Book Shelf Box

Making the book shelf was a boost for my energy and motivation, bringing back the good old days’ productivity vibes. My father made a toy shelf for my son more than a year ago and it’s still lacking the storage boxes. So I decided to make three toy boxes myself. I got some 18mm beech wood from the hardware store (Bauhaus) and used my new table saw and router table.

I stuck to the same way of putting things together, using butt joints and dowels, and it turned out well in a decent amount of time. Making grip grooves and holes was tricky. I tried with a forstner bit, cut the rest with a jigsaw, and perfected it with a router template. I faced some challenges - my jigsaw took a fall during house construction, and the router bit didn’t work well with a handheld router. After a few attempts, I got a new router bit and used the router table, realizing that nothing beats a sharp router bit. I applied one coat of hardwax oil as finish for all parts.

I couldn’t resist engraving some cool designs on the front – a steam engine for my son’s curiosity and my love for engineering. My dad, a real engineer (not like me, a software engineer who thinks they can do everything), has his Duple toy railway in this box. The second box has Nessaja, a very old and very wise turtle, and a handsome dragon named Tabaluga with his buddy Happy. It’s a bit like Peter Pan’s idea of not wanting to grow up, echoing my goal of staying young at heart.

The third box shows a whale lifted by balloons, with a saying:

When dreams travel on the back of a whale across the sea, they become colorful balloons in the sky of imagination.

“That’s All I Have To Say About That” - Forrest Gump