Building a Pochade Box, Part 2

My woodworking skills are crap, and my measuring skills are even crappier (hooray for poor math skills!) So I employed my girlfriend to help figure out the separate sizes and parts. The wood we got from Michaels was 1/4” thick, 12” x 24” birch plywood, so the plans were made to fit as many pieces as possible on as few boards as we can. In the end, 3 pieces were used.

Above are the plans for the box. You’ll notice some pieces marked trays; these were to eventually be trays I can clip to the side to hold water cans, tubes of paint, and possible brushes when not in use. I unfortunately didn’t get them done in time for the trip, but I did find a decent solution in time, which I’ll cover later. These aren't scaled up to 100% - I used the plans just as reference for drawing the lines on the wood. Each piece should butt up against another one to converse wood (in the event you muck up something and come out with a bad piece, like I did a few times.)

With wood and plans ready, all that was left was the hardware. I got everything from Home Depot, so hopefully finding these won’t be too hard for anyone else. Here’s a rundown of the supplies:

-3 pieces of Birch Plywood, 12” x 24”, quarter inch thick.

-Packet of small craft hinges (they’re brass colored, and are the sort of hinges that would go onto a jewelry box.

-4 packets of L-Shaped “Decorative Brackets”, to reinforce and strengthen the box.

- Bag of #10-24 x ¾” machine screws (Should contain both the screws and nuts)

- Bag of ¼” – 20 x 5/16” Tee Nuts (to attach the tripod to the box.)

- Box of ¾” brad nails (to reinforce the box while the glue dries.)

- Elmer’s Wood glue

- 2 3/16” x 5-1/2” Turnbuckle Eye/Hook (For holding the box open)

- Jigsaw or something else that can cut quickly and accurately

- Drill

- If possible, a Dremel tool with the small drill bits, or an equivalent type of tool (for pre-drilling screw holes.)

- Sandpaper

- A few hours of time

As I’m going over the construction, I’ll explain some of these supplies in more detail when we get around to using them.

In the next post, I’ll go over cutting and putting the two halves of the boxes together.