The basic box.

About a week ago my dentist, Bam, said he had a piece of old Kamagong for me. Well that made the pain in the dentist chair more tolerable (actually it was only a routine cleaning). It was a pretty scrungy looking board about 30” x 18” with nail holes (including a couple of nails) and a fair share of splits. I could see some nice grain buried in there though it would have to be brought out where it was more obvious. Also someone had ‘filled’ some big cracks with what looked like black asphault. Lovely!

Well after removing two nails which had been put in to hold a couple of the bigger splits together and working the surface a bit, it was confirmed that there was some beautiful grain to show off.

An idea from the past popped into my head of a jewelry box I’d made. This piece might make another one of those. Some figuring confirmed that it would so I’m working on it now.

Got the sides and a sliding tray together along with the top glued up. Still have to cut some pieces for the base but to stretch the board a bit I resawed a piece of the somewhat split section down to 1/8” after some thicknessing for use as the bottom pieces fitting into a saw-kerf groove.

The piece for the top.

Put some splines in the mitered joints on the main box.

A shot of the assembly before finish.

Here’s the Narra outer frame with first coat of lacquer applied.

Here is the finished outer frame.

It is a work still in process. Will try to get up a finished picture soon.

The ‘outer’ frame is notched to accept a 1” wide by 1/2” Kamagong (Ebony) inner frame for decorative accent.

The Kamagong inner frame has lap joints and fits together this way.

And here’s the sketch-up drawing