Thread: Variations on a Theme

Very pretty; I love camphor laurel and I'm fortunate that it's a fairly common species around here.

Very nice. It's amazing how a base with feet like that can elevate a piece.

By the way, do I detect a Mendelssohn fan, based on the thread title?

Not really Lance, just a figure of speech as far as I'm concerned.

Very nice collection there David. Looks like you have been keeping yourself out of mischief while we can't do much outside of home.
Some fine looking pieces of timber you have used.
Do you still have your ebay store?

Very nice collection there David. Looks like you have been keeping yourself out of mischief while we can't do much outside of home.
Some fine looking pieces of timber you have used.
Do you still have your ebay store?

Thanks Dallas. Yes, still got the ebay store there's just not much in it these days.

Hi Dave, nice boxes there, they come up well. I guess you have jigs to cut the mortises required for the quadrant hinges. They were always a bit of a pain that's why I stopped using them a few years ago. I remember your technique for your ring holders, they look good.

Paul

One of the advantages of the lockdown - more time in the shed!
Very nice details in these boxes, and I really like the way you have constructed the lids.
Quality jewellery boxes attract quality jewellery, and these are a fair size, I hope the recipients don't get too enthusiastic in trying to fill them, could get a bit expensive.

Alan...

Originally Posted by Pauls321

Hi Dave, nice boxes there, they come up well. I guess you have jigs to cut the mortises required for the quadrant hinges. They were always a bit of a pain that's why I stopped using them a few years ago. I remember your technique for your ring holders, they look good.

Paul

Thanks Paul. Yes, I make templates for all the hinges I use, even strap hinges. The templates are used with guide bushes on the router to cut the hinge mortises. As you say, without the template, fitting quadrant hinges is real pain. The worst thing about ring holders is that they are very tedious to make. You might have noticed that I only fitted them to two of the boxes.

Hey Dave, I know what you mean about ring holders. Interesting little story here, we were down in Tassie 3 years ago (second time there) and I reckon I visited every woodwork shop in Tassie, at least 50 of them. My favourite woodwork shop down there is in Richmond and I told the woman running the shop that. I went through it 3 times during the week in that area. In the shop there is a beautiful range/display of timber boxes made from local craftsmen, lovely timbers. Then in another section of the shop is is a range which obviously comes from Asia. And bear in mind that lots of coaches pull up at Richmond every day full of tourists looking to buy.

I said to the woman, so out of these two ranges, which boxes do you sell the most of. Without hesitation she said, these ones,...pointing to the Asian boxes. I was a bit surprised,.really, you have all these lovely boxes here etc etc. She said yes but all the women want little compartments, ring holders and such. She said the local boxmakers either aren't interested in making ring holder compartments, or just don't want to. Most interesting.

Paul

Thanks Paul, that's good to know. My daughter actually lives in Richmond and I too have made a bit of a study of the wood shop there. The boxes that she stocks do indeed vary widely. The most 'interesting' ones are large and have a lot of little compartments all very nicely upholstered. If you look at them closely you can see that they're made out of MDF, but they've been covered in very nice veneers of Tasmanian timbers. Whoever the local 'artisan' is he is obviously too lazy to do the, admittedly significant, extra work to allow applying veneer to the box openings. So when you open the box you see bare MDF edges in all their glory. The local 'artisan' obviously imports the completed box from China and then veneers it. Big markup and not too much trouble while still keeping the price attractive for a product that many would perceive to be local.

No doubt these boxes sell very well and a lot of buyers think that they've bought a locally produced item rather than something pumped out by a cnc machine and some industrious production line workers thousands at a time. Ah well, I guess you can fool most of the people a lot of the time.

That's very interesting Dave. I must admit I never even opened any of the "asian" type boxes there to look closely at them. I think there was a couple already open on display all nicely padded/ring holders etc inside. From memory I think the price of the "asian" type were about half the price of the local timber boxes. Memory maybe around the $250 to $300 mark.

Importing them in, then fixing tassie veneers to them,....hmmm, really makes you think. (not that I have thoughts of doing that)

Paul

Lovely work, nice to see the cornerpost dovetail and the other INCRA variations. great choice of timbers and I like the mitered lids. Inspirational stuff. thanks.