Playing Catchup

Here is the inside of the box. There is a couple of steps in there that I haven't covered. First, there are some runners for the inner box to ride on. The other is the lid aligner? I'm not sure what you call it, but it's an inner frame that when the lid is closed, will align the top half and lower half. That's the theory anyway. :-)

Inside of the box.

Here is the box thus far. There is an applied molding on the lid, and I rolled over the top edge.

Shot of the box closed.

I didn't take any picture about how I made the inner tray, but it was slicing a 3/4 board in half, and planing it to thickness. I then ripped it to height and cut to length. Finally, I cut a groove for the bottom.

Inner Tray.

In my last post, I pointed out my opportunity. Here is what I decided. I decided to leave the knothole. It's character to the piece, and I didn't want to loose that. I did want to try and take care of the chipout on the pins. I mixed up some 15 minute epoxy and added some black pigment. Next I taped off the area and added the epoxy.

Filling the holes.

When you need to mark something accurately, you mark it with a knife. It's there somewhere.

Marking it with a knife.

After the ruler has located the place for the hinge, I slid the hinge into it. Pretty self explanatory.

Putting the hinge in place.

Now that I got the top cut off, it's time to put them back together. I'm using a square to guesstimate the location. That looks about right. I'll come in from that same distance on both sides.

Hinge layout.

I want to get as tight a joint as I can, and my No. 4 plane will get me really close. I'll do all four corners, on both sides of the lid, and then check to see how they match up.

Planing the joint smooth.

It would be useless as a jewelry box if you can't open it, and here is how I did it. I took out my standard blade in my saw, and put in a skil saw blade. The idea here is I wanted to remove as little material as possible, and that blade was about half as thick as my heavy duty blade. The trade off is that the blade had quite a bit of chatter and didn't yield as smooth a cut as I would have liked.

Getting ready to cut the top off.

I'm terrible at keeping on top of this, so here is my catchup post to get me back to where I'm at on this project. I've got all of the boxes out of the clamps, planed and sanded them smooth.

Out of the clamps and ready for cutting.

Vondrak Jewelry Boxes

This is almost where I'm at now. I have all 3 boxes out of the clamps, I did plane the pins flush with a plane, (sorry no picture) sanded smooth, and I've also made a molding for the lid. I felt that the distance between the top of the box and the top of the lid needed a little help. I'll get a picture of that later.

Tower 'o Boxes.

Here is what I did to glue the boxes up. I cut some small pieces of wood that fit between the pins and tails, and taped them in place. Glue on the pins and tails, and a few clamps. Pretty straight forward.

Gluing up a Box.

Well, its not handmade without a little opportunity. I've got a double whopper here. First, I had a little tearout on the tails. I'm thinking that the way to fix that is either with a little black epoxy, or glue in some walnut endgrain. I'll do some research on that and I'll take pictures along the way. The other one, I thought was going to be a design feature of the piece. The knot looks really neat, and has a lot of nice grain around it. The problem is that I haven't cut the box apart yet, and guess where the cut needs to be...you guessed it, right through the knot on the right.

Opportunity.

Here is the veneer saying hello to the plywood substrate. Both sides got 2 coats of contact cement and were then stuck together. Even with both windows and the door open, "Towely" from South Park showed up and asked me if I wanted to go get high. Those fumes were pretty strong. I'm thinking a good mask might have to be in my future if I do this again...or wait until summer.

Getting Ready to Glue Veneer.

I was a little slow on the picture taking, so imagine taking rough boards and running them through the jointer, planer, and dovetailing them. The result is what you see here.

Stack of Boxes Ready for Glueup.

Along for the ride is my prototype box. This box is built a step or 2 ahead of the other boxes so I can figure out things like assembly procedures, finishing, everything and anything that can make the other boxes go together quickly and easily.

Test Box.

For this project, I was given creative license (thankfully) and I've always wanted to try my hand at veneering. I ordered some Carpathian Elm Burl off of ebay and this is what I got. This should look really good when it gets its finish on.

Veneer for the lid.