Intarsia Memory Box

I had a devil of a time trying to decide what to call this. “Intarsia on Glass” is my best attempt.

A co-worker hired me to make a memory box for his mother, a retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant (Hooah!) It will eventually hold her medals and memories from her time in the Service.

We played around a bunch with different ideas, and collectively came up with what you see. It’s modeled off of a unit patch she was assigned to while in Germany with the 2nd Corps Support Command. See the last picture for the actual patch she wore.

I did the patch design in different hardwoods and considered it an intarsia project – only this time attached to glass instead of a backer board. Each piece was shaped, sanded, oiled and then waxed and polished before gluing onto the glass.

As a piece, I cut out the E-6 Rank from some white oak on the scrollsaw and attached velcro to the back of it to allow it to mount inside of the box wherever they choose to.

This was a very fun and unique project to work on – hope his Mom likes it!

Oh yeah! Overall dimensions are 11×14 inches.

Hardwoods used:

White Oak for the Rank
Maple for the blade
Mahogany for the Handle
Walnut for the Blade Guard, Top as well as Chevrons.

-bob

-- Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. - Thomas Carlyle http://www.ffrf.org