Jewellery Box

For my next project i decided to try something i had seen on www.thewoodwhisperer.com, this website is excellent and i strongly advise taking a look. loads of video's and good reading here.

I am limited with the told i have compared with thewoodwhisperer but decided to give it my best shot and created this which is a variation of the one on the site.

I started by purchasing some walnut for this project, bought it from Strahans in Rathcoole, Co. Dublin. I bought 2 4 foot lengths in both 1 x 6 and 2 x 6 i wanted enough so i had some more walnut to mess around with after this project. Good thing i did cause i botched the first effort, i was still learning the basics of the tools i had so it didn't upset me too much.


i started by planing both sides of each board to get them somewhat straight, i don't own a planner thicknesser so i had to do it the old fashioned way with a plane. i done about half the length of both boards. i used a straight edge to check where along the boards i needed to plane as i was getting close. i also marked this area with pencil so as I'd know when I've planed that spot. both these tricks i also got from www.thewoodwhisperer.com.

I then used my compound mitre saw to cut 7 inch lengths of the walnut of both widths. I then started working on the lid, the lid is made from the 1 inch thick stock. i placed a stop block on my saw set for 6 1/8th inches. i then  cut one side about a quarter of an inch shy of this stop block and then cut the parallel side of this with the other pressed against the stop block, this gave me 2 smooth sides. i then done the same process for the other 2 sides, this gave me a perfectly square piece of 1inch thick walnut. i repeated the same process for the 2 inch thick stock.



I then moved onto the base of the box. i had some 1/4 inch thick mdf and out of this i used an adjustable circle cutter similar to this one to cut a 4 1/2 inch hole in the mdf. i then centred this circle to the centre of the base. i traced the outline onto the box and removed the template.

I then used a 38mm forsner bit in a drill press to remove most the stock to 1 and a half inches deep. I then used double sided tape to re attach the template.  I then used a Freud top bearing flush trim bearing bit in my router. The router i have is the black and Decker kw900 (http://www.blackanddecker.co.uk/powertools/productdetails/catno/KW900EKA/) I used this to follow the template taking out small bits of stock at a time until i had smoothed the sides and the base of the box.

I then set up my home made router table and placed my router in this. I inserted a Freud 14 Degree dovetail bit and ran the base of this box over the router the left of centre, i then rotated the piece 180 degrees and ran it through again, this made sure that the protruding dovetail was wide and also perfectly centred in the lid. i continued working out until i had cleared all the stock that was protruding except for the dovetail.

I then took the lid of the box and ran my dovetail bit as close to centre as possible, i then turned the piece 180 degrees and ran it through again, This made sure the dovetail was equal distance from each side. i continued moving it millimetre by millimetre doing a run down each side until it fitted over the base of the box with enough room for expansion. i placed a Roman Ogee bit into the router and ran the lid of the box through this to give the lid a nice feature on the corners. It also took the sharp edges off the top corners.

I then sanded it all and put one coat of Danishoil on the entire piece. i then lightly sanded it again once this was dry and put 3 more coats of Danishoil on the entire piece.