this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Woodworking

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Any idea how to do the edges/feet on this box? (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/woodworking
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The only thing i can come up with is to start with a long mitre on the edges, use a jig to cut a 45 degree dado on each corner, then inlay the edges/feet?

My concerns are:

  1. I can't use splines on the mitres, they'll be visible.
  2. I'll be cutting most of the mitre joint away, leaving very little glue surface.
  3. I'd have to glue in the feet/edges cross-grain, so the glue will probably fail with wood movement.

The upside is that this is an urn (i guess that's not an upside for everyone involved) so I'll be gluing the lid on, which should provide some extra stability.

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[–] ellisk 3 points 22 hours ago

Just been thinking about this a lot because the feet really bug me somehow. I think it probably is do-able as other people have mentioned, but also, are you sure this is a real box someone made and not AI-generated? I hate to have to ask it, but these days... and man, why don't the feet visibly support the box? I guess it could be inlaid... like I said, I don't think it's impossible. Just odd somehow.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Make the feet “ribs” protrude into the box, with a 45° rebated channel cut into each side that the side pieces slot into maybe? Have the foot detail just extend under the base to support it. That’s a lot of glue area even if the sides and base are thin, and you’d only lose a small part of the volume to the part protruding into the internal volume

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

@nice

Nice box.

Looks like it’s a carcass and panels build. So the corners/feet are the four stiles of the box carcass with mitred panel grooves along their length. (The walls of the grooves would need to be mitred but not the bottoms of the grooves; they only need to be sufficiently deep, thus the stiles sufficiently thick.) Likewise the rails would have mitred joins with the stiles, plus right angle panel grooves on the bottom rails

That’s how I would try it, anyway. Not an easy one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

That's what I'd do. Maybe try for thicker sides so you have a bit more meat for the mitres. Or you could just flatten the corners and butt the edges with glue and tiny dowels.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Not a wood worker, but:

  • tongue and groove for each side where it meets the center (mitered corners)
  • cut a 90 degree angle on the interior of the feet and mount on corner
  • Screws for extra support on the feet, placed from inside the box
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not sure where the tongue and groove is meant to go? But routing that groove into the feet rather than the box itself is a good idea. Might have to make the feet a bit beefier but that shouldn't be a problem. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Another thought- if you're playing with how to get the right effect, sometimes it helps to take some scrap and see if you can get experimental or weird part right before you're using nice materials and doing all of the operations together

Good luck with your project!