Mahjong Box

My girlfriend was storing her mahjong tiles in an old shoe box and asked me to make her a new box to store them in. This is made of big box red oak and some leftover walnut from my picture frame. I had a lot of first in this one and I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. I has to resaw the material for the lid using my table saw which makes me want a band saw even more.

It was tough to determine the size for everything since I needed a tight fit for the tiles so that they wouldn’t move around too much and wouldn’t get dumped out if it was turned over but there still needed to be enough room to get them out. Worked out perfectly.

I used a Shellac finish. Originally, I was going to try using the Shellac to fill the grain and then finish with some poly. But, I just used the Shellac and think it turned out really well. I still need to install some felt on the interior. The biggest disappointment…the hardware. I got it from Rockler and the latches just were not that nice and the screw heads stripped way to easily. Additionally, the front latch used small nails which simply popped out and I had to buy some screws from Home Depot that don’t quite match.

Overall, a fun project.