My bass guitar pedals had been getting a bit unruly, so here is my enjoyably solid new pedal board...

It's a sturdy wedge-shaped box with a chunky oak casing and a removable plywood faceboard. The gubbins of power units and cabling is all tucked up to bed inside the box. This leaves the pedals free and easy to get at, without cable-spaghetti getting under one's feet.

In close up...

Previously...

Here is the shambolic state of affairs before this tidy up. Loose pedals liable to move about when stomped on, and a whole load of wiring chaos...

Build

Like many things in life, I could have just bought a pedal board new.

In, fact they are quite cheap, starting at about £30.

BUT WHERE'S THE FUN IN THAT?!

Materials

Casing - oak

The cabinet for the box has walls made from single plank.

This is salvaged oak. It was previously a shelf. I think it came from a mid 20th century bookcase. I can't really be sure though. It was just a plank in my general stash of hardwood useful things. I've probably had it for 5 or more years in the shed, waiting for its destiny?

Top and bottom - plywood

The plywood is some cheapish ply from packing cases. Salvaged from a local shop skip. It is not the finest quality, but it is quite strong.

Casing

I was not sure that I had ever made a box using box joints before. In fact, one of the reasons I bothered to make the board rather than just buy one, was to try out making a box-jointed case. Obviously, it's also much more satisfying using a pedal board that you've made yourself. It adds a level of satisfaction whenever I am playing.

Being oak, it is also heavy, so it is super stable. I don't move it about, so this is fine. If one was playing gigs or something, it might be a bit to heavy to lug about. Having said that, it is actually a box, and the cabling and power supply and so on are all tucked away inside.

Q. How big should a pedal board be?

A. As big as you fancy. That's the beauty of building your own.

The first thing I did was measure out all the pedals to see what sort of area I needed to lay them out in. I wanted a comfortable arrangement for stamping on, when playing. I didn't want everything all crammed together as I am not known for my subtlety. It's just easiest when each pedal is a clear target for stamping on.

The board shown here was not used in the final constrution. It is insulating fibreboard. It was just some random handy piece of wood lying about in the shed. I was only using it to mock up the layout physically, to get my head around how the design would work in practice.

The wood for all the casing walls came from a single piece of oak. I just happened to have a big enough plank in my wood stash that I could cut all the pieces from. By using one source, it made it much easier to get started as all the pieces would be the same starting thickness. (about 20mm, in fact)

You can see various holes from where this plank had been joined in some piece of furniture. These were originally for dowels. I didn't fill them, I don't mind a few holes. They add character.

After some pondering, I cut out the basic pieces from the plank. This was a simple rip job on the table saw.

But old shelves have dirty, uneven faces, so I then planed all the parts. This brought out the lovely grain of the oak. I believe the plank was from a bookcase from the 1950s or 60s, so potentially 60-70 years old. This square piece is a back wall.

The pieces below are side walls. You can see the angled cut that eventually would give the gentle slope of the pedal board casing.

You can also see the before and after. A quick couple of passes through the Beast cleans up the face of the board showing off its lovely grain.

A slightly coser view of the side walls, showing before and after state of the plank face. Note the old holes that I had left in for character (I also couldn't be arsed to find other wood that was more perfectish)

The board casing is angled for ease of use. This meant the front and back walls were different heights and also that the top edge of the side walls was angled, so that the front end was shorter than the back end (see above).

This is quite tricky when joining two pieces at right angles.

To get a continuous slope across the whole case, side walls and front/back walls need to be angle on their top edge in different ways:

the side rails are angled when viewed from the face of the board
the front and back rails are angled when viewed from the end of the board

Cutting the side walls was easy enough. I did this on the table saw, following a line marked to give the required angle.

The back walls were cut square along the face. Their heights were different to match the different height of the two ends of the side walls they would be joined to. The angle was cut as a chamfer along the length of each front and back wall.

This was done by hand with this rather enjoyable jack plane. This is a Record No 5. plane. Apparently manufactured between 1931 and 2004. It's 14" longand weighs about 2 kilos (4.5 pounds). It is a pleasure to wield.

https://www.record-planes.com/record-no-05-jack-plane/

You can just about see the subtle angle of the edge

And this shot shows angles side wall meets angled back edge cosying up.

Cutting the box joints...

In an astonishingly slack bit of photographic documentation, I only took one shot of how I cut the fingers of the box joints. This is a shame, as this was quite laborious. It involved quite disciplined measurements and marking of cutting guides on the boards.

The cutting was done on my bench router. To get the cuts in the right place involves a lot of setup of the guards to ensure the slots are cut in the right place and to the right depth.

It's likely that the reason I overlooked to take any useful shots is because I was concentrating on the complex and repetitive steps involved. Once you get in the zone, other things go out of your mind.

Measuring the exact positioning of the fingers/slots had to be done from the lower edge of the walls, as they are the only edge that is square with the vertical ends.

The upper edges of the side walls are of course angled. This means that using them as an edge on the guard would never work. This would have caused angled fingers.

Similarly, the top edge of the front and back walls have a chamfer and because they do not offer a square face they also couldn't be used against the guide rails.

It takes a lot of patience as the routing depth is increased over many passes. It is quite easy to accidentally cut a slot ever so slightly wider or deeper than intended. Below is the front right-hand corner. Note, the fingers were cut deliberately longer than the corresponding slots were deep. This was done so that they would stick out a bit. This allowed me to trim them back to the exact height later, after gluing. It's easier to get a tidy square corner that way.

Also, note the critical pencil lines (vertical in this shot). These were needed marked so that the distance measured between the bottom of the slots was defining the length of the walls, NOT the outer distance from board-end to board-end.

