Hand made mitre box

After two failed attempts to construct a handmade mitre box, I had to take a step back and figure out what was going on. The project is part of the hand tool school that  Shawn Rogers runs, and seemed simple enough. Cutting the grooves and rabbets both by saw/routerplane and by plow and rabbet planes was easy enough. Getting nice tight fits and 90 degree corners also wasn't a problem. My first sign of trouble was when I tried to cut the 90 degree cross cut. I chiseled out the wedge using the paring chisel, and got a good start on the cut, but buy the time I got to the bottom of the box, the cut line had crossed over the vertical lineto the other side of the marked line - enough to be embarrassing. Yeah, shame on me. I marked the verticals, but only used the pared "V" cut at the top. I swore I wouldn't do that again.

So back to square one, I milled up another set of pieces and got them to the cut point. This time I remembered to cut in the slots for the cross pieces for the support boards (which I forgot to do before the first one was glued up). I got everything glued up, and let it set overnight. The next evening, I carefully marked and pared the lines for the 90 degree cut. This time it went perfectly! right angles all around -- and 1 pass on the shooting board to clean up the end grain. Now I was cooking! So I marked out the right side 45, pared to the knife marks, grabbed my saw with one hand, and the miter box with the other holding it firmly against the fence of the paring hook, and proceeded to cut a beautiful 45 miter across the box. I was so pleased - until I looked at the vertical portion of the cut. Once again - I had crossed the line.

Ok, I'm pushing through more wood because I'm at an angle - but that's not the problem. The box was moving around a bit when I cut - but that's not the problem. The saw is sharp. The problem must be in the user.

I put together another miter box (lucky number 3?) and got ready to cut then stopped. When I started cutting dovetails by hand, the most important lesson I learned was that to work well, you needed to be able to cut straight lines - across and up and down. To get comfortable with that, you really needed to practice cutting with the saw, and position yourself relative to the work. I figured, why not do the same thing now. After all, I'm cutting with a crosscut saw, not a rip saw, and that's the only difference. I marked a series of lines across and down the face of a scrap peice of the oak I was using, and starting doing some crosscuts - and lo and behold, I started crossing the line. I used the same techniques I learned from dovetailing - moving my feet to the left, to compensate and that fixed up the cuts well. Next I marked off a bunch of 45 degree angle cuts across the edge, and verticals down the face, and cut out a batch of those -- and *again* I was crossing the line. It seems that I'm still suffering from a need to get my head in line with the saw, instead of my wrist/elbow/shoulder line. 

I think I've learned my lesson now - and am going to make it a point to run a set of practice cuts before I make the next set of mitre box cuts. Hopefully this will get me past this mini-project and into the next lessons!