This box was inspired by fellow Lumberjock Greg and his recent experiments with sculpting laminated boxes. He specializes in graceful curves, and I’m more of a lines and angles guy, so I decided to see what would happen if I made a box from a board that consisted of two contrasting woods laminated together, and used assorted router bits to “sculpt” through the surface, exposing the other species. To further enhance the effect, I reversed which surface was on the outside on adjacent sides of the box.

The woods are bloodwood and yellowheart, and the finish is BLO, buffed and waxed. I’m far from satisfied with the end result…. it’s pretty schizophrenic-looking. But I do see some possibilities. I think the biggest problem is that the two woods were of the same thickness, meaning it took very severe cuts to expose the other species. On my next experiment, I’m going to laminate a much thinner top layer to a thicker substrate, allowing for more gentle, shallow cuts to expose both woods.

Another box from maple and mystery wood.

Like the last box I posted, I installed the inlay banding in one continuous piece on a 24” board, then cut the box sides and assembled them. This is much easier than trying to cut inlay to the exact size for the four box sides after assembly.

The knife is a Gerber locking blade my grandfather gave me at least 30 years ago. I used to carry it on my belt in my first job after college when I worked in a lumberyard, so it has sentimental value in a couple of different ways.

Just a little beveled-edge box, about 6” x 4”. The primary woods are maple and mystery wood. (I picked up a box of mixed wood on eBay a while back, and I really don’t recall the exact species the seller said were included. Some I can identify… some I’m not sure about.)

Finish is about as simple as it gets: The dreaded (by some) BLO, followed by buffing and waxing on my Beall 3-wheel system.

A friend and neighbor from three doors down passed away not too long ago. His children are currently in the process of trying to sell his house. There were quite a few trees down around here after Hurricane Isaac, including one from his back yard. When I saw the cut up trunk and branches at the curb, I thought it would be nice to turn something from a piece of Mr. Ben’s tree to remember him by.

I thought it was an oak tree, but the wood didn’t have the big pores I’m used to seeing from local oaks. Then again, this is the first green wood I’ve ever turned, so I had no idea what to expect. I left the walls fairly thick, but no telling what will happen as it dries. The finish is buffed BLO.

Whatever it decides to do, it will still bring me good memories of a fine old gentleman.

Call these boxes cousins, I guess. Call them coin boxes, change boxes, or whatever. They came about from the idea of cutting angled pieces and arranging them in a circle. Then came the thought that if I offset the wedges a bit as I glued them up, it would provide something of a swirl effect.

Materials are walnut and curly maple. The finish on both starts out with BLO, but the predominantly walnut box has satin wipe-on poly, whereas the maple box just got a buffing and waxing treatment.

One important lesson I learned from these: If you are going to do a recessed floating panel for the top, finish it first! I couldn’t sand or buff these tops after glue-up to get a finish I was happy with.

A little experimental box of maple and bloodwood.

This was my first attempt at a box with a pivot-type hinge. Since I didn’t have anything like brass rod laying around, I figured a couple of screws would serve the purpose. The holes in the lid are drilled slightly over-sized so the screws aren’t really biting into it. Not very elegant, but effective enough.

The finish is BLO, buffed out on the lathe.

I had some 1/4” thick bloodwood stock, so I laminated it to 1/8” oak(?) and milled the resulting 3/8” material to size for these boxes. The laminated stock creates an interesting effect, I think. Finish is just BLO and paste wax.

I have to call this box accidental, because I had absolutely no idea of its purpose until well after it was completed.

Just to challenge my skills, I decided to attempt making a small box from some 1/4” bloodwood I had on hand. (Don’t ask me what the lighter colored wood is.) I’m not used to working in such a small scale, so I kept the construction pretty simple. Surprisingly enough, it came together pretty well.

I stuck a half-rolled up sanding sponge in the bottom, because it sort of looked like a ring box, but I still didn’t really have a purpose for it. I brought the box to my office this morning, thinking it would find some use holding paper clips or whatever, but its true raison d’etre immediately revealed itself! We had recently been given lapel pins to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the university where I work, and the colors of the box matched perfectly with our school colors of maroon and gold on the pin. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Overall dimensions are approximately 3.5” x 2” x 2”, and the finish is satin wipe-on poly.

