Maple and cherry jewellery box - Mum's 60th

[Ironballs]

In between the other projects I've got on I've been working on a jewellery box, initially this was to be a (late ) birthday present for my girlfriend and I'd planned to do one quite similar for my Mum's 60th in December. However, seeing as we were into November and I hadn't finished hers yet she kindly suggested that I make this one my Mum's and she'd wait for hers - she's very good to me, even brings me mugs of tea in the garage.

So, jewellery box with drawer, part inspired by the shaker style table I had done, in maple and cherry. Here goes....

First up, get yourself a nice piece of maple board

Then clean it up a bit

Then make some leg blanks from a thick piece of cherry and work around the dodgy bits

Do a bit of matching to get the best pairings for the front and rear legs and mark up

Then marked up the legs for the mortices, probably a bit overboard but it kept me busy

Cleaning up of the mortices, bit more than anticipated as I hadn't tightened up one of the bolts on the table of the morticer and it moved around a bit - arse...

Didn't get a pic of the marking and cutting of the tenons, but you can see them here when I routed the rebate for the base - above the drawer

Once the straight edge stuff was done it was over to the bandsaw to rough cut the curve at the bottom of the rails

Any excuse to break out the LV flat bottomed spokeshave, I would happily curve rails all day long if I could use one of these little fellas

The ends glued up prior to full assembly of the carcass

A pre-glueing fit of the carcass, so no comments that the fit is a bit loose...

Glue and clamp up of the entire carcass, 6mm ply base has been inserted above the drawer aperture

Now that the carcass is in one piece I can turn attention to the drawer, this is a matched piece from the same section as the top and bottom front rail. Sides are elm as I was chopping up some elm and the contrast looked good - see other post about smelly elm. Still smells like crap after a week. Simple dovetail joint, shown here after cutting on the bandsaw and a bit of work with the coping saw

Next time will be completion of the dovetails and a look at the lid version 2, version 1 cupped like a motherf****r and was too far gone to be used. Cue a much nicer replacement from Boddy's, everything always happens for a reason

 

[OPJ]

Still smells like crap after a week.

And I'm sure your mother will love it!! :wink:

Looks like it's coming along nicely, I like the basic design so far. Looking at your first two photo's though, that looks like English Cherry to me. :wink:

How do get along with your router table? I've got the identical Bosch table that I'm looking to sell. It's not perfect but, I've found it okay to start off with... Have you also had problems getting the plate dead level?

 

[ByronBlack]

Thats looking spanky, I really like the color contrast and the curve work, very nice so far!

 

[RogerM]

Very nice. Cherry and maple are a lovely combination. Waiting for the next set of photos with eager anticipation.

 

[Ironballs]

Legs are english cherry, as was lid number one. Lid number two is a lovely piece of american cherry and if that one cups I'm setting fire to it.

Router table has been interesting, it's a Trend table with a Trend adaptor plate for my router. Getting the plate to fit was an utter sod as the screws didn't want to go in all the way, then it wasn't level and I had to use different shims from the disc brakes on my mountain bike.

lastly the router (De Walt 621) won't fit in one way round and doesn't fit properly the other. I may have to come back to it at a later date and machine off some metal on the plate, but for now it's fitted using mountain bike v brake washers this time. This gives me the clearance I need but means the router is 1cm below the plate which reduces its depth of cut. Stupid trend and their stupid table. Fence is a bit of a pig as well.

Anyone want a router table :lol:

 

[shim20]

looks good, the lv spokeshaves are ace arnt they love mine.

 

[Ironballs]

Okay then, WIPs have been a bit lacking, largely due to time pressures from work and doing the construction, but I have now finished and included a few pics along the way. Big thanks to Laura for sorting out all the velvety bits in the drawers etc, job well done. So, where were we.....

Drawer glue up time, maple front and elm sides with a hand planed and bookmatched cedar bottom. A real pain to do and probably not worth it

Here I'm glueing in the cedar insert to hold up the tray

Glue up of the tray, maple sides with a 4mm play bottom

Tray glued up and ready for some wax and velvet

Here is the drawer and tray with velvet inserts glued in

And now with the tray out to show the shelf underneath

A with and without picture of the outside of the box, handle on the drawer was shaped from walnut with a planed hollow underneath. Very tactile

Side on view of the drawer

View of the underside of the lid, I had originally planned to use some Brusso hinges and was on the Classic Hand Tools site until I had a good hard think about where the hinges were going and how they were going to pivot . What a pillock, I'd forgotten about the legs. At least I made the mistake on paper. Had a bit of a think and switched to a lift off lid with walnut ledge to hold it in place.

All in all not a physically big piece but managed to incorporate 6 different species of timber and some ply. Still learning but I think it turned out okay, any mistakes were not major ones

 

[newt]

Nice job. The tray when clamped up shows the separators right up to the centre, but the following picture shows a gap. I do like the lid. She should be well pleased.

 

[motownmartin]

I do like this.

I made some boxes with a similar lid and they have twisted, bowed, cupped and everything else that could happen, I think its important to condition the timber first, in the house, as the dry conditions soon alter the shape.

 

[Ironballs]

Newt - I got the picture sequence wrong, blame the red wine!

The lid was a pain too, I made the mistake of leaving it in the garage for a couple of minus christ knows what nights and there was a distinct U shape to it :shock: Two days back in the house and it was back to normal so I slapped the finish on it to seal it.

Delivered it today and my Mum was over the moon, it's now doing what it was made for and is full of jewellery

 

[OPJ]

Very nice indeed - won't she be expecting a second one for Christmas though!! :wink:

Have you got a close up shot of the detail to the handle/drawer pull?

I see you have the Veritas spokeshave - but, did I noticed in another forum that you've also added the Clifton to your collection?? :shock:

 

[ByronBlack]

It's a great box IB, you've made a fantastic job on that.

 

[The Shark]

Good job! Lovely contrast in the woods.

Malc

 

[Ironballs]

Olly, don't have a close up of the handle I'm afraid. It was a 50mm rectangular piece of walnut that I cut to fit a rectangular mortice in the drawer. It's curved lengthways undernetah and then is hollowed front to back with more taken from the back to give purchase. Very tactile. Did that using the thumb plane.

Yes, do have a Veritas spokeshave, this is the flat bottomed one that's very good for curving rails and chamfers, the Clifton one is convex and bought because I need to do some hollow curves shortly