Glass Boot Box

I'm ready for my next Instructable! Like many Americans, I like drinking beer out of a glass boot:

Unfortunately, I don't have a good way to store and protect my glass boot when not in use.

When thinking about the best way to store my glass boot, I kept thinking back to the scene in A Christmas Story when the leg lamp arrives:

I decided to build a scale model of the leg lamp box to store my glass boot. I think it turned out pretty nicely and now it looks like my boot is Italian. Here's how I did it...

Parts - 26 1x2 boards (13" long), glue, screws, MDF scraps, black spray paint

Tools - skill saw, electric drill, Kreg Jig R3, pen knife, cardboard scraps

I had plenty of scraps of wood left over from a different project. To complete the Glass Boot Box, I needed just one new 8 foot long 1x4 to complete the project.

I cut 18 pieces of 1x2 (actual dimensions are 3/4 x 1 1/2) to 13" long for the main body and 8 more 1x2s long enough to serve as the cross pieces. I made my 1x2s by ripping down a 1x4 with my stop set on the skillsaw. This left me with a small pile of scraps, in the third picture, which I put to use later.

I built each side of the box separately so that by the end of this step I had all four sides done.

Two of the sides were four 1x2s wide, the other two were five wide. I trimmed the ends of the horizontal cross pieces to stick out 3/4" past the end of the vertical pieces.

I used the Kreg Jig R3 to drill pocket holes in the side pieces to more easily connect to the back piece. Make sure to set your Kreg Jig to the correct thickness for the boards your are using, 3/4" in this case.

For the top and bottom pieces I used some scrap MDF I had sitting around cut to 6x6" squares. I used my Kreg jig to drill pocket holes on 3 of the 4 edges (as I don't need a pocket hole on the front edge) and then glued and screwed in the top and bottom pieces.

This is where I used the scrap left over from ripping my 1x4s down to 1x2s. You can see in the picture, I set the top down from the sides the exact thickness of the scrap I had left. I did this so that the top of the box doesn't look like MDF but looks like it is made from many boards.

I cut the scraps to length, 6", to fit into the space at the top of the box. I glued them in to place and used masking tape to hold the scraps down while the glue dried.

To attach the front piece to the rest of box, I picked up two magnetic clasps at the local hardware store. The front piece is pretty snug, but the magnets help hold it in place.

The stencils were the worst part of the project, as it took quite a long time to cut out the letters. I printed on regular paper, taped to thin card board, and cut out my stencil with the penknife. A little black spray paint and I was done.

To complete the look and provide some padding, I shredded some brown paper grocery store bags to pack around the glass boot. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and it looks great on the shelf!