How To Make A Box For A Sharpening Stone Homemade Woodworking Tools

I bought this large sharpening stone around 3 years ago, and it was always my intention to make a box with a lid to keep it, but never got around to doint that. When a recent project that I’d put a lot of time into went off the rails, I looked around for something I could do to replace it as regular content, and settled on this.

It’s an oil stone that is 2-1/2″ wide, 11-7/16″ long and one inch thick. It has a fine side and a coarse side, and I use it for nearly all of my sharpening tasks. Up until now, I’d been keeping it wrapped in a cloth to try to keep the dust off of it when it’s not being used.

Originally I was going to do something very basic – just a simple wooden box with a simple lid, but decided that I’d get a bit fancier and make the lid interlocking. A box that holds a stone like this really doesn’t need it, since the stone will stick up past the sides on the bottom anyway, and that can align the lid. But I figured now was a good time to show how to make one, since they are great for other purposes.

I started with a simple drawing to get the dimensions I’d need, and that involved designing the parts that make up the sides of the bottom and top so that they would be the same size:

The benefit is that I could cut all of the parts at the same time. As you can see above, they have a rabbet cut on the edge that fits into a rabbet cut on the other piece. This was a sample I cut from the rest of the stock to fine turn the fit before cutting the rest.

They had to have another rabbet cut to receive the top and bottom panel, and you need to pay attention to the orientation:

After the basic cutting was done, I taped the top and bottom pieces for the sides together, so that I could cut them to length at the same time:

I then separated them and laid the parts out to glue together:

The video at the bottom of this page shows how I used masking tape to clamp the miters together for the glue up. That’s an old trick, but one that’s very reliable and quite strong when the parts fit together well.

I let the glue dry for several hours then removed the tape that I used to clamp the miters:

And checked the fit:

I made the top and bottom panels from 1/2″ plywood, cut to a snug fit and glued in:

Since this is an oil stone, this box will get quite dirty over time, but I figured a coat or two of water based poly would at least make it easier to keep clean. I brushed on a coat and let it dry before lightly sanding with 220 grit paper. A second and third coat was applied as well:

And here it is with the stone put in:

Here’s a video showing the build from start to finish: