Band saw tuneup project

I went down to Woodcraft and bought a 2 inch by 2 inch by 12 inch long piece of rosewood for $10 to make a pencil box. Heavy piece of wood, it's sitting on my desk. I changed blades on the band saw to a 1/4 inch blade, but didn't reset the blade guide blocks. The guide blocks wore out the teeth on the saw in about two minutes. Live and learn.... Bought some more band saw blades from Sears and replaced the 1/4 inch blade and carefully reset the blade guides. Cuts well now, but it makes a squealing noise when it cuts.... very irritating.... Decided to make a practice pencil box on a two by four piece of pine. The fence that came with the band saw is not very good, and the saw blade has a lot of lead too. The top and bottom cuts on the two by four wandered all over... Oh, the humanity!.... I cut out the body okay and glued bottom and ends back to make a pretty decent body for the pencil box. I made a beveled cut to cut the sliding lid out of the top.... what a mess.... I couldn't get the semicircle on the end to cut sharp enough... very ugly. Also, the wandering beveled blade doesn't facilitate a nice straight cut for the sliding lid. After gluing the top to the body, the lid wouldn't slide in. After sanding and filing to get the lid to slide, it was so loose that it almost falls out, bevel cut or not.... It is obvious to me that pencil boxes of this type must be made with a router.... I'll post a photo this evening.

Band saw tuneup project

Here's the pencil box I'm going to make as a starter project to learn how to use the bandsaw. I plan to build it out of a piece of 2 inch by 2 inch by 8 inch long poplar wood.