I finally got this walnut display box finished. I say finally because it has taken a couple of months to get it finished. The sawdust part went quickly, maybe 2 weeks, but due to cold weather, haste, family, work (you get the picture) and contaminated mineral spirits, it has taken a couple of months. The finish messed up TWICE and I had to strip it back to bare wood both times. It was supposed to be a quickie. :dontknow: So I'm glad to have this albatross out of the shop and get back to my main project.
The box is kiln dried walnut with ebony accents. The corners are handcut dovetails. The top is crotch walnut that came out of a big knot, the top and bottom are doweled to the box. The box was made together as an assembly of course and the top sawed off. The twist is that the lid was cut at an angle so the usual tablesaw or bandsaw cut-off methods were too risky, so I just cut the lid off with a backsaw and cleaned up the cuts with a block plane. Didn't take a picture, but the hinges (and latch) came from Lee Valley. The neat thing about the hinges are that they recessed into the box with a 35mm forstner bit for European hinges plus they are very heavy and classy looking. I looked high and low for hardware, a lot of what is out there is very cheesy. Never forget to check-out Lee Valley, I usually don't think of them for hardware, but they have lots of nice unique hardware. Another design obstacle I attempted to solve was on a box with thinner back/side material, the hardware screws are always too long. The sides/back/front material on this box is shy of 7/16". Cutting off the screws or using smaller/shorter screws doesn't always work, as was the case here. My initial (feeble) attempt to solve this was to add the ebony pieces to the back inside. Next time I will add shaped pieces to the outside similar to the front ebony latch piece.
The finish ended up being several coats of minwax stain with lacquer sanding sealer and 3 topcoats of clear Deft lacquer. As I said, the finish botched twice. I got fish eyes, wrinkling, rough waviness in the finish, and other unexpected maladies. After much fiddling and fussing, I finally realized that the new can of mineral spirits must have some contaminant, maybe silicone or something. I got more mineral spirits and things immediately went perfect. (Must be more of that quality Lowes materials, kinda like the pre-bent nails and whitewood :no: ) Anyway, I'm not happy with the finish, but it's done and semi-OK.
The box was built to display a matching pair of Marsh M2 #2 size planes, a smooth bottom and a corrugated bottom. The smooth bottom Marsh M2 is scarce but they turn up fairly often in tool collecting world. The corrugated bottom M2C on the other hand is what I would classify as truly a rare plane (and I don't use the word rare loosely). I only know of 4 M2C's. These two planes are from my Marsh collection and are in super shape.
Anyway, following are a few pictures, more in my photo gallery. Thanks for looking.
The box is kiln dried walnut with ebony accents. The corners are handcut dovetails. The top is crotch walnut that came out of a big knot, the top and bottom are doweled to the box. The box was made together as an assembly of course and the top sawed off. The twist is that the lid was cut at an angle so the usual tablesaw or bandsaw cut-off methods were too risky, so I just cut the lid off with a backsaw and cleaned up the cuts with a block plane. Didn't take a picture, but the hinges (and latch) came from Lee Valley. The neat thing about the hinges are that they recessed into the box with a 35mm forstner bit for European hinges plus they are very heavy and classy looking. I looked high and low for hardware, a lot of what is out there is very cheesy. Never forget to check-out Lee Valley, I usually don't think of them for hardware, but they have lots of nice unique hardware. Another design obstacle I attempted to solve was on a box with thinner back/side material, the hardware screws are always too long. The sides/back/front material on this box is shy of 7/16". Cutting off the screws or using smaller/shorter screws doesn't always work, as was the case here. My initial (feeble) attempt to solve this was to add the ebony pieces to the back inside. Next time I will add shaped pieces to the outside similar to the front ebony latch piece.
The finish ended up being several coats of minwax stain with lacquer sanding sealer and 3 topcoats of clear Deft lacquer. As I said, the finish botched twice. I got fish eyes, wrinkling, rough waviness in the finish, and other unexpected maladies. After much fiddling and fussing, I finally realized that the new can of mineral spirits must have some contaminant, maybe silicone or something. I got more mineral spirits and things immediately went perfect. (Must be more of that quality Lowes materials, kinda like the pre-bent nails and whitewood :no: ) Anyway, I'm not happy with the finish, but it's done and semi-OK.
The box was built to display a matching pair of Marsh M2 #2 size planes, a smooth bottom and a corrugated bottom. The smooth bottom Marsh M2 is scarce but they turn up fairly often in tool collecting world. The corrugated bottom M2C on the other hand is what I would classify as truly a rare plane (and I don't use the word rare loosely). I only know of 4 M2C's. These two planes are from my Marsh collection and are in super shape.
Anyway, following are a few pictures, more in my photo gallery. Thanks for looking.
