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.