Knot Just Bookends

So.
I’ve finally finished my entry for the competitions. I don’t expect to win, but I decided early on to give it my best shot – I didn’t decide on the shooting weapon however, and it looks like I used a water pistol! More info on some thought processes in this blog.
Anyway – bookends – we needed some (but I always say that), and here they are.

I wanted to do something “different” for the hidden compartment, so I came up with this “dismantleable” bookend idea – one of them is attached to the base with a sliding dovetail (not easy without a router table)...

and inside…

drum roll…

is the stash of cash!
Now, bookends have 2 sides – on the “pretty” side I’ve done a marquetry (I think that’s what it is) olive inset – 2 slices from the same log – it’s a knot, so I’m trying to qualify for that competition with the same piece.
I’m supposed to tell a story about the knot…
The log had been sitting in the garage, oops, shop, for a while, and every time I went past it I could hear this voice calling to me – “I’m not for burning. I’m knot for burning”. So I sliced it up – weird thing was that the knot you see wasn’t where I’d expected it to be – there was no sign of that old branch on the outside, and the knot I’d been aiming for simply wasn’t there. Serendipity.
Enough drivel…
On the other side…

is, well, a mess – and therein lies a story, and almost grounds for divorce. The original design was to give Micheangelo a run for his money and make a carving like the entry doors at Lisbon’s Rossio train station on the other side.

My mistake was to bounce this idea of the wife. Her argument, which I eventually came round to (after several days with no food), was that, since the olive side looked so incredibly beautiful (she’s a big fan too, especially since the Christmas pressie of the rose-tinted glasses), a thief might want to steal them. Soooooooo, when we go away, we’re supposed to turn the bookends “crappy side” out.
“So you have 2 hidden compartments”, I hear you say. Well – no. I figured (all on my own this time), that, in the unlikely event that a burglar decided to examine the bookends for a hidden compartment, there would be a 50% chance that he’d pick the one that didn’t have one, and would be unlikely to try the other one as well! That and not having a lot of cash to stash, of course.
Some more pics during building, in my blog.
Oh, it’s ash, with olive inset, finished with my usual turps/oil/varnish mix – this time teak oil seems to bring out the olive best and tung oil is still not available here.

The design is based on the neo-manueline entry doors at Lisbon’s Rossio train station.

which is, without doubt, in my humble opinion, one of the most beautiful entryways in the universe. There are some more beautiful pictures here if you’re interested, and even more if you google “Rossio train station” or anything similar.