Custom Photo Album

A close friend passed away this week, and some of his friends and I wanted to put together some pictures for his family. We decided that we wanted to build a nice photo album to put them in, and I came up with this.

We started out with a 3-ring binder, and drilled out the binder portion, leaving just the metal rings. The spine of the original binder was 3”, so that set the width of the spine for our album. Then, we measured the album pages that we found, and made the front and back cover approximately 1” taller and 1” wider than the pages. The covers are 14” tall and 7.5” wide.

The cover is made of Koa, Purpleheart, and Teak. The teak is actually a piece of decking from the USS MISSOURI that the deceased was given for doing some volunteer work on the MISSOURI. All of the pieces started out as 4/4; we used the bandsaw and planer to resaw to 3/8”, then edge-glued the strips of wood. The spine is 3/8” Koa.

We cut a piano hinge to 13”, then used a 1/16” straight router bit to cut a stopped groove for the hinges, and glued the hinges in place. The metal rings from the original binder were centered on the spine, and we drilled two counter-sunk holes to mount the rings with #8 X 1/2” brass bolts and nuts.

Finishe sanded to 320 grit, and 2 coats of Danish Oil.