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pickers boxIf you are one of the millions of people who watch programs like The Antiques Road Show, American Pickers, Canadian Pickers, Pawn Stars and other similar shows, or if you have ever been to an antique or collectibles show and sale, you have seen these little display boxes at various sellers tables. You may have even seen them in someone's home or business to display small, featured and valued items. They are called all sorts of things, slanted display boxes, pickers display boxes, collectible boxes and sellers show boxes and so on. 

In this video we make our version of this box with a bit of a twist, our box will use box joints for the corners to make it more attractive and sturdier and instead of painting the inside or lining the bottom with felt, we are going to flock the whole inside of the box, a rich green to make items in the box stand out. This project will consist of 3 parts, making the box, making the top or lid and finally, finishing and flocking the box. 

Part 1 - Making the Box
 


Part 2 - Making the Top or Lid for the Box

Click below, for more details on sizes and other construction detail. 

pickers display box


The details of this box are simple. The dimensions are 16" wide by 18" long. The back is 5 3/4" high and the front is 2 1/2" high. There is no accountability taken for the edges as we are using a box joint which will account for whatever the width of your material. In our case we used 5/8" thick material for the main box and 3/4" thick material for the top or lid. The width of the lid material is 1 1/4".  The material to use is up to you, in our case we used fir because it is light weight and strong. We knew that this box was going to be used at many different sales events and shows so we needed something that looked great, but that was going to be rugged and not too heavy to be hauled around. For these same reasons we also decided to both glue and nail the bottom plywood base for the box, as this would add more strength. 

Cutting the box joints on our table saw box joint jig, was surprisingly easy. It was really just a matter of setting the offset for 1/4" as that was the size of our box joints, then making sure we had each corner done with the two pieces that would constitute that corner. We did find during the dry assembly that the joints were very tight. To make the joints easier to fit together we use a coarse 1/4" file and simply ran it through each slot box joint slot once and this gave us a much easier to fit together joint, while still being a hand-in-glove fit.

After the box was assembled we moved on to the lid or top. This was a very straight forward component as we used the Freud - Adjustable Rail and Style set. To see how we determined sizes for the lid, please see the video, we detail it there. 

Moving on to the finishing, we knew this box was going to be doing some traveling back and forth to shows and sales, so we wanted to use a finish that was both durable and easy to touch up if needed. We could have used a few different kinds of finish but for this project we finally settled on a MinWax Tung Oil finish. It gave us non-glossy finish that looks great and if the box gets bumped or scraped, we can simply go over that area with another layer of Tung Oil and in many cases it will minimize the look of the wear and tear. And with all our finishing we once again relied on our Versaspin 360 turntable. We love this little finishing tool.

And finally, we flocked the inside of the main box with a green flocking material. We did use the green glue that is recommended for use with the flock material, which on larger projects like this is important toi ensure that there is nice even color once the flock has been applied.

Of course the final step is to install the hardware and for this project we opted to use piano hinge as the wear and tear of opening will be better for the box, and we used a good quality hasp with good long screws to ensure the top can be locked firmly. We also added an eye bolt to the back of the box so that it can be chained and locked to a table to further discourage someone from taking the whole box with them.

All in all this was a great project, it turned out well and looks awesome and I'm sure it will help our "Picker" Roy in his shows and sales.

Copyright - Colin Knecht

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