I've hooked up with the Diablo Woodworker Club in near by pleasant hill, CA. Nice folks who meet monthly at an adult education compound conveniently located near the BART line so I can show up at their meetings without having to drive in traffic.
What's unique to this club is that they do not charge dues, however we need to make some $ to pay for space, insurance, and usual stuff necessary for any group of people these days.
Soon the club will be entering member built work at a local craft fair to help cover expenses, so this is my first of hopefully many entries to help things along. The design I chose originates from a build-video that Marc Spagnolo did with Gary Rognowski here.
I loved the idea of gluing antique paper to the base of the box instead of the usual velvet or suede you typically see in a jewelry box. I also liked the overall proportions and there is a very handy primer in how to do bridle joints off the band saw. My project diverges by using a frame/panel lid since the hinge hardware I had wouldn't work with thin panels (but I used slip/bridle joints for the panel). I also elected to use 1/2 lap dovetails for the carcass joints to make the front side of the box as calm as possible, and show off this gorgeous redwood I found at the junk yard, Urban Ore
So now I need to figure out what my bandsaw's kerf offset is.
This is used to offset the finger joints along the fence like so
Works a Treat!
I improvised a router table from some plywood to help me groove out the panel recesses in the frame pieces. I learned it's best to do this BEFORE you cut your bridle joints as there's too little supporting wood in the tenons to resist blowout. Also, I love the feather boards. So simple to make and really hold your work to the fence.
Oh and this Lee Valley 6" square is an adorable tool. I use it almost all the time. True winner.
Here's a fix I had to do to one piece where I fired up the router when the wood was too close to the bit and it shot out the backside. Good learning experience.
Here's the lid panel, book matched from two slices of quarter sawn redwood.
The frame was squared and clamped up on top of the panel, and panel raising lines were derived insitu with the help of the blue tape gods
the bottom of the box will have magenta silk from my dear uncle michael via India. Bonded to the wood using white Elmer's diluted with water, applied with a course chip brush.
Needed to use a 25deg bevel on my 6mm chisel to shear the brittle fibers well enough. Still found this wood to be very unforgiving and weak cross grain, typical redwood, but I love it nonetheless.
And then things went awry. I mismeasured the depth of the box, and made the carcass too deep against the lid. The lid would have been the better choice to build too deep, as it's easier to trim. The half lap dovetails don't look right when the thickness of the outer end grain section gets too thin. I spent about 6 hours last night coming to the terms with the fact that there wasn't a satisfactory fix to this involving tapers. Plus I was not so happy with the way the gappy dovetails ended up. I needed the practice, and the grapes were sour.
