Black Walnut Jewelry Box

Well, Its been a while but here is my latest. This box was made for a customer out of Black Walnut. I milled the wood myself so as to cut down on some of the cost. This was a lot of fun as I did all that by hand. No power tools for that process. In fact, my power tools kind of died on me so most of this work was all done by hand. I had my table saw but the band saw, sanders and drill all died. I don’t have a jointer or a thickness planer so all that work was done by hand as well.

I started with a black walnut log milled to about 1/2 in thickness. I cut my sections slightly larger to give some room to work. The sides are 3 inches tall and the box is about 11 1/2 in wide and 9 1/2 in deep. All from the same log. the bottom of the box, tray and center piece of the lid are 1/4 birch. The dividers and corner keys are milled from an elm log. This was a huge learning project for me. Doing almost the entire box by hand tools alone brought me some new knowledge and appreciation of woodworks long ago. The miters were a slight challenge but after making a couple of miter sleds for the table saw things worked out fine. Not perfect mind you. But they are close enough to please the customer. I wanted the lid to stop at a point so the lid would sit about 65 or 70 degrees. I made a stop on the back so when the lid is raised, it would sit on the stop and just the right angel.

The tile on the front is another business my wife and I do called sublimation. We can take just about any picture or graphic the customer has and place it on tiles of all kinds and sizes as well as coffee mugs and various other substrates. Using epoxy, I placed the tile on the front and trimmed out the sides. The mirror on the inside is sandblasted/etched which is another part of our business. I have been asked what kinds of things we can etch on. I jokingly tell people anything including the dog.

The finish is a high gloss poly. After curing for a couple of days, I rubbed it out with 600 grit and buffed with butchers wax. This produced a very nice shine and smooth surface of which the customer was really excited over. Don’t know why. They just kept running their fingers over it. I’m not sure but I think I heard them call the box, “My precious”. Okay, well all you Lord of the Ring fans caught that one.

Now I took the box to the customer and while there another person saw the box and fell in love with it. So needless to say, I will be starting a new box shortly. Well I hope these pictures turn out okay.

-- In His Grip,