Thread: Black Walnut Card Box

Seeing both Black Walnut and Playing Card Boxes featured recently prompted me to post on a small card box that I finished a short time ago. It’s a bit different so I thought it may be of some interest to others.


The impetus for this box started when a good friend and fellow woodworker gave me a small piece of walnut from his off-cut stack which was destined for his fireplace. At first glance there was a bit of figure showing and the thinking was that it might provide a few small lid panels so I took it home to see what I could use it for.


Just a small rough cut block, about 120 x 60 and a little over 200 mm long, it came alive when I planed it on 3 sides. The transition of the figure from surface to surface was striking and I felt I had to make something that preserved that visual image, so I cut a slice off the front and back and another off the top and set them together to wait for some inspiration.


Because of the way I’d cut them the lid had to fit inside the box - should have thought about that before I started cutting - and I didn’t want a handle on the top so a lift out lid wasn’t an option. I thought about hinging the lid on pins at the back but that needed some kind of lift at the front and I didn't want to do that either. I’m not sure where the notion of pins sliding in grooves came from but it turned out to be something that wasn’t hard to do and when I made a dummy out of MDF it worked quite well, so I made the little box in the photos.

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The lid action is quite neat, you press down on the back of the lid and it flips up and drops into the back of the box. Of course this means it retracts inside the box so I needed to find a way to ensure the contents, whatever they are might be, didn’t obstruct the lid or vice versa. It just happened that the available space neatly held two standard packs of cards and I fitted a small insert which allowed clearance for the lid and held the packs in place. All things considered, a nice bit of serendipity.

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The box is made from Black Walnut with the ends from Kahikatea, attached with loose tenons. The bottom is from Rimu and the finish is three coats of Osmo Polyx hard wax oil. I’m happy with the result - it’s pretty little box with a unique lid action.