I wanted to make something a little different with this lovely timber and came up with the idea of a long box with slide out lids but i wanted a way of holding the lids closed and came up with this idea. No drawings or engineering went into it it was just what came into my head and the shape of the stay seemed like it would work. The idea was to make it as thick as the lids and cut in so accurate as to give it a seamless finish. It was soon evident that the pivot point needed to be as close to the centre as possible for this to work which was not possible for the make up of the box so the next move was to make the stay as thin as possible, drop the pivot point down and keep making the lid cut outs bigger until the stay swung freely. The next dilemma was how to position the stay and glue it in with the lids shut and unfortunately i had to make a carriage which was much larger than i wanted but much easier to glue into place with the lids closed. So I'm 70% happy with the outcome and lucky that the timber is the main focus. I have thought of other ideas for the pivot of the stay but my process of thinking does not see a better outcome.

Any ideas are welcome