Box Repair

[Habanera Hal]

Need some help from the woodworkers out there. My wife brought some nice boxes back from a trip to Houston, and I want to start on projects, but I need to repair a bit of damage and don't know the right way to go about it.  Hope someone here can help.

 

The first is this Cohiba Toro box - absolutely perfect except for a small ding in the leading edge of the lid.  I've heard of steaming out wood dents but don't know how or if it would work on this:

 

Second, She brought me a nice Padron box with a beautiful grain on the lid, bit the lid is warped.  If I brace it down and steam it, will it stay unwarped, or will the plywood always stay warped?  Will I need to add permanent bracing underneath?  I don't want any screws showing.

 

Any help would be great!  Thanks!

[Zeke Leonard]

Hal-

 

For the first one, here is how I steam out dents:  Get an old towel and a really hot iron.  Make the towel damp but not sopping and lay it on the dent folded in half.  Put the iron on top of the towel for just a couple of seconds and remove.  You should hear it hiss, if not it is not hot enough.  Do that a couple of times and the dent should start to steam out.  Careful not to scorch the wood, though.  Streaming only works so far, but it should raise the grain back a little.  Here are a couple of caveats:  This process can (but does no always) cause the plys in plywood to separate, so it if is a plywood box, do it at your own risk.  Also, the steam will raise the grain of the wood around the dent as well, so you might need to sand back the wood around where the dent is.

 

Now to the warped lid:  Wood (as you probably know) expands when it gets wet.  So what likely happened here is that the bottom ply got moist and expanded.  Often cigar boxes have dehumidifiers in them so the inside of the box is much drier than the outside.  Once the dehumidifier is removed, the very dry wood on the inside absorbs moisture from the air and expands.  So how to counter act the swelling of the inside ply?  Steaming the top as you mentioned above seems like a good shot to me, just do it in light passes and do it carefully.  That might make the outside ply swell and remove the warp.  If you resort to interior bracing, you should not need screws, just glue and clamp them on and let them sit for a couple of hours.

 

Hope this helps, looking forward to seeing the finished pieces.

[Habanera Hal]

Thanks Zeke, I needed that reinforcement of my thoughts.  Will try both.

Zeke Leonard said:

Hal-

 

For the first one, here is how I steam out dents:  Get an old towel and a really hot iron.  Make the towel damp but not sopping and lay it on the dent folded in half.  Put the iron on top of the towel for just a couple of seconds and remove.  You should hear it hiss, if not it is not hot enough.  Do that a couple of times and the dent should start to steam out.  Careful not to scorch the wood, though.  Streaming only works so far, but it should raise the grain back a little.  Here are a couple of caveats:  This process can (but does no always) cause the plys in plywood to separate, so it if is a plywood box, do it at your own risk.  Also, the steam will raise the grain of the wood around the dent as well, so you might need to sand back the wood around where the dent is.

 

Now to the warped lid:  Wood (as you probably know) expands when it gets wet.  So what likely happened here is that the bottom ply got moist and expanded.  Often cigar boxes have dehumidifiers in them so the inside of the box is much drier than the outside.  Once the dehumidifier is removed, the very dry wood on the inside absorbs moisture from the air and expands.  So how to counter act the swelling of the inside ply?  Steaming the top as you mentioned above seems like a good shot to me, just do it in light passes and do it carefully.  That might make the outside ply swell and remove the warp.  If you resort to interior bracing, you should not need screws, just glue and clamp them on and let them sit for a couple of hours.

 

Hope this helps, looking forward to seeing the finished pieces.

[Outhouse Instruments]

Those spots you're trying to remove .... that's called character and Mojo. If you fix them boxes, they might never sound right!

 

AFKAM    ;)

[MichaelS Country Boy Guitars]

I have a bunch of padron box's and love how they sound. They are almost always warped. I put 2 or 3 tiny screws in the lid on the open edge. The middle hits the thru neck at the front and back edges to hold it up. I had one that did not need the screws but after building it I found it sounded better with them added.  As for the dent, I'm with Matt on that one, character.

[Brian "Pork Pie" Anderson]

that style of Padron box works best with the lid as the bottom and the bottom as the sound board...

[MichaelS Country Boy Guitars]

Brian, I use that Padron all the time right side up and they sound great!

[Habanera Hal]

I have about a dozen Padrons right now.  About half of them have a "flat" lid - no supporting wood, which probably makes them more prone to warp.  I'm going to use these with the lid on the bottom and attach a rail inside the box to screw the lid to, screws on the bottom won't be too noticeable.  The other boxes have a "fitted" lid.  I think these are better used with the lid as the soundboard.  JMHO.