USAF Coin Display Box

Before I got serious with motorcycles and kids, I used to do a fair bit of woodworking and furniture building. I think my last major projects were a crib and swingset. At any rate co-worker of my wife is retiring from the civil service side of the Air Force. The Air Force coin has a long history and the units this gentlemen have supported sent in like 30 coins. So a proper display was needed. We couldn't find what we wanted so we had to build it. Of course it was short notice so I had to cheat a bit.

I started with a basic hinged door display from Hobby Lobby. My other friend took it to a glass shop and had mirror put into the back of it. The mirror will look great in use, but will make my pictures of the build a little tricky for sure.

Measure the depth for the shelves.


When you have cheap bench saw with cheap fence you need a square to set it up properly.



Cheating again, I bought the nice pine board that was sanded smooth already. That will save me more time in the end. Always use push boot with a table saw.


One 1X4 will rip down to two shelf boards.


Measure the width.


Cut those to length on the miter saw.


Fitting good.


Make a few spares, too.


Now to figure out the spacers to hold the new shelves.


Yeah, I tried and tried to figure out how to get those shelves evenly spaced. I should have used a CAD program or something, maybe in was the 105° heat in my shed, but the math never worked out one shelf is just a bit different.




The spacing looks okay though, but ...


I don't like the width of the spacers at all.


Set the saw to rip them in half again.


I started with a fresh board for safety sake.


Now it's shaping up.


I didn't like the bottom shelf height so I ripped it narrower and cut the last shorter spacer.



Matching the finish on the prebuilt box is going to be a trick. I played with a couple of methods and finishing black spray paint and flat clear spray seemed to match up pretty well.


Now to cut the coin slots. I tilted the blade a bit and had to make two passes get the width right. Notice the shim on the fence to get the cut offset just a bit.


It left a little in the middle, that was easy to knock out.


Test fit.


All cut and ready for paint. The presanded boards helped a bunch here.



All together and looking good.