The Normite section of my blog, some times I just want to play and talk about the big tools.
This will be the last box I’m making for a while and It hardly deserves a post of it’s own, But I feel compelled to share a shot of it, because it’s my favorite by far. The Hickory Sides, Black Walnut Keys, and Figured Honduran Mahogany top perfectly compliment each other, at least in my eyes.
I finished the prototype box last night. The top is Spalted Maple, the sides are Poplar, & the bottom is Red Cedar. The finish is two coats of Watco Danish oil, followed by a coat of clear Liberon Black Bison wax. This was the first time I’ve used Spalted Maple, and I have to say It was a lot harder to work that I thought it would be. The lid pictured below is actually #3, The first one chipped out badly while tapering the final side, and #2 split almost in half, while removing it from the cutting jig.
Check back in a few days, as I’m planing to film a video over the weekend, to show how the process I used to make this box deviated from the one Doug shows in his book.
It’s looks like this winter is going to be colder than normal, so I’ve lined up a bunch of projects that don’t require me to spend long periods of time in the shop. At the top of the list are some small display boxes. I’m going to start with my take on Doug Stowe’s Lift-lid box. If you want more information on how to make this box, you can find the associated chapter of Doug’s book here.
I made two minor changes to Doug’s design. The first was purely a stylistic one. Doug’s uses Baltic Birch plywood for the bottom of his boxes, and that just didn’t feel right to me. I’m going to use shiplaped Red Cedar for my bottoms. The second change was to scale up Doug’s dimensions, as I felt his were to small. As always I did a complete design in Sketchup, that you can download and play with.
Files:
Large
Small
They’re done, and I’m really happy with how they turned out. This was my first experience with black walnut, and I must say, I really like the wood. It was really easy to work with my limited hand tool collection and skill set. Most of the work was done with power tools, but I used my hand tools for a lot of the finishing and finesse work.
I have read that walnut is the “premier” North American furniture making wood, and after this project I can see why. The only real drawback of walnut is that it has large pores/grain. I had originally wanted a glass smooth surface for the top, but I quickly changed my mind when I realized how much work that would require. Ok, that’s enough of me babbling on it’s time for the photos.
Yea, it's three boards, I promise.
Look mom it's a set.
buttons anyone?
Last night my router table router, under went surgery to remove some growths that where preventing it from doing it’s job properly. When I made the inserts for my router lift, the spindle lock prevented the router from rising high enough for above the table bit changes. While not the end of the world, it was definitely annoying. Since I had some time to kill last night, I decided to rectify the problem. I taped off the bottom of the router to keep filings out of the hosing, and went to town with a mill file. After about 20 minutes, my biceps burned, and I had a nice pile of filings.
Before
After