Is that pin spring loaded?
Mornin' Barry.
No, the pin is just a piece of 1/8" brass rod, about 3/4" long. I'm using the method Ray told me about. Once your lid is more or less finished (dimensionally anyway), you drill a hole in the frame of your lid, centered in your lid, one each side. Then you figure out where the matching hole needs to go in each side of the box itself. I had a section of the "frame" I used for my lid, found the center (both top/bottom and from one end) and drilled a 1/8" diameter hole. I used that as a drill guide by clamping it to my lid (which centered the hole) and drilled it to depth. Then I could use the same drill guide on the box sides by aligning it with the top edge (which gets the hole to the right spot vertically). I started with the end of the guide right at the inside miter of the box sides, then I pulled it away from the miter edge a distance equal to the rest of the spacing between the lid and the box. This is important otherwise your lid will sit closer or farther from the back or front of your box. Once you have the drill guide in place I drilled a 1/8" hole in each side of the box. When I put the box together I'll slide the pins in as I raise each side of the box. Once it's glued, the lid and pins are fixed in place. That's why Ray recommends finishing the inside of the box and the lid before gluing it all up.
I thought about the spring loaded type of pins and a slightly different design in which you drill a hole that is the total length of your pin. You also drill a tiny hole perpendicular at about the halfway point. To assemble the lid, you slip it into place, then use a knife edge to wiggle the pin across the opening and into the box side. Once you have the pin at the appropriate depth, you insert a tiny wood dowel into the perpendicular hole to prevent the pin from sliding back. Both seemed like more trouble to me so I went with the simple design.
