finished it with friction polish.

Next time—turning the top, and then the tricky part of blending them together.