How to Make Useful Steel Boxes - Simple Jig with No Folding Equipment Needed

Maker’s Mob Black Friday//Cyber Monday: go.themakersmob.com/black-friday-super-sale-neil/?… Some of you wanted to see how I made the steel boxes in my last video so here it is. The jig is pretty simple but works fantastic. As well as making boxes and trays I also plan on making drawers for a few projects using this jig.

Handy hint: If you don't own an old caliper to score the sheet with, simply use a new caliper. In only a few passes it will be an old caliper.

You mentioned instead of welding the corners, one might do corner brackets. Another idea would be to not fully remove the corner pieces. Instead, just do one of the cuts and fold over the other. That way you have a bit of overlap at the corner, which yo could very easily drill through and rivet. No extra brackets needed.

Here is a tip... With metal, strip it and paint it first before you store it. You can see some of the sheet metal is already rusting, removing rust in corners is difficult. If you store any metal IT WILL RUST. Just wipe your metal clean of any oils, and spray it with some spray paint. When you do a project the paint wipes easily off with a bit of acetone, no time wasting removing messy rust.

Neat project. One of the things that stands out with your projects and videos are the jigs you create. For me, sometimes that is the take away from the video. For someone that doesn't weld, another idea to close the corners would be to only cut one side of the waste square and the fold that over and join with a rivet. Thanks for another video.

If you're using an angle grinder, harbor freight has an attachment for them called a "Safety Guard for Angle Grinders" , it's a replacement guard for your angle grinder that has an adjustable flat plate so that it can be used like a saw. I used one quite often when I was doing metalwork, it made it real easy to do straight cuts.

Been doing this for a long time with aluminum. The best part about that is you put a jumky blade in your table saw you can do all of it without the jig. Never really occurred to me to try it with steel though so I dig it.

A chatted with a contractor who was making a lab, and the upstairs storage was floored with diamond plate. He had an old Blue Ryobi circular saw he was using for cutting the steel. He bought something he wasn't going to mind losing quickly for cutting some plate, figuring to buy something better suited if he got more of those kinds of jobs and after the saw died. Several years later and although being used more than he thought for cutting steel (and occasionally wood as a spare saw) it was surprising him with how long it was lasting.

I’m a new welder and just finished making four drawers for my welding cart using angle iron and sheet metal, I really wish I saw this video BEFORE I went through all that! I could have shaved a lot of weight and headache! I’ll definitely use this technique next time!

I'm not sure about that metal cutting blade in a normal saw business, metal cutting saws are usually half as fast or much slower than wood saws (so between 1500 and 80 rpm), the metal cutting blade will work but probably not for long. It's a shame they are not compatible with abrasive discs, because those would probably work better. Also you used a battery powered saw for both, those are generally slower than corded ones, so they probably work better for this case.

What are the metal cutting blade and circular saw speed ratings ?

If you don't weld and want to use rivets, instead of making corner brackets, just don't cut the piece completely off from the corners.

What is the type of welding you use? Or what type of welding machine is this?

I really like, that you always have an alternative way of doing your projects, if you haven't got the tools. It's super important knowing how to improvise around a problem and using alternative building methods.

Not being an authentic craftsman, I think I'm going to get rid of the jig entirely, half ass the entire process and make me a couple of quite useful, if somewhat irregular steel boxes and trays. This is great. Didn't even know I needed them til now.

I've done this with 1/4" plate steel before but welded it afterwards to put the strength back as this weakens the corners considerably, for your purpose it will still be as strong as needed though.

If you want to spot weld or pop rivet, you could just cut one half of the tab, and fold it in. Beautiful quick project

If you set the blade at 45 degrees, it would cut a V groove instead of a square groove. Would that be better?

With lid bent at the same time is easy, in the 1980s I used to cut 2 blanks like you have done but in 0.7mm Zintec Steel and fold them both sandwiched together at the same time and that would give a tight fitting lid. Sometimes I did bend them with a sheet of cardboard as a spacer to give clearance while bending for a lose fitting lid. This was so much easier then working out a bending clearance and marking out ;-) I am still using my 4" x 6" small tin boxes, they now have a bit of gas welding just on the corners to stop them spreading.

I need to know about that pencil you've used at 10:50 in your video. So far, nothing I found marks clean on slightly oily metal, rubber, and rough plastics.