Little Boxes Made of Ticky-Tacky for Dummies

Philippa's instructions wouldn't make this box!

In ye olden days every boy who completed eighth grade had to take wood shop. Nowadays, it's apparently an elective, which is a little sad because that leaves a lot of middle-schoolers ignorant of even the basics of woodworking and home repair. At least they've managed to pass "history of film"; like script writer Philippa Jones certainly did. It's for darned sure she never took wood shop, based on the ridiculous instructions she provided in "How to Build a Wood Box with Hand Tools" at OurPastimes.com.

Jones, like so many of the contributors to eHow.com, found herself a set of tangentially-related instructions and shamelessly plagiarized them. Unfortunately, she lacked the basic knowledge necessary to reword instructions written by someone who knows the difference between a hawk and a hand saw. Here's how Philippa started out:

"You can build a wooden box easily using simple hand tools, and avoid using electrical equipment such as a drill or band saw. Constructing a box in this way does not limit you to the size or style of box, but time will be a factor as it takes longer to prepare the materials by hand. If you are a beginner to woodworking, building a small box is a good way to learn how to use hand tools."

We're at a loss as to why Philippa chose a band saw and drill as her examples of "electrical equipment" – what we would call "power tools" – but we do agree that building a small box is good practice for using hand tools. Unfortunately, you can't follow Jones' instructions for this little project.

Take, for instance, her first instruction:

"Lie [sic] the sheet of plywood flat on a workbench. Use the measuring tape to measure the lengths of the box's sides, ready for cutting. Create four equal rectangular shapes measuring 12 inches by 6 inches, then two end squares measuring 6 inches by 6 inches."

Any grammatical errors notwithstanding, those are crappy instructions for a couple of reasons: first, no one but a blithering idiot uses plywood for hand tool practice projects. More importantly, Philippa's measurements did not allow for the thickness of the wood: her four sides would make a box that is six inches on two sides and six inches plus twice the thickness of the plywood on the other two. Idiot.

Philippa continued merrily on her way, instructing her readers to lay out the cuts with a pencil (no mention of a straightedge) and cut along the lines with a hand saw. Ugh – what kind of hand saw? Rip? Crosscut? Combination? That's what happens when you let a tool-ignorant freelancer write DIY instructions!

Jones continued on, scattering errors throughout as she went:

• She didn't mentioning squaring the cuts with a plane, just said to smooth the edges with sandpaper.
• She said to glue the pieces together, let the glue dry, and then hammer in nails to "strengthen the box." Note to Jones: you don't nail plywood... 
• She included skimpy – nay, useless – instructions for adding a hinged lid.

This is the kind of useless rubbish that got eHow in hot water in the first place (that, and butt plug articles). No one could build a useful wooden box with those instructions, and it's a safe bet that Jones had never even held a hand saw when she wrote this garbage. It's also a safe bet that Philippa is our Dumbass of the Day.

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