The latches snap securely and installed easily, as did the hinges. The only caveat was that the sides of the case were 1/2" thick and the screws were a little longer. The difference isn't noticeable due to the type of liner he chose. The short protruding nibs actually help keep the foam in place.

I had never worked with this material. There are a few videos on the Internet explaining how to cut and shape it to your needs. Because I was placing it inside a box and the fit needed to be perfect, I cut the foam to size on my table saw using a fine toothed blade from my circular saw. Worked Perfectly!!

I was able to get both the lid and bottom liner from a single sheet of 58mm material. The box bottom used the piece's full thickness. The lid, however, needed the material to be a little less than 1" thick. The plan was to simply separate the 58mm foam into a thinner sheet.

The foam is manufactured in layers. The concept is to cut out an outline of the item you want to store and then remove the foam layers to create a cavity. My thoughts were- "Hey, I'll use the same idea and just thin down the thick piece." Not so fast, pilgrim! Let's just say it sounded easier than it turned out. The surface where the material separated is extremely rough. Fortunately, that surface is not seen.

He still hasn't decided on a carrying handle. He is thinking of something like a woven becket-

My friend comes from a family of "finishers", so I think that part of the project will be handled by them.

Well, that's it! Thanks for reading along

Next up, was fixing the dovetail error. I went back and forth between matching or contrasting dowel pins. Finally settled on walnut. My first idea was to create dowels, that when installed, had the flat grain exposed. This would make them almost invisible.

However, my goal was also to increase the strength of the joint. With the grain running across the dowel diameter, the dowel could be easily snapped in half. Back to the lathe-

Grain running lengthwise.

Drilling the corner holes was done on the drill press.

My drill press table sets slightly off center. This presented a little bit of an problem when drilling two of the holes.

The case extended quite a bit off of the side of the drill table and needed to have additional support. I used to have a shop made adjustable support just for this purpose- but I never used it. NOTE TO SELF- Don't throw anything away!

Dowels were then glued into place and trimmed with a flush trim saw. Sanding all of the dovetails flush and the case was ready to be split.

Using the table saw and a really thin blade- actually the blade off of my miter saw- I made a cut around the outside of the box.

The saw cut did not completely separate the top and bottom. I left a little bit of material to hold the two pieces together throughout the cut.

To complete the separation, carefully cut through the material with a sharp utility knife-

The completed cut-

Finally, sand the excess material left in the cut (I don't trust myself with the hand plane). The blue tape on the inside corners needs to be removed. That really facilitates cleaning any glue squeeze out.

When the hardware and liner gets here, we'll continue. I'm not sure what my friend has picked for hinges/latches or what kind of finish- just hope he doesn't want latex paint!

Most often, I like to make actual measurements rather than rely on what I calculated the size of the pieces I'll need.

The good old Stanley Folder is my go-to tool for this type of measurement.

Once the dimensions are taken, I can size and create the top and bottom.

Both pieces were made from glue-ups. The top is 1/2" stock. The bottom is created from some thinner stock glued up to make the panel.; then planed to 1/2" thick.

The bottom and top set in dados. The bottom is rabbeted to make a 1/4" tongue for the dado.

The top is a raised panel made on the table saw. To make the top, the first thing is to create a crisp edge for the raised portion.

The cuts are about 1/16" deep and will form the lip of the raised portion. The distance from the edge of the panel to the cut is sort of a trial and error method. Layout on a test piece, cut, check. I make my raised panels with a 7° angle. It seems to work best for me.

To make the angled cuts, I use a shop made raised pane jig. It is sort of an overgrown tenoning jig.

The down side of this method is that it requires a fair amount of sanding on the bevel to get rid of the saw marks. The up side- I don't need to buy a giant router and a set of raised panel bits. Don't get me wrong- I'm not opposed to buying more tools. However, a bigger router means I'd have to rebuild my shop made router table lift.

Now it is just a matter of dry fitting the entire unit together-

Next time, the glue-up, fix for the dove tail mistake and splitting the box.

It was time for a little finessing of the joints to assure everything fit.

Yes, there it was staring me right in the face! How could I not see what I did. Worse yet, how am I going to fix it now?!?!?!?

I picked up the test piece and it finally hit me! If I cut the top completely free, there will only be one pin for the lid "tail". There will be no structural element (second pin) to hold them together. Even the best glue won't hack it here. Hmmm... can't weld wood together. Maybe a glue block on the inside corners. There's not much material between the top and the edge of the lid. 

At this point I stopped and went for a long walk. Several thoughts went through my mind- including selling all my tools and just sitting on the porch watching cars go by. But then it came to me-

After assembling the box, I could drill a hole in each corner. The depth of the hole would be just shy of the saw kerf. Gluing a dowel into the hole should provide enough strength to make the joint stable.

Next time- making the top and bottom.

I use a marking knife for laying out the dovetails and a marking gauge to locate the dept of cuts.

As for cutting the the dovetails, I really like the Japanese pull saw. I only have the Dozuki (cross cut) but it works OK for all of the cuts. Maybe one of these days I'll get a Ryoba and do things the correct way.

Layout of the location of the dovetails was straight forward- I didn't take a bunch of pix during this part-

One of the design problems was that I wanted to keep the tails fairly consistent in width. However, the box will be split after the assembly so the saw kerf will change the dimension of the tail width. To compensate, I needed to make one of the tails slightly wider. I made a full size template in Sketchup to help me figure it all out.

A white artist pencil for labeling all of the pieces to maintain the proper orientation.

A mock-up of one of the corners helped me see how things were going to go together. Including the cut that would eventually separate the top and bottom

You would think, at this point, I would see the giant mistake staring me in the face- but Nooooo!

Next part, the near fatal error and how I fixed it

We measured his gun and calculated what size the case it would take. Not too large but enough room for a couple of accessories.

Using Sketchup, we eventually came up with an appropriate design.

While he hadn't decided on the hardware, I now had enough information to begin working. The box is solid walnut with inside dimensions of 10" x 32" x 3 1/8". All stock is 1/2" thick. The top has a raised panel. The interior will be filled with FastCap Kiazen Liner.

There was enough walnut left from the humidor to make all the necessary pieces, with the exception of the bottom. The bottom is actually two thinner panels glued together. The design of the bottom installation hides the seam.

My friend wanted the sides/ends joined with dovetails. The bottom and top will set in dadoes. 

In the next part- layout and cutting dovetails.