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I made this box for my lady friends birthday. The box isn't so much the present as a container for the present. I bought her a pendant and I wanted more than a cardboard box to give it to her in. So I whipped this out.

The woods are ambrosia maple and padauk. I had already been planning on using the maple. She likes maple and I had this nice piece sitting in the shop. The idea to use the padauk came from Phil's Oak Box with Padauk Lid project. I really liked the colors and thought the padauk would work well with the maple.

The decision for the tapered sides came from the book "Box Making Basics by David Freedman". I knew the same old straight side box wasn't going to cut it. I had to jazz it up a little. The tapered sides and top give it a little different look and hopefully make it a little more visually interesting.

The box is made as a standard straight walled mitered corner box with standard identical miter keys top and bottom. After the glue dried I raised the table saw blade as far as it would go, tilted it 6 degrees and sliced all four walls of the box. The lid is tapered at 10 degrees. The lid is short compared to the box so I had to give it more taper so it didn't look straight up and down.

The finish is a single coat of pure tung oil thinned 50/50 with turpentine.

Gallery

Comments

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Beautiful…bet she will like this almost as much as the pendant. I real keep sake !!!!
 

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Very nice box. Like the tapered sides/lid and great choice of woods.

Keep it up.

Scrappy
 

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Fantastic!! Definitely beats a cardboard box :))
 

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That's a nice box. I need to read that fellows book
 

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Beautiful job! Love the design and choice of woods.
 

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Great box! Design and execution outstanding…purpose noble!
Ellen
 

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Very nice take off on a classic box. Well done.

Tapering the sides must have been exciting. Especially the forth side. Any tips on how you did it, as in how you held it while slicing?

Steve
 

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beautifull box !
simple and elegant .
i think i hear quasimoto ,
tuning his bells ,
for the big day !
 

· In Loving Memory
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Very beautiful box. unique too.
 

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Great looking box. Nice choice of colors and excellent job on 'wrapping' the grain around the sides.
 

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Very nice! You've set a big precedent for all future gifts, though. :)
 

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Beautiful box.
 

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A real pretty box !
I love the spalted woods and the padauk adds the right contrast and really makes it stand out.
The tapered design is very nice also…....... Job well done, thanks for sharing.
 

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Nice job making wrapping paper… lol. I enjoy browsing and picking up on box ideas. Thanks for including the part on how you tapered it… I'm an amateur and probably would have tried to cut the tapers, then mitered.. and then.. toss it all out.

So, the side walls are thinner at the top than at the bottom-maybe tapering in thickness from half to three quarter thick? Box isn't so tall that your saw depth could cut all the way from top to bottom? I might need to try this on some cheap poplar first…

Thanks for sharing…
 

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Nice box! I really like the spalting and color contrast. What keeps the box lid from seating all the way?
 

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Thanks all for the kind comments. It was a fun box to make and cranked out pretty fast.

Simple answers first. The lid has a small step set back from the outer edge to keep the big part of the lid lifted off of the box. The idea was to have a small gap so the lid looks like it is "floating" just off of the box. You can only see the gap from straight on or lower but if she sets it on a high shelf you should be able to see it. Or maybe it will be a design element that will never be noticed, except by another woodworker :). I cut the rabbet around the lid on the table saw, cut with the lid flat and then with the lid on edge. I made the two cuts shy of meeting in the corner so it left the step all around the rabbet. The lid just barely fits into the box so the lid stops high and rests on the step leaving the small gap.

Yep, the box tapers from thick at the bottom, 3/4 of an inch or so at the bottom to maybe 1/2 inch thick at the top. The box is a typical mitered corner box made from 3/4 or so stock. It looks pretty thick and clunky before it is tapered. Add in the miter keys while it's still square using a standard 45 degree sled run over the table saw blade. I even cut the lid square and sized the rabbet and step while the box was square. Once it's all dry you cut the tapers.

Cutting the tapers was the slightly tricky part, not a big deal but that's a lot of blade exposed. First I did a quick pass with a block plane over the miter keys to get the sides mostly flat. I did not have to worry about scuffing the sides since I was about to slice them off. Mostly the sides need to be reasonably flat so you can register a side against your miter fence.

I like to make my cuts so that the off cut falls away under the tilted blade. I dont like the idea of an off cut riding free on top of the spinning blade. So since I wanted the off cut to be on the bottom side of the blade I had to cut the sides with the box upside down. The open top of the box was riding on the table saw table with the blade tilted away from the bottom of the box. The first two cuts were pretty easy and pretty safe. Since the box is still square sided at this point I pushed one flat side against the miter fence and put a F clamp on it to hold the box against the fence. I then sliced off one end. Flip the box around to get the other flat face against the miter fence, clamped it, and sliced off the another face.

That left me with a box with flats on two sides and tapers on two sides. Now comes the dicey part. Freedman's book suggests making tapered seats for your miter fence and opposite clamping face so you can get a good clamp while holding the tapered sides. That sounds like a good idea to me, that's my recommendation for anyone else trying this. I ended up free handing it for the remaining two side. I held the upside down box with the tapered side against the miter fence and sliced off the other two sides. It was a little spooky but mostly I kept my dang fingers back and crept up on it gentle, that's a lot of blade exposed.
 

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This is Ambrosia Maple , not Spalted Maple if you want to correct your post.
If you notice , the little holes in it are left behind as the Ambrosia Beetle grub bores its way through the Maple tree . The staining is a reaction by the tree caused by the boring process.

Spalted Maple is characterized as black "pencil" lines caused by a fungus in the wood as the tree starts to decompose.

Very nice gift box and you did a great job matching the grain on the corners : )
 

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So cool. Love the shape, love the colors, love the wormy figure.
 

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Dusty,

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to do a little more research and correct my postings. I bought a few sticks of this maple, saw the bug holes, saw what looked to me like spalting, and assumed that was what it was. I did not realize the beetle tracks also resulted in staining like this.
 
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