Ian Guy
06-12-2020, 1:26 PM
Approximately five years ago, a friend gave me a truck load of firewood from a maple tree in his yard that he had taken down. We used a lot of the wood in our patio fire pit. However, when we moved two summers ago, I had recently taken up woodworking and decided to bring a chunk of wood with us to our new house. I had no idea if the wood would be any good, but figured that one day I would see if it could be made it into something.
About 18 months ago, I resawed it on a band saw and ended up with four pieces with some spalting in them that might be usable one day. I then just put them aside on a shelf and brought them back out a couple months ago. I did not have any specific plans, but thought a box might be doable. I wanted to do dovetails, primarily to practice them. I came across pictures from the Krenov/College of the Redwoods website of some boxes that they made there. They were simple in overall design, but not visually simple in the final product (not sure if that makes sense).
I laid out dovetails according to what I thought might work. I had enough maple for the base, but would not be able to make the lid completely from the same material. So I used some cherry and made stiles and glued up two pieces of the maple and planed it down thin to use as the panel. I used a piece of 1/4-inch birch plywood for the bottom. I'm not sure that the cherry and maple necessarily go together, but the project was mainly to practice some dovetails and some different techniques.
Anyhow, the dovetails (and the box as a whole) are far from perfect. I learned some useful skills that I can expand on for future projects. I peened the dovetails after doing some research on this website and seeing Derek Cohen's post about it.
The best part of the project was seeing the spaliting in the maple come out as the wood was planed and then sanded and then finished with a simple finish. I got good use out of a Veritas custom smoothing plane with a 50-degree frog. It did a great job at taking thin shavings without tear out as the maple does have some figure to it. I bought the plane about 15 months ago and I had wondered if I really needed something as nice as that. But I really appreciated it on this project as it was up to the task.
About 18 months ago, I resawed it on a band saw and ended up with four pieces with some spalting in them that might be usable one day. I then just put them aside on a shelf and brought them back out a couple months ago. I did not have any specific plans, but thought a box might be doable. I wanted to do dovetails, primarily to practice them. I came across pictures from the Krenov/College of the Redwoods website of some boxes that they made there. They were simple in overall design, but not visually simple in the final product (not sure if that makes sense).
I laid out dovetails according to what I thought might work. I had enough maple for the base, but would not be able to make the lid completely from the same material. So I used some cherry and made stiles and glued up two pieces of the maple and planed it down thin to use as the panel. I used a piece of 1/4-inch birch plywood for the bottom. I'm not sure that the cherry and maple necessarily go together, but the project was mainly to practice some dovetails and some different techniques.
Anyhow, the dovetails (and the box as a whole) are far from perfect. I learned some useful skills that I can expand on for future projects. I peened the dