The Watch Box (Finished)

Last weekend I was able to work on the box a little.  There really wasn't enough progress to post about, but I did manage to glue things up.  I decided to put the inlayed corners facing down and I think it looks pretty good.  I got into the shop today and got the box out of the clamps. Of course I forgot to take a picture, but I put the clamps back on the way they were and snapped this shot.

  
The only difference between this shot and the actual glue up was the masking tape holding everything together.  The lines you see behind the top clamp are there to accept the cherry partitions (as seen below).  Here is a shot of the box after a bit of sanding with the partitions installed.

At this point I was convinced that I would never make anything out of birds eye maple again.  What a pain in the butt this stuff is to work.  I have never had such issues with tear out before.  I managed to sand most of the issues away, but man what a hassle.

Then I put on some wipe on poly, and that totally changed my mind...  This stuff is beautiful.  I probably won't make a full box out of it again, but I would use it for panels any day.  I love how it came out.

Most importantly, Susan loves it.  It is drying right now after the third coat, but should be out of the shop by tomorrow.  Here a few more shots.

The Watch Box (Part 1)

I started the watch box today.  I milled the birds eye maple board into two pieces that were 3.5 in x 31 in x 3/8 in.  I then cut those two boards to the sizes I wanted for all sides.  I've made a bunch of boxes in the past, so I wanted this one to be a little different.  I recently saw a video on FineWoodworking.com where the presenter made a table leg that included an overlay of a contrasting wood on the bottom of the legs.  It didn't look too hard, so I decided to try something like that.  I used my table saw and the dado blade to cut semi-curcular recesses into the corners of each board.

This is the setup I used.  I setup a very thin stop block on the fence to stop the cut consistently on all the pieces.  I pushed the piece through up to the stop block, then I backed out of the cut.  I had to do this on both sides of the fence to get the cuts lined up properly for the miter.  I also made a template stick (shown in the bottom photo) that I used to cut the pieces to fit into the recesses, on that stick I went all the way through, so that I could trace the shape onto the lacewood.

I traced the shape from my template onto the lacewood and cut the patches oversized for the recesses.  I then used the oscillating belt sander to clean up the edges to fit.  This is the belt sander from Rigid, I love this tool, it is also a spindle sander.  Great tool at a great price with multiple functions...

Then I glued and clamped the pieces into the recesses.

Once the glue dried I planed and sanded the faces smooth and flush.  I also cut the edges square again to line up the edges of the lacewood with the edges of the maple.  Then I cut the miters.

I intended to keep the corners down like this, but it also looks good the other way.

I stopped at this point.  I need to think about how I want to lay this out.  I will work on it some more this week and next weekend, and post the final details after.  Here are a few more pictures I took.

A New Commitment

I am without a doubt one of those wood workers that chronically only makes things for the shop.  I have done so many shop projects lately that I have to be honest I can't even remember the last project that left the basement.  I have decided that this needs to end...  While I totally love making the shop better and more efficient, I really need to start making some stuff that sees the light of day.  So I am announcing here that I am going to alternate shop and non-shop projects.  Since I just built the tablesaw outfeed table, I am now going to switch to something that I have been promising Susan (immensely patient significant other) for some time.  She has a crap ton of watches and she needs a place to keep them, so I will be making her a case.  I have some birds eye maple that I bought a while ago, and I am going to start this weekend.  I will try to take pictures along the way and document the process.  Stay tuned.

The Shop

I just wanted to give a quick tour of my basement shop.  The shop is roughly 14.5 feet by 22 feet.  I have to admit that most of my projects tend to be things for the shop.  My goal is to get rid of all the "not built by me" stuff.  I am close, I just have a big tool chest and an old office desk left to go.  I am a pretty big fan of Grizzly tools as you will see, the store is not that terribly far away from where I live, and the price always seems to be right.  All of my major tools (Table Saw, Band Saw, Jointer, Planer, and Dust Collector) are from Grizzly.

The shop cabinets were one of my first really big projects.  The plans came from ShopNotes (my favorite woodworking magazine) Volume 17 Issue 97.  I built them a few years ago.

Just recently I decided that I needed an outfeed table.  I started building it a few weeks ago.  I tried to keep true to the shop cabinets and make it match.  I think it looks pretty good.  I still have to add the back, sides and doors, but it should match quite nicely once I paint and finish it.  I added a drawer on the bottom shelf for a bunch of tools.  The table is pretty heavy now, and will get even more so when I add the back, sides, and doors (almost a full sheet of 3/4 MDF).  I already need to make a change to put it on casters.  But that can wait for now...

Quick final note...  The shop is NEVER this clean.  I rearranged and cleaned the entire shop this weekend (for like 5 hours) to get it ready for this post.  In future posts you will see the mess it becomes.