Jewelry Box

Here is my first attempt at making a jewelry box. It took about 3 days to make the box, and all week to finish it (I hate finishing… someday I’ll have to get a sprayer to speed the process). The sides are red oak, the top frame is purpleheart with laminated padauk strips (also the main box splines), the center panel of the top frame is figured sapele veneer (the same as on my wooden computer) on a baltic birch ply substrate, the bottom is MDF, and the splines in the top frame are hard maple (from some scraps I had lying around). Since I made this quickly, there were a number of mistakes. The main box splines were too deep and the splines too thick… the strips split and shredded horribly while pounding them in. I had to make lots of little wedges to hammer in the remaining gaps. Noting this mistake, I made the top frame splines smaller, but my jig slipped a bit on some of them. Oh well, I think it looks decent overall. The hinges also gave me a bit of trouble, as they were not very straight (stupid cheap Chinese parts from the local hardware store). Another mistake was using normal Titebond wood glue for the veneering. It bled through the veneer pretty badly and made the finish a bit uneven. I didn’t have much luck with contact cement when I was working with the wood comp, so maybe I’ll have to come up with a different solution (urea resin?).

The design is similar to a jewelry box tutorial I found on this site (I can’t find it now, so I’m not sure who wrote it). Eventually I’ll make at least a velvet-covered bottom insert, and maybe some dividers. I finished with 5 coats of a tung oil / poly blend.

Bigger versions of these pics:

http://imgur.com/OwLL2.jpg
http://imgur.com/cGRcL.jpg
http://imgur.com/5fpFI.jpg
http://imgur.com/wxDbr.jpg
http://imgur.com/cd1rI.jpg
http://imgur.com/QYnPu.jpg