To recap, in my last post I mentioned I head a big sickening crack sound when I clamped together this Spanish cedar box. One side broke badly. I attribute that to my level of skill and that maybe Spanish cedar wasn't the best wood choice given how some areas were thin. Rather than toss this, I wanted to see if I could fix it so that the box could be used for something. Prior to the glue up, I had already reached the conclusion I would be making at least two more of these boxes. That helped take a bit of the sting out of this issue.
Before I could fix the crack, I had to saw open the box to get the body and lid. Fortunately, this was uneventful and nothing fell apart during this process.
The first thing to do was to clamp and glue up the cracks to get the wood as close to the proper orientation. It required two different glue ups with a day in between to make sure the glue set fully. It helped but still looked ugly. Ralph over at The Accidental Woodworker (hi Ralph) had an awesome idea - cover the cracks with inlay. My wife loves inlay so any time I use it she gets happy. I like to keep a variety of commercial inlay I purchase from the local Woodcraft and Rockler in my shop so I already had it handy.
I used my small router (a tool that doesn't get used often but I'm happy when I have a chance to use it) to put a symmetrical design. I didn't put the banding on all four sides - this had become a shop box and I didn't want to "waste" the banding. I wanted to practice fixing the break to make it less visible and where the symmetrical banding is accomplishes this.
I used my low angle block plane (new tool purchase which I will talk about in some future blogs - I like it but could live without as I've gone without one for close to 7 years) to flush the inlay. In a few areas I got some blow out - sigh. In another area, I didn't make the groove deep enough to accept the inlay - double sigh. That's ok. I have learned something and will keep this in mind next time I use inlay. I could have spent more time trying to fix the inlay but I stopped. Given the gaps in the dovetails, etc, etc. The fix was good enough and the box would be fine in my garage as is.
For the hinges, I was worried that the Spanish cedar would be too fragile to support them. As such, I added some cherry backing blocks to firm up the area. I could have tried inlaying the hinges and screwing them in without this but I found that fixing this error was taking a lot of time. My lesson learned is that it is always worth spending a little time to avoid having an error rather than fixing it. If I had to guess, 5 to 7 hours of the 30 hours it took me to build this box was to fix the problem.
It turned out that I also ordered the wrong hinges. I had through these were stop hinges (which I had heard about on Fine Woodworking's Shop Talk Live podcast). They weren't but they also stopped at 90 degrees but they mounted on the outside. Luckily I ordered only one pair for Horton Brasses. I have ordered and received more sets of stop hinges so I will be ok for the next few boxes. The inlay process itself for the hinges went fine.
For the legs, I just took some small pieces of scrap, shaped, and put 45 degree miters. I haven't done many 45 degree miters and it showed. Again, more boxes will give me more practice. I really like these feet that Paul Sellers designed. No doubt I will use them on other types of projects when I want a simple foot on a box.
From there, it was a matter of applying finish. For this project the finish only goes on the outside so that the interior of the box retains the nice Spanish cedar smell. I went with what I like and looks good - shellac. I dissolved up some blond shellac flakes in isopropanol. Why isopropanol you ask? I have a fair bit of it in the shop and wanted to see how well it work. Not quite as good as ethanol but acceptable. Three(ish coats, denibbed, then three more coats of the 1-1.2 lb cut) After letting the box sit for a week, I waxed.
It's done. I think it took 31 hours. I learned a lot in making this. Very much looking forward to making more of these. However, that will have to wait as I need to get ready for a woodworking class that I'm super excited to be taking. That will be the focus of next week's blog.
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