You have probably noticed that I love making things. The last week I spent writing and going over three edited chapters for the Rustic Furniture Basics book, so it is quite a pleasant change to get back to working wood. I am making an interesting cabinet that nagged at my sleep the other night. I tossed and turned with this thing running through my brain, as it introduces a new level of simplicity in making small cabinets. It uses varying lengths of wood glued together to form the joints at the corners, and evolved from some small boxes we did with my 5th and 6th grade students two years ago. I think you will see how utterly simple the concept is from the photo below, and you can see that by gluing up the assemblies with equal thickness of stock, a perfect fit of parts interlocking at the corners is inevitable. In the photo I am gluing up the parts for the top and bottom at the same time. The sides are in clamps below.

The results of this simple joint are shown below. In using this technique, the ends can be brought flush or left in the exaggerated overlap as shown depending on your design objectives. In order to add to the rustic quality of the materials, I plan to use a steel wool and vinegar mixture to artificially weather the wood as shown in the sample block at left.