Tray (a success!)

We’re spending Christmas with a group of friends, and the rule for presents is “one for a boy, one for a girl, not more than 5 euros” (at today’s exchange rate that’s 6 dollars and 69 cents). Presents will be picked at random. The “Stool, failure” I posted previously was also for this.
Thought I’d make a tray – the wife won’t let me make one for us, since we’ve already got several (like that’s relevant?).
So many things went wrong making this I was reminded of the (almost) Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem, “How have I screwed this up? Let me count the ways.”
And then it all started coming together – the box joints had a little tear out, but not too much, and they fitted (except the one that wasn’t quite straight). The base fitted into the slot I’d cut, except for one of them where some “persuasion” was necessary. At glue time it still fitted, and it was square, and the sides were vertical – I kept checking since that obviously couldn’t be right, but it was.
The 2 mahogany (found at a dump and therefore free, as was the base) “teeth” on each corner are a nice design touch made to hide the fact that I’d very cleverly (not) cut the slots the full length of the plank so I had holes at the joints. It was supposed to be a bit bigger, but I’d divided by 2 wrongly cutting the planks in two.
To date I’ve been happy with some of my designs, but never their implementation, and, whilst this is far far far from perfect when you look up close, I’m quite pleased with both the design and the implementation.
Riga pine and canadian red cedar stained whatever that “scraps from the floor and glued up into a panel like chipboard” stuff is called. Oil and varnish.
The wife’s comment – “It’s kinda heavy”.

-- "Do not speak – unless it improves on silence."