Box with a Knot for Eva

  The current fashion of making things from re-used lumber is something I endorse fully, I hate to see wood wasted. Across our street the house that burned(mostly) was recently crushed and hauled away, there was lots of framing lumber that isn't getting used again, it isn't even being burned in a fire place.  The lumber goes to a landfill site, jeez.

  Anyway, getting off my soap box.  

  Recently Eva asked for a wooden box to gather the various lotions and potions on her bedroom dresser.  I looked about in the work shop and found a couple of boards with serious knots in them or as some people say, wood with character. 

  The boards were from the skid that I took apart a couple of weeks ago.  I kept the boards because of the knot, I thought I might make a flower box or something using the wood and featuring the knots.  

  The basic box I cut out using power, sliding mitre saw mostly.  Then I nailed the box together with butt joint corners. The bottom is made from slats cut from a 2 x 4, the slats were also nailed onto the box. It was my plan to make some trim for the corners, so nails worked fine, and fast. With pre-drilling nails work just fine and shouldn't be scorned as low class.

  I used my hand saw with a sawing jig to cut out the wood,

  and my  planing jig to smooth  and put a 45 degree edge on each piece of trim.

  Since the trim pieces were small I cut the angle by eye with a small plane.

covering the nails and
 adding  some style

The end result was pretty good, not perfect but pretty good and by the time everything was sanded the corner joints look good.

13 x 8 x 7 inches

  The end result was given a coat of orange shellac, a coat of blonde shellac and a couple of sprays of varnish.  As you can see the knots are quite notable.  Once the sanding was done and the coats of shellac applied the wood is perfectly smooth, even  the knots.

  A note about sanding.  When I was a grade 7 and 8 student the boys had one period of wood shop each week in which me made simple projects and got to see and use a variety of wood working tools.  Since I had a Grampa with a workshop there wasn't anything new for me in 'shop' class, but it was fun and I was pretty good at it.  I still have the foot stool and bowl I made in that class.  There were always more boys then tools and while you waited your turn you spent time sanding your projects. Few shop projects suffer from too much sanding, and learning to spend your time and attention on hand sanding is not a bad thing.  Having started with construction grade wood, this project needed lots of sanding, and frankly I think careful sanding can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

  cheers, ianw