Peanut Butter Box

A locked box for tempting goodies

We all have something that challenges our willpower, right? A food that keeps calling you back. Maybe it's coffee, candy, potato chips, or cake. For my wife, it's peanut butter. She requested I make a locked box for our peanut butter in order to "encourage a healthier amount of peanut butter consumption."

For no particular reason, I wanted to include a slight Asian influence to the design. I can't say it's a properly informed influence, so no offense intended. As an added experiment, I wanted to design and build this project using metric measurements.

I thought Black Walnut sides would look nice with Maple corner posts. I planned for Birch plywood for the top and bottom, because I had it on hand.

It's worth noting there's a bit more than meets the eye here. All the side panels (including in the lid) have mortise and tenon joints into the corner posts, as illustrated in this image.

I knew there was going to be plenty of tricky cutting, fitting, and joining for this project, so I made some rough plans for myself.

I actually have a few in-progress pictures of this project!

I decided to make the hinge a feature, since I needed to solve the issue of the corner posts interfering with a normal hinge anyway. I decided to make a hinge using a solid brass rod, and a couple brackets on either side, which trap the rod inside. Illustrated below.

The design intricacies made this project quite labor-intensive in the end, between the joinery, the tapered legs, and the hinge, but I'm happy with how it turned out. We've been using it for over a year and a half now to safeguard peanut butter, and it works just as well as the day I made it.