I was just playing around with a box of assorted exotic woods I picked up on eBay. The lighter wood is obviously (?) mahogany. I’m not so sure about the darker wood on the sides and inlay. It looks a lot like walnut, but seems a bit darker and has a very different aroma than walnut when cutting it…. almost like cinnamon. Guesses, anyone?

The lid is held in place by a thin keeper, almost the size of the box opening, glued to the underside of the lid. I used simple butt joints on the sides, and installed the light-colored plugs simply for visual effect as there was no reason to actually use dowels or screws in such a small box (approx. 6” x 5” x 4”high).

The finish is somewhat of a hodgepodge, since I kept changing my mind. :-) One coat of BLO, followed by a coat of Crystalac clear grain filler, followed by two coats of wipe-on poly, and finally buffing on my three-wheel buffing system. It probably would have turned out the same if I had gone straight to the buffer in the first place, but that would have been too easy.

I had a bit of time to kill this week, and I haven’t spent much time in the shop lately, so I built these ”
reverse twins” of bubinga and bloodwood.

The material was 1/4” thick, so I laminated it with some 1/8” ash to provide a good aesthetic thickness for these 4” x 6” boxes. Construction is very simple, with the tops and bottoms being floating panels. I stopped fooling with hinges on my boxes a while back, and now I remember why. Hinges are the spawn of Satan. ‘Nuff said. The finish is BLO, followed by machine buffing.

This was my first time working with bloodwood, and I think I’m in love. :-) Can someone tell me if and how the rich, red color of the wood is affected by light exposure over time?

Thanks for looking!

I haven’t spent much time in the shop lately. I bought a new guitar a few weeks ago, and I’ve been indulging that particular hobby more as of late. Yesterday, though, I had the urge to make some sawdust, so I went into the shop and grabbed a bowl blank from the pile. It looked like ambrosia maple, but I wasn’t sure until I started turning it.

The great thing about turning small bowls is that you can go from start to finish in an hour or so. It satisfies my need for immediate gratification. :-) This one is simply buffed on my three-wheel system. No other finish was used on the outside. I wiped a coat of poly on the inside.

It took longer to photograph than it took to make.

Thanks to all of you who gave me guidance when I was having difficulty turning the knob. I ended up doing it what seemed like the simplest way: I turned the shape from a longer spindle, then parted it off.

The tote is pretty true to the original shape, but I made the knob a little beefier at the waist (mainly because I was a bit gun shy after breaking the first two attempts).

There is no finish on these… I just buffed and waxed them for now.

The last photo is what the plane looked like when I acquired it.

The other day when I posted my “Lines and Angles” box, several folks requested I post the sled I used to cut the parts.

It’s nothing out of the ordinary. Designed for small-ish work, it is pretty compact. The miter fence attaches to T-nuts on either side of the blade. It can be left in place when cutting short cutoffs against the rear fence, or it can be removed for crosscutting longer pieces.

I was initially a little skeptical about whether the screw-down miter fence would prove to be accurate, but so far it appears to be dead on. I’m still mulling over ideas for a hold-down on the miter fence.

This didn’t really start out to be a project at all.

I made a new medium-sized crosscut sled for my table saw a couple of weeks ago. It also includes a reversible miter fence. So I was just fooling around with it, cutting various small pieces from scraps, when a pattern started to form in my head. Pretty soon I had a reasonable facsimile of a box lid glued up, and it was just a matter of making a box to go under it. There is no inlay on the top…. it is all solid pieces glued into a pattern. Woods used (all scrap) include oak, walnut, maple, padauk, and mystery wood for the removable tray’s bottom. Finish is BLO, buffed on my 3-wheel system.

And if anybody followed Rich Greer’s thread on mistakes, you may know that this box started out to be about an inch taller than the final version. :-)

As soon as I rounded off the corners of this blank, I could see there was some really great figure in it.

