Thread: Meranti box wip

Good job! Nicely done.

Originally Posted by yosam

Well today I rounded over the edges using my newly acquired 1/4" router bit and then sanded the box and applied the first wax coat.

Although meranti is a pretty uninteresting timber in terms of colour and grain variation, it hasn't come up too bad.

All that's needed now is a couple more coats of wax, a contrasting drawer handle using a small shaped piece of huon pine (I think) and royal blue flocking in the drawer.

Cheers.
Ray

Hi Ray I have just had a look at your WIP great job on the pictures and the way you put them together to explain things.
I can now see how you would go about building such a box the finished Item looks just great you have now got me really interested in the whole process.

PS Have just read you email will answer in due course.
Col

Well here I am finally with the box completely finished with handle and flocked drawer.

I took up John T's idea of an ebony handle (thanks John). I purchased a couple of pieces of Solomon Island Queen Ebony at the WWW show recently, which I thought was reasonably priced. I must say I don't know anything about ebony timber, but I did notice one of the other timber supply stands had a small piece of Madagascar ebony which was ten times the price! Sounds like you use it with extreme care.

The ebony handle is 30mm x 12mm x 10mm cut in to a basic wedge shape to allow easy of grabbing to open the drawer. It's quite a challenge working with a small piece of hard timber. What I did was to cut the basic block shape and the vertical end angle cuts with a Japanese hand saw and the horizontal angled top & bottom cuts on the bandsaw at 10 degrees. The front profile of the handle didn't quite end up square as I had planned, more of a slight parallelogram shape.

Anyway the box has come up quite well.

Another lesson learned - the timber laminates run vertically in the box and I have noticed a gap appear in one of the laminates on the left hand side, which I think is due to the piece of timber I purchased not being perfectly flat, and has sprung back to the original twist position. Next time I would plane the board flat to remove any twist before cutting into segments and laminating together.

Thanks for all your feedback, suggestions and encouragement along the way.

Until the next box - Best Regards.
Ray

Wow, excellent finish yosam.

HI RAY,
The box has come up a treat a great wip the ebony made the difference looking foward to the next one.
john.

You nailed it Ray! Nice finish. You also made a nice inside layer for the drawer.