Excuse the mess trying to learn how to add parts to an existing blog!
Hinging lids on thin material

The Hinged lid

After discarding the brass hinges concept, I continued with my bamboo under the finger nails torture! 
As the jig to hold the lids and bore the holes worked perfectly, I continued.  
 I should register the process and call it The Boring Company!

 As discussed earlier and after reading SplinterGroup’s comments the lids should never have been fitted raw to the boxes first.

Weed and weep
I finally settled on a similar process for the pin pivot hinges, except I use metal (brass) since the holes can be smaller, leaving more "meat" in the wood.
  Just fit the lid flush and square, then jam in paper, credit card, thin cardboard, whatever to fill your gaps. Apply a clamp or two to squish the gap filler tight so the lid won't move.
 Drill the holes and everything will be aligned.

 The brass Rod  concept I had never thought about, however fully agree with the aspects of integrity.

As for the Preferred Method I took a break (which was well overdue) and visited Woolworths, in the Stationary section/isle I selected a 3 x pack of 4 colour ball points  real BIC’s! hoping inside would be 4 x small springs that I needed.

I brought them home and dissected them, LBD would have been proud of me as an apprentice working with pens! ( I hope)

Eureka ! There inside was 4 x small springs hiding and  just what I needed, Woopee,  

After doing a few cartwheels around the yard I was beginning to appreciate all the frustrating bumbling and process mistakes.

This is what the boxes looked like and the reason  I decided to drop the photo montage and veneer them instead.

So my veneering journey continued, is starting to look like a woodworking project after all.

I hadn't done any serious veneering since Aug 2013 when I made two Accent tables from plans from what was those days was  The Australian Woodsmith magazine.

 I hadn’t used veneer for some years, and it made me aware of the skills Shipright and other veneer and marquetry workers must have.

So it wasn't as though I didn't know how to do it but more the correct sequence that was required to produce a impressive result 
My selection of veneers is reasonable but not many of the same quantity which made my work a little tricky, for instance the undersides of the lids were all Brush Box with the feature veneers on the box and the lid matching, (in most cases)

Box 1 was Queensland  Brush Box
Box 2 was Tasmanian Celery top Pine
Box 3 was Australian  Red Cedar
Box 4 was American Walnut on the box and Sassafras on the lid
Box 5 was Canadian or North American even California Myrtle Cluster and plain Myrtle

Attachment
All the veneers were attached using Titebond III then clamped and cauled to get the flatness.
Trimming
The veneer was originally cut oversize.
Upon the glue setting I trimmed the veneer oversize using a box cutter and guide,  I cut the excess cross grain off using scissors and then a flush cutting router bit with a top mount bearing to finish the job.
This worked reasonably well but you needed to be aware of chipping on the end grain and edges, meaning you needed to back cut or cut into the veneer from the edges to avoid this.

Defects
Some chip out occurred and required patching, this I eventually found was caused by two sources, one  from the open dust holes in the sanding disks and secondly operator error regarding technique, … sanding across  into the edge grain.

and again

A chisel was used to square up the internal rounded edges you see in the first chip out picture left by the shaper.

The sides

The fronts and backs

Lots of clamps lots of glue and lots of time.
Like it took all week to cut glue leave overnight and next day trim then repeat five times.

starting to produce some results at last, the tops still to be done

I will get there!