Becky's Birthday Box

The finished piece -- roughly 18" wide by 10" deep by 12" high.

It all started with a phone call the day after Christmas. Craig and I had discussed me making a jewelry box for his then-fiance (now wife), but nothing beyond the speculative stage. "Hey Loyd, you know the box we'd talked about? Can you have it done by January 7th? That's her birthday."

At first, I just laughed. I'd only gotten electricity into the new shop a couple of weekends prior -- the tool situation hadn't been sorted out at all. And I wasn't even at home at the time, I was at my in-laws. Once I grew less hysterical, I took a look at the calender. Ten days from the time I'm home. My normal finishing routine takes 4 weeks. "No problem, plan on being out at the house to pick out wood on Monday." I was committed.

Craig came out to the house and we spent several hours going through stacks of lumber and veneer. When we were done, it came down to two boards -- an 8" wide piece of curly birdseye maple and a 26" x 43" walnut board.

The walnut board is on the bottom, with the maple on top.

Closeup of the maple board

The dimensions of the piece were completely driven by the wood. The top had to be large enough to get a "butterfly" effect from bookmatching the maple, and the front had to be wide enough to let me center the knot in the walnut. The project had grown from a jewelry box to a jewelry chest.

Bookmatched maple "butterfly" on the top

Front view. The knot is my favorite part of the piece. The picture doesn't really show the great curly grain in it.

The entire project took about 20 hours to build. Figure 20% of that time was wasted poking around the shop trying to find the tools/finish supplies/etc. that I needed. Of this time, about 4-5 hours was finish work. The bandsaw played a large part in this project, from the oversized finger joints to the bookmatching of the maple. It was orbital-sanded with 80, 100, 120, 220, and 300 grit, then hand-sanded with Micro-Mesh 800, 1200, 1400, 1800, 2400, 3600, 4800, 6000, 8000 and 12000 grits. The finish is a 50/50 mix of BLO and mineral spirits. The liner is a crushed red velour, and the dividers are walnut.

The open box. The strangeness at the bottom is where the photo cropped.

Inside top. The bookmatched panel floats in the walnut frame to allow for wood expansion.

This sucker is big. Here's the happy owner to give you an idea of scale.