Bar Mitzvah Box

A box I made for a relative’s Bar Mitzvah. My first mitered corner box and my first inlay. The sides are cherry, top is walnut, inlay is cherry and splines are walnut. The bottom is baltic birch ply. My mother burned the hebrew lettering into the top (it says “mazel tov”, meaning congratulations or good luck). Finished with Enduro Var.

It was one of those projects that kind of designed itself as it went, meaning mistakes dictated the design. It was supposed to be simple. (Hey, I think I just found my tag line!) The top is made of a solid piece of walnut with rabbits around the bottom edges to fit into the box. I had intended that the top would just sit on top of the box, but it was hard to lift off, so I put on a handle. Because of where I placed the handle, the top had a tendency to just fall off when it was lifted, so hinges went on. However, because I had beveled the edges of the top, there was only about 1/4” of material for the screws to go in. I ended up having to dremel the tips off some brass screws so they wouldn’t come through.

The inlay went much the same way. I had intended to just router out the lines of a star, but as I was routing the base of the router bumped up against my clamp, causing it to make a slightly curved line. So I cursed, and then routed out the entire star. I was just using a triangle shaped template, flipping it over to make a full star, so when I had to cut out the inlay piece I didn’t have a full star-shaped template. I made two triangles and cut the corners off of one. In the end I was really pleased, as I think it looks more interesting. There were some slight gaps that I filled with superglue and sawdust.

Finally, the box wobbled a bit when sitting on a flat surface. So it got some feet. Small walnut squares, mitered edges to look like the top, mounted to the bottom of the ply bottom.

Happy accidents. Thanks for looking.

-- I cut it three times and it's STILL too short!