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:
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Small
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 always take me longer to get around to a post than I think it should, I should probably stop predicting when I’m going to post next. With that being said, I’ve finished some more lif-top boxes, and I even remembered to shoot some video this time. This is not my best recording job, but hey it was 45 degrees in the shop.
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.
