Zachary Taylor: Project 2 Deck Box

For my second project I decided to deviate from making a laser cut tool tote and instead opted to make a deck box that would be a perfect fit for 100 double-sleeved Magic: The Gathering cards. I choose 100 as this is the size of a "Commander" or "EDH" deck, a format that I enjoy playing with my friends. I have decent deck boxes, but not many made of wood, so I figured this would be a great opportunity to design a box that I could print out for myself and for friends on the cheap.

The sketches I used for the box

I started in Fusion360 and modeled the box in a manner similar to the tool tote project. I used four sketches: one for the bottom, one for the top, and one for either type of side. This allowed for easy changes to the design as well as a fast process altogether.

The final sketch, extruded and combined

Once the sketches were finished, I extruded and combined them to get the final components of the box, which were then exported to a PDF to be sent to the Glowforge.

You'll see from the material I've got on the components that I would like to eventually make this deck box out of nicer wood - I plan to order some walnut hardwood from Glowforge's online store, and see if that turns out well. The MDF that we used in class has a lingering "burned" smell, and isn't very visually appealing. I also worry that it will deteriorate if it contacts water, which is the opposite of what a good deck box should do!

Green shop tape held things together while I
applied small beads of glue with my finger

After laser cutting on the Glowforge, the only thing left to do was glue and tape the parts together. This was perhaps the easiest part of the process, and it was satisfying seeing everything come together.

All taped up and ready to dry

Once it was ready to dry, I had to sand the backside of the circle hinge to give the lid enough clearance to open - I could probably change the design slightly to account for this, but careful filing made for a snug fit.

The final result turned out great - one of the greatest benefits of using a laser cutter is precision. My parts fit perfectly together, and only required a little bit of glue and minor sanding to achieve perfection. The interior width required to perfectly hold the cards is 2.71 inches, and my box measures exactly as it did in Fusion360! That is a huge improvement over the first project, where I found myself downsizing dimensions left-and-right as I made mistakes.

The finished product, lid closed

The finished product, lid opened to reveal 100 double-sleeved cards, as planned

I plan to add some sort of clasping mechanism, but I haven't quite figured out how I'd like to do it yet. I think the best route would be to make a leather strap that goes over the top of the box, securing on either side. I'll have to explore that in later builds!

In reflection, I encountered some hiccups along the way that actually resulted in a better project! I originally tried a different design on the Zing laser cutter, but it was having problems and couldn't cut all the way through the material, so we had to give up on it and switch to the Glowforge. That ended up making the deck box better, because I was forced to go back to Fusion360 and make changes to the design. I ended up adding a hinge lid, which vastly improved upon the original interference-fit design.

I liked the design so much that I made a second deck box for my friend Cameron in Baton Rouge, LA, which I'll be sending to him very soon. His has a cool raster that I've posted an image of below, which is the "Planeswalker" symbol from the card game the box is meant to contain.