The Materials:
The boxes primary wood is Sapele, the solid top is a 1/4” Quilted Maple panel, and Gabon Ebony is the accent wood. The escutcheon inlay is handmade out of is some old piano key Ivory that I bought from a guy in Rhode Island “a.k.a. Walnuts” who sells his wears regularly on Woodnet and Ebay. The hinges are from Brasso and the 1/2 mortise lock is from Woodcraft.

Calculating the Dimension of the piece:
As with most projects I make from scratch, I find the aspect of my desired material that I want to use and figure out the limiting factor.. which turned out to be the height of the Sapele boards that I had re-sawn from a huge chunk that I had picked up. Using the height of the boards and plugging that into the Golden Ratio, I calculated the length and depth of the box to maximize the use of my materials.

The Finish
The entire piece was planed smooth, hand scraped and finally sanded down with 320 git w/d SP. The piece has two coats of Watco Natural Danish Oil. Inbetween both coats of oil the piece was lightly sanded w/ 600 grit w/d SP to help fill the grain of the Sapele. The top was french polished and the rest of the box was bushed Shellac. The shellac solution was about #3/4 pound cut so it was really thin and allowed me to put about three coats on the box in about an hour. It has about 15 coats, but remember they are really thin.

In between each three coat application I would rub down the surface w/ 600 w/d sandpaper using Mineral Spirits as a lubricant. After being satisfied with the overall coverage the final polishing step used Pink Stropping Abrasive compound shaved into a find powder and rubbed into the shellac w/ the direction of the grain using Paste Wax. I didn’t have any Pumice or Rottenstone on hand so the stropping abrasive worked just fine.

How Long did it take
The build took 18 hours.. including hardware, inlay. fixing a few accidental design opportunities.. and included in the build time was the fact that I originally lined the inside w/ Spanish Cedar but I removed it since it really dulled the piece and took way from the overall impact. It wasn’t intended as a humidor so I’m glad the inside was kept plain and not lined. The finishing time took about the same but that was mostly due to the fact I tried many new techniques and spent a lot of time waxing it to get the mirror finish.

Why I built it
The box was made as a thank you gift for some family friends the graciously gave me a complete Stanley #55 Combination plane in its original box. This project is the least I could do to try and compensate them for their generosity.

I received my new Fine Woodworking Magazine today in the mail and noticed Tommy’s (a.k.a. tchisel) article about building his Shaker step stool. Over the summer I had the opportunity to built the same project from the plans he has available and posted on his www.tchisel.com site. I noticed that he recently posted the same plans on Lumberjocks. Hopefully a few of you Lumberjocks will give the project a go and build it. I took me around 20 hours total, and that includes using mostly hand tools for the entire build.

The step stool uses contrasting walnut and hard maple and is finished with two coats of Natural Danish Oil and three coats of blonde shellac. In between each finishing step I sanded over the surfaces w/ 0000 Steel Wool and 600 grit W/D sandpaper. The maple turned out to be a crazy grained curly/blistered hard maple with a light sprinkling of birdseyes.

I deviated from the original plans a little bit since I cut the back cleat a 1/2” short of the proper length. I modified the design and joinery to incorporate a 1/2 blind dovetail instead of a through dovetail to attach the cleat. I’m happy with the way it turned out.

Project Specification: A good friend of mine that just so happen to be my painting teacher in college approached with a request to build him a custom painting box. There were many available on the market but they all seemed to lack some feature or were unattractive. I agreed to take on this project not knowing what I was about to get myself into. My friend wrote up a detailed specification for features such as it must attach to a tripod, it must have a shoulder strap for carrying it, it must have a top that is adjustable to allow for different angles depending on the conditions, it must have a storage bin for a 9”x12” water color table, it must be able to store paint brushes and tubes of water colors, it must be able to store a large palette surface for color mixing and last but not least the inside top of the painting box needed to be designed in such a way that it could securely hold water color paper from larger 9”x12” to smaller sized post card 3”x5”s material.

The Basic Design and Materials: I’m cursed with the inability to so anything simple and I’m a perfectionist to my detriment. So if I was smart I would have chosen a nice veneered Plywood and moved on. But no, I decided to go with solid cherry and curly hard maple. In my head the box design that I jotted down on paper seemed fairly simple: dadoed sides to hold the BB plywood dividers and raised panels for the top and bottom, mitered corners, curly hard maple splines to strengthen the corner joints and an inlaid lignum vitae block in the bottom raised panel to help strengthen the 1/4”-20 T-nut for attaching the box to the tripod. Being foolish I started to build the box before a solution to hold the water color paper was decided upon.

