How to build a large plywood toy box

A friend asked me to make a toy box for his son: bigger than anything you can buy in the shops, with a thick wooden lid and the boy's initial on the front. A plywood toy box is just four sides, a top and a bottom, so I thought it might take a month.

Cutting and assembling the plywood box

The box is 18 mm plywood, cut to size at the local hardware store. The front board has a finger-safe gap cut along the top edge so small hands can't get trapped under the lid: I drilled a hole at each end, rounded the corners with a jigsaw and joined them with a straight cut on the table saw. All cut edges got iron-on edge banding (the same trick as on my forward-facing bookshelves), and where the iron couldn't reach I used a heat gun and smoothed the banding with an offcut of pipe. The carcass went together with my new pocket-hole jig, checked for square by measuring the diagonals before the base was screwed on.

A thick laminated lid and hinges that won't split it

The lid is two sheets of plywood laminated together. Without enough clamps, I used the box itself as a press and piled everything heavy I owned on top. I cleaned up the long edge on the table saw and the short edges with a sander, banded them, and trimmed the banding with a scrap of paper and a blade, so it reads as one solid slab. An offcut of door frame makes a skirting around the bottom to protect it from knocks.

For hinges I avoided anything screwed into the plywood end grain, since the weight of the lid could split it. Instead I used kitchen-cabinet-style hinges that fix into side grain, cut with a 35 mm hinge bit, plus soft-close stays so the heavy lid can't slam.

Finishing touches

The body is painted grey with a darker grey edge, and the lid has a sanding sealer under a stain-and-varnish so it doesn't blotch or show brush marks. The big "H" on the front was cut from MDF with a jigsaw, refined with a rotary tool, chamfered with a router, painted to match and screwed on from behind so no fixings show.

Inside, rather than just painting, I lined the box with panels of fibreboard covered in a vinyl tablecloth, stuck down with spray contact adhesive and fixed with upholstery screw cups. An engraved maker's plate finishes it off.