I dared not turn the walls too thin because there were lots of cracks and voids as I went along. The bright spot in the center of the last photo is a piece of metal that appeared out of nowhere as I was turning. Go figure.

Finish is BLO followed with a 3-wheel buffing process.

I wanted to add some details to this one, without going too far over the top. Primary woods are walnut and padauk, and the corner beading is just some light scrap I had around…. probably ash. I debated back and forth on whether to do a mirror finish or a hand-rubbed look. I opted for shiny just because it’s more of a challenge to get right. I used Crystallac grain filler, followed by multiple coats of wipe-on oil-based poly. Finally, it was buffed out on my three-wheel Beall buffing system.

UPDATE: I decided to change the finish. See here.

Lastly, for the plane lovers, I threw in a photo of the Stanley Four Square 5 1/4 I just finished restoring. Here is what it looked like originally if you’re interested.

Nothing fancy – just shop furniture – but I thought someone might find the idea useful to modify for their own needs.

Since I don’t have the greatest dust collection setup in the world, everything in my shop tends to get funky pretty quickly. I built this out of scraps I had laying around (and a purchased piece of plexiglass) to keep my collection of hand plane restorations nice and clean. The slanted piece of plywood the planes are resting on is hinged at the top, and can be lifted to reveal a storage area for spare parts, blades, etc. (see finger hole in last photo).

The first four planes from the left are a #7, #6, #5, and #4, all dating from the 20’s to the 40’s. In theory, the next two spaces will one day be occupied by the elusive and expensive #2 and #1. Currently they are home to an old block plane, and a 1950’s era Craftsman my dad gave me from his shop.

After many trials and tribulations, not the least of which is red dust everywhere and on everything, I finally finished the project made from the padauk given to me by my friend Gary E. , a Lumberjocks lurker.

Finish is wipe-on poly. I used satin on the legs and apron, and gloss on the top, bringing it to a mirror finish with automotive polishing compound and carnuba wax. The contrasting light wood is some “mystery wood” salvaged from the renovation of the old library at the university where I work. Sanding bleed-over from the padauk was a bear to deal with, but I think it came out okay in the end. After my first attempt at using BLO as a finish ended in a pink, muddled mess, I sanded everything back and hit it with compressed air to remove the red dust befire applying the poly. Afterwards, I was wondering if sandblasting would be good for that. If anyone has tried it, let me know.

Thanks for looking, and all comments/criticisms/questions are welcome.

I’m afraid I’ve been bitten by the plane bug.

After debating shelling out $200+ for a #4 Veritas, I came across this pair of old Stanleys (#4 and #5) on eBay. The second photo shows their original condition. Based on the seller’s 100% rating and his promise that all the major parts were in good shape, I decided to go the rehab route rather than buy brand new. I’m extremely happy with my decision. After spending a good part of the weekend cleaning these up and honing the irons on my new Worksharp3000, they were turning out newspaper-thin shavings with ease. As an added bonus, the process of taking them apart and putting them back together again took a lot of the mystery out of planes for me. Now I finally understand what all the screws, levers, and various adjustments actually do!

I was able to date the #4 as a Type15, built in 1931-32, and the #5 as a Type 19, manufactured between 1948 and 1961. I find it pretty amazing how well made these things are. Considering they are 50-80 years old, and all it took was a few hours of work to make them look like new… well, I think that says it all.

Since I posted a gloat on this lumber a while back, I thought the least I could do is post the first project I made with it.

Construction is solid oak except for the oak ply backing. In stead of ripping wider boards that I had on hand down to make the trim, I purchased a couple of boards from the big box store. In retrospect, the reclaimed wood is nicer looking, so I should have bitten the bullet and cut it up anyway.

The only piece I had that was long enough for the top showed some seriously mismatched grain when I planed the old finish off. I was disappointed at first, but in the end I decided it adds a bit of character, which is in keeping with the age of the wood and it’s former life holding books in a college library.

Finish is Minwax Provincial stain(chosen to match my bedroom furniture) with five coats of wipe-on satin poly.