One of the joys I've had since I have started woodworking is trying to make a box to house the gift I am giving to my dad for birthday's, father'd day, Christmas, etc. Figure 1 is a snap shot of one such gift. I was between jobs at the time so I wanted to use what I had around. As such, I used three boards of scrap cherry that were 3/4" thick and sawed it in half by hand. It took a while for sure. It got the wood to a more desirable thickness. Though not obvious in the photo, the long sides and short sides and top and bottom are all book matched. I was quite happy with that. The dovetails came out ok but I did need to put in a few slivers of cherry on some because of gaps.
Figure 1 Gift Box closed
For each of the various boxes I have made for my dad, I have tried different methods for the top of the box to open. For this one, I glued it all up and then sawed the top off. I was a bit nervous doing that but I took my time with the handsaw and it was relatively easy to do. Took my number 5 hand plane and then smoothed everything up. To get the saw off part to stay put, I lined the top with some thin Spanish cedar I had purchased at Woodcraft. They have a nice selection of pre-milled woods for just such use. Used amber shellac then wax to finish it off (Figure 2).
Figure 2
If I had to do it over again, I would width and height of the piece different values. I had just read By Hand and Eye so I was using proportions for the length to width (2:1). For the height I went 1:1 between height and width. In my mind, it sounded fine but it reality it does look as good. I know this because I can look at the open box in Figure 2, imagine them as the finished proportions and they look better. Such is life. I didn't loose sleep over it. Next time I will know. My dad like the box (I don't remember what the gift was inside the box) and it is proudly on display in his living room.