This did mean a calculation to get the correct dimensions, something like this

Cutting distance marked to indicate distance between the joint slot-bases

= Final desired casing length - 2x (plank thickness)

Also note the blue and orange dog-ball throwing stick. This was used to entertain Mr Pickles in between tasks

After some "what's the best way to do this?" pondering, I realised that I needd to cut the slots to leave fingers that would be ever so slightly over-thick. This allowed me enough tolerance to hand-trim the fingers later.

The first pass on the table router did all the heavy cutting. The resulting joint ends almost fitted together. This allowed me to accurateky clean up the fit, finger by finger.

The cleanup of the fingrs was done with a riffler. This is a small coarse rasp. This is better tha using a chisel, because it leaves the wood rough with fibres sticking out. This allows the glue to get in between the rough fibres of each face on the two joining pieces and form a more solid meshed bond. Think of it like chewing gum in hair.

A riffler... (bought from the now sadly defunct Tiranti's sculpture supplies shop)

Below is a shot of the case being dry-jointed to test the joint accuracy and squareness of the corners. It was pleasingly square. The cramp shown was needed to close the joints as the fit was nice and tight and friction alone proved to be a surprisingly solid joint, even before setting with glue later.

The router gave good accuracy it seems. Miraculously the casing was dead square, vertically.

And even more pleasingly, all the corners of the casing were also nice and square.

Another detail I forgot to take shots of was that each wall also has a rebate cut in its internal face, close to to the base. This was used to house the base board. Mind you, it seems I did manage to take this rather bland photo simulating cutting the base board. Slick!

Mr Pickles interrupted a few times to remind me of dog-walking commitments.

More shots of the dry construction test...

Next was gluing. It's always a bit nerve-wracking putting a casement together dry, only to then knock it apart again. But, although it feels like you are breaking it, it always ends up insanely strong once glued.

This is the main glue. There were sash cramps front to back and left to right and one F cramp on the right hand front joint

You can see the deliberately long fingers of the box joint sticking out a bit. These were trimmed later.

This picture is one of the bigger joints at the rear of the casing. These had a lot more fingers than the equivalent joints at the front corners. (five/five, in fact, for these back jointsd. This compared to three/two on the front ones)

Close-up of the larger back joint. The deliberately long joint fingers are obvious here.

This is the equivalent joint at the lower front of the casing. I've got sash cramps holding the frame tight together during the set. You can also see the foot of a F-Cramp keeping the slender finger at the top in contact with the interlocking finger from the side wall.

Trimming

Before tidying up the joints, I left the joints clamped for a couple of days to make sure the glue was completely set. I didn't want to risk weakening the joint with the sawing action if the glue was not fully set.

All this can take time and concentration. Mr P walks off in disgust at waiting...

When trimming with the tenon saw I didn't cut the edges completely flush. This was deliberate. I was being cautious not to score the faces of the casing walls with the saw teeth. I used a plane for the final clean up.

Final tidying of the corners with the plane.

Not great shots, but you get the gist. The box casing is clamped to the workbench here. The plane allows a surprisingly subtle clean up. You just need to take care to plane the end grain in the right direction so you aren't splitting the fibres outwards. The plane blade also needs to be razor sharp for this.

So, with a flappy bit like above, you plane inwards, NOT outwards, or the blade may catch and split off the thin wood of the top finger,

Even here, I didn't worry too much about getting it super flush, as I would plane it again l;ater after filling.

Filling

Unless you are a cabinet making diety, you can always get a few gaps in a comp;lex joint like this

I certaily did. I used filler in these jointy gaps, to ensure all gaps were solid.

For this, I like a sloppy filler, packed with wood fibres.

Pack it in, then wipe of excess good with a wet cloth. It is not recommended to try to over-clean off the goo as you can wipe out filler unintentionally. This all gets re-planed and sanded later anyway.

This filler a pulp-based packing. I made it a mix of the oak sawdust from sawing and sanding and PVA glue for bonding. The cellulose fibres in the sawdust add strength.

It's about half-and-half, PVA to sawdust

Wiring up internal sockets

I wanted all the power to be contained inside the casework of the pedal box. This would mean it was all super tidy and I just would need to power up the pedal board once, instead of having multiple cables in, to service each pedal independently. For this I needed two separate internal sockets, as some pedals used a different supply to others.

Here I am wiring a kettle lead socket to install to the rear of the casing

The flux used to make it all flow easier.

To fit the socket, I cut a whole in the back wall with a flat bladed drill, and shaped it to match the socket section shape. I did this with my beloved electric finger sander. (this name refers to the shape of the long thin sander belt, but can ironically sometimes also refer to my fingers getting sanded).

Then, in the socket popped...

Within the inside, I used two tough rubber sockets on flexible cables, to allow them to move about. This was because the various power adapters are different sizes. I wanted the plugs and sockets to be moveable inside the restraints of the box, to allow power adapters of different shapes or sizes.

Here are the cables (2.5mm mains cables - you can't use thin wires here)

This tiny junction box has both spurs coming off the input voltage. It is tightly packed in to save space.

And here are the two rubber sockets with flexible cables to allow different shaped power units to be fitted in, if required (e.g. on their side)

Final face board

The top face board was sat on a small inner batten, screwed and glued around the inside of the box.

Holes were cut to allow power and signal cables to be threaded through from the insides. These were cut very carefully to avoid splitting the thin veneer of the plywood. To do this, I used a flat spade bit with a centre spur. This cuts cleanly on the side you are curtting, but cannot be allowed to cut all the way through or it will mangle the veneer on the opposite side when the blade breaks through.

Instead, you first drill holes partially on one side (as in this demo shot)

And then turn over to the other side where there will be a small hole, that is used as a pilot hole to guide the blade to cut the opposing side just as neatly..