The Glue Up: This is the one area where I really need to learn a lot. I’ve been so impressed to read through all the completed project posts by fellow woodworker’s. They seems like their glues ups always go flawless. Following advice gleaned from several posts of others I made sure that I dry fit the box several times before the glue up was started. During my test runs it appeared like it would take a mere 5 minutes so for some reason I had it in my head that the box would be stronger if I used an 8 minute epoxy. Things didn’t go as smooth I initially intended, before the last side was glued the epoxy started to set up. In a panic I grabbed the tube of yellow glue to wrap up the last side quickly. This little mishap during the glue up left the top raised panel crooked and two of the side miter joints were off by a 1/16”. The crooked raised panel provided a design opportunity which allowed me to include curly maple inlaid in the top. Using a straight edge guide and a dado bit on my router I smoothed out a channel around the edge of the crooked panel. The gaps between the miter joints were easily filled with some yellow glue and cherry sawdust.

The Finish: The box was finished using 3 coats of BLO using 300 grit wet/dry sand paper and 0000 steel wool between coats. The dry Colorado climate allowed each coat of BLO to set up and totally dry in about a week. Afterwards 3 coats of wipe on semi-satin poly were applied. During the dry time between finish coats the box was set in the sun to speed up the darkening of the cherry to a deep dark natural red color.

My Biggest Mistake: I’ve never really put much thought into the hardware aspect of this project since it was my first time installing hinges or pretty much using hardware. This is one area that I never should have under estimated the time and skilled required to do a good job. Aligning the lid took four attempts, it took me three times of filling the screw holes and waiting a day for the glue set up it before I began to appreciate what so many woodworkers do so effortlessly. Again, at this stage of the project I still didn’t have a clue as to how I would hold down the water color paper.

Thinking of a way to securely hold the drawer closed in front was something that I had solved long ago. I ordered one of those toolbox pin locking sets from LV. I guess I should read the instructions before I made the box. The rail between my lid and drawer front was way under the minimal width to handle the springs and miscellaneous hardware. So this was another place where the project slowed down and I decided to just use a pair of custom made brass pins that would go through the rail and into the drawer front to keep it closed. I nearly blew out the fronts when I was hammering in the brass insets but luckily the cracks stopped after a few millimeters.

My father was out for the holidays and since he was involved with designing high end kitchens and being a great draftsman I laid the burden of designing the paper hold down solution on his shoulders before he left for home. The funny thing was the fact that after I showed him the box and told him my problem he just through out the idea after 10 seconds, “Why not use magnets somehow and try veneering some sheet metal or similar material that you could install inside the lid”. Wow, something that I had been milling over for 3 years before I was able to pick up a piece of wood was answered in a matter of seconds. Anyways, in one of the above photos you can see the back of the galvanized sheet metal that was veneered with cherry. This was my first veneering project so trying to think about the purpose of the box and the durability required since water will be running down the surface I used gorilla glue as the adhesive and just made sure that the surface of the steel was clean and scuffed up to help bond the two surfaces. I clamped the veneer and sheet metal between a few pieces of plywood and let it cure overnight. Amazingly there were no air pockets and the veneer cleaned up great. I finished it the same as the box and left it in the sun for three days to get it match the patina of the box. I installed it using some industrial strength double sticky tape and never did apply any DAP around the edge as initially intended to keep water from wicking behind the steel sheet and strips of tape. That solution seems very practical and reversible if for some reason I needed to replace it or do a repair.

The feet are birdseye maple that I turned, and countersunk with 5 mil rubber pads inserted over the screw heads to provide a non-skid work surface when my painting teach needs to use it off the tripod.

Here are a few action pictures of the painting box in the hands of its new owner, doing as it was intended. Getting covered in paint and capturing the bucolic Maine country side.

I’ve been a part of lumberjocks for a while and I’ve enjoyed viewing everyone’s amazing projects, very inspiring. I’m finally having a chance to get back in the garage and build a few things so I thought I would share a project I just completed a few days ago for another woodworking forums hand tool Secret Santa exchange.

The marking gauge is made out of some old pre-ban Brazilian rosewood, Lignum Vitae, brass plate/hardware and an old jigsaw blade. The project has around 6-8 hours of my time invested, most of it was taken up by shaping the brass parts, filing and sanding. The front face is 4” wide x 2.75” tall, the beam is 8 1/4” long and weights around 3/4 lbs. I wanted to incorporate a wider face to give a larger reference edge that should in turn increase the stability and accuracy of the mark cut.

The top knurled knob is constructed of three parts: the knurled nut, 1/4” 20 brass screw and a rosewood top. I used a countersink bit to drill out the inside of the knurled nut, the brass screw was than ground down along the edges to match the 81 1/2 degrees of the countersink angle. Once those had a great fit I super glued the screw in the nut and filed down the top of the screw flush with the nut. The thin piece of rosewood was super glued to the top and shaped while attached.

I’m not sure if many of you have worked lignum vitae before, well it is tough stuff but I was surprised as to how splintery and brittle it is and when the stuff blows out it doesn’t mess around. If the long fibers were not fully supported while sanding or filing the wood would tear out and pull huge chunks out. 1/3 of my time spent on the gauge was damage control trying to repair the lignum vitae.

The body and parts were hand sanded to 400 grit, rubbed down with 0000 steel wool, and the brass plate was polished using some pink strop compound and buffed with a cotton rag. The body was rubbed down with two coats of boilded linseed oil, the rosewood beam and wedge were rubbed with BLO and shellacked.