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I made this jewelry box for my mother-in-law partly as a gift for Christmas and partly as a thank-you for pitching in with all my other family members to make the purchase of my new bandsaw possible. This was my fist bandsaw box ever and one of my first projects in general on the machine. The design is heavily inspired by a few boxes I found with a quick google image search for ideas, but the design was my own - it was my first time designing around the figure in a board, and I chose the shape for the two drawers. The top drawer highlights the twisted, curly, knotty figure and just below it the bottom drawer has sort of a counter-point smooth grain circular cathedral structure that I thought was really cool together.

I picked out this 12/4 offcut slab of walnut from Woodcraft when they had a sale on their scraps.


I stared at this thing on and off for about a week before I visualized the perfect spot to cut out the box, then I drew it out.




I rough cut the size I needed around the drawing, then resawed down the middle.


Then I glued up a scrap piece of hard maple I had from another project and put every clamp I could fit on it.






Once the glue-up was dry, I cut out the final shape of the box.

I
Then it was a lot of bandsaw time cutting things out in this order: back, bottom and top drawer shapes (took some thinking to find the best place to enter from the sides - I tried to follow the path of the grain), drawer fronts, backs, and finally scooped out the insides of the drawers.




Once all the pieces were cut out, I sanded down the insides of the drawers and the insides of the drawer holes in the main box before the backs were glued on - made it a bit easier to get in there. It was at this point I realized just how much sanding to do and I thought hard about going out to buy a spindle sander right then…


Once all the inside prep was done, lots of little glue-ups. Fronts and backs of drawers could happen while I glued up the blade entry points on the main box, but the back of the main box had to wait for that first glue-up to dry.


After the glue-ups were done, more sanding. I didn't get any pictures of this because things got a little rushed before Christmas, but I clamped my belt sander upside down on my workbench and went to town on the outsides of things. The piece was too wide to do everything in one pass so I flipped it in between. I think this caused some finishing issues in the end if you look at the end-grain sides. Next time I might keep it in the same orientation for the whole thing.

After the sanding was done, I cut the drawer pulls from a long brass rod using my dremel tool and glued them on with CA glue. It took 3 coats of Arm-R-Seal and it was done! One coat in pic below, finished 3 coats pics in the thread header.


Still learning every day - comments and critiques welcome!

Gallery

Comments

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Well I'd say you did a heck of a job for your first time! I really like the shape of this box-very appealing!
 

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I like that knot you didn't hide.
 

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Another thumb up for the knot! Let the wood be wood. Excellent work!
 

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Looks great! Should have threw in a picture of the new bandsaw,mmmm new tools!
 

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Inspiring! Well done on the placement of the figuring. I also like the extra effort on the project notes.
 

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Inspiring! Well done on the placement of the figuring. I also like the extra effort on the project notes.
 

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3,704 Posts
Hey, with a saw that nice, you probably weren't even anywhere around when it was built, were ya?

;)
 
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