Jarrah & NQ silky oak box

[Dengue]

Hello, just 12 months ago we holidayed with relatives in their beach house on the southern NSW coast near Merimbula, and I promised them to make a box in appreciation of our stay. They had gone to a lot of trouble taking us around to some of the local woodwork galleries like the ones at Tilba Tilba.

This box started out as a rather large jewellery box styled project. The jarrah and NQ silky oak were a given, being connected to their family history.

Used mitre joints as this enabled me to do decorative keys and maintain a continuous grain around the box sides. Stringing was a first time effort, and was done after the box was made. In future I will add it to the box boards before they are mitre cut to size. The tray and the stringing are made of Qld Silver Ash. the stringing went a darker colour too, but I had not used sanding sealer on this box - learnt that lesson from this project on the advice of AlexS .

There were a number of problems in the construction that were submitted to the forum, like these two for starters here and here, and of course here, where help from the forum heavyweights solved this unusual problem of flecking on the silky oak lid.

There were three goes at making it. It started out something like 260 x 160 ( golden ratio) and after careful cutting down and re-using the box sides and lids, eventually ended up 230 x 130, which was good as I had run out of jarrah.

The lid is a floating design, to allow for seasonal wood movement.Box sides are 10mm thick, which required the use of 35 x 6mm strap hinges.

I have posted a couple of pictures of the lid, as the pattern differs markedly with the angle of the light. Hope it shows up.
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I felt a bit guilty for the long delay, and for the reduced size of the box, so decided to make an additional one for them, this time an open utility box out of huon pine and Queen Ebony from the Solomon Islands, seen below.

This one turned out well, but was disappointed with the end grain of the huon pine. Despite using a couple of coats of sanding sealer made up in a 8:1 mix with Ubeaut white shellac, it still went a bit darker than the face sides, but not as bad as the keys on the jewellery box above. Next time I am going to try a half blind dovetail joint to hide the light coloured end grain

Both boxes are finished with 3 coats of Livos Kunos #244 oil, a linseed oil based product that requires a month to fully cure and harden.

Made a small mistake in the dovetailing. Should have made dovetails on the huon pine and pins on the ebony with half ebony pins at the top and bottom for extra strength. Would look better too, I think?

Doing the red felt mats for each box was very time consuming. I got the felt from Spotlight, spray glued it to 10 ply cardboard from the local newsagent. In the end, after experimenting with marking knives and steel straight edges, I decided to cut it with an office style guillotine, using a couple of Magswitch hold down magnets and a steel rule to set the opposite border lines on the guillotine. Best cut was with the felt facing upwards, hence the need to mark the borders with the hold down magnets as I could not accurately mark the cut lines on the felt. With the ruler and magnets I was able to get accuracy to 0.5mm.



box_util_01 (Large).jpgbox_util_02 (Large).jpgbox_util_03 (Large).jpgbox_util_04 (Large).jpg

[AlexS]

Nice result, Dengue, I'm sure the recipients will appreciate it.

[TTIT]

You're getting good at this box making thing. Nice work mate

[AngelaPetruzzi]

They look magnificent.

[Christos]

Really great going on the boxes.

I like the contrast of the ebony and huon and would agree about reversing the tails and pins.