Jewelry Box

One of my sisters’ boyfriends commissioned me to build her a jewelry box for her birthday and this is the result. Quartersawn sycamore with a solid walnut bookmatched top sliced from a small scrap that I almost threw away with some other offcuts I had laying around – glad I didn’t! The removable tray is walnut and the box is lined with black velvet.

The inspiration for the shape of the finger lift cutout and the curved friction fit dividers (thanks, Andy!) came from the “V” shape formed by the bookmatched top – I think it all works pretty well together.

The finishing was a little challenging. I always experiment with scraps while I’m working on a box to work out a finishing technique – for me, it’s important to not have any surprises when I put down a finish on a piece – I have too much invested to make a mistake at that point. In this case, I’m glad I did. I wanted to maintain the contrast between the light (sapwood?) and dark (heartwood?) stripe running around the body of the box. But when i put a coat of oil on to highlight the figure, it darkened the lighter part so much that it almost totally blended in with the dark part. To solve that, I applied a coat of shellac first and then sanded thoroughly with 320 grit back to bare wood. This effectively sealed the sapwood grain so it was similar to the heartwood but still allowed oil to penetrate. I followed that with a coat of BLO, then several more coats of shellac. Finally, after sanding with 600 to level the surface and going over the whole thing with 0000 steel wool, I applied 2 coats of Renaissance Wax. A silky, lustrous finish.

-- Wag more, bark less.