A perfect hinged box

This is one of those ideas that prompts a "why didn't I think of that".

In the past I have made hinged boxes and the lids never lined up quite right (or at least not easily). Then a friend showed me this trick.

Build the box as a cube first, this one was built with 1x3 pine with lauan tacked on the top and bottom.

After the box is tacked together glued and dry, set the table saw to the depth of the lid and split the box in half.

When you are making the origional box be careful to add the 1/8 inch blade width that you will loose when you cut the box.

All you have to do then is line the pieces back up where you cut them apart and screw the hinges on.

I built four of these in about 1 hour (with painting), alot faster than building the lids and bottoms seperately.