Every woodworker eventually runs into the question of what you can manage when the tool wall is bare. For April 1, 2016, MatthiasWandel turned that question into a comedy premise: putting together a small maple box with almost no tools, done in the style of a television painter's instructional show. As shop humour it lands well, and the box still comes out genuinely finished by the end.
The construction leans on scoring and snapping. The board was marked out to 10 cm lengths with a tape measure and pencil, and lines were scored deeply on both sides using an X-Acto knife and a speed square. Pieces came apart by snapping them over the table edge, plus some mallet persuasion. For the rabbet joints, printed paper Makita rebate slips were laid on the wood under a block, and mallet strikes along with jump cuts made the grooves appear. That routine was repeated around the lower edges of the four walls, leaving a recessed ledge to seat the bottom square.
Two touches stand out to me. Yellow glue was mixed with magenta pigment on a white cutting board acting as an artist's palette, then brushed on in light strokes along the joint shoulders with a two-inch brush. And instead of clamps, a Makita cordless impact driver stood upright on the top edge as the glue cured. The mail-in rebate slips were printed purely as a joke, which I find the funniest single detail here.
The finished open box appears at the conclusion, and the end screen carries an April 1 message. One open question remains for me: the score-and-snap method clearly worked on this maple, but nothing indicates how it would fare on denser stock.
Project by MatthiasWandel. Watch it on their YouTube channel: