Sycamore One Drawer Box-Twins

I picked up some English Sycamore while I was at Schutte Lumber in Kansas City. Compared to the Woodcraft and Rockler stores in Denver, Schutte was like a walk through a woodcrafter’s nirvana. I have never worked with Sycamore before but was entranced by the almost lizard-like ray patterns.

Having done a ton of band saw boxes, I was trying to figure out a way to make sure the ray paettern didn’t get lost. Most band saw boxes have the grain end on either the top/bottom or left/right. What I did this time was place the end-grain facing front/back and the ray pattern was displayed on the top. It worked out very well and I will definitely do this in the future with fantastic figured wood.

The finish is a natural stain and then three layers of thinned polyurethane. Steel wool took down the raised grain and bumps in between coats. The drawers are flocked with wine colored fiber. I made two of these at the same time, and while slightly different, they are almost identical.

Each one is 3 1/2” tall, 10” wide and 5 1/2” deep. The hardware is standard home center stock.

QUESTION: I was hoping to get a deeper 3-D chatoyancy out of the sycamore but was unsuccessful. Does sycamore not usually give this kind of depth or could I have done something to bring it out? I’ll post this question in a forum as well.

-- Behind the Bark is a lot of Heartwood----Charles, Centennial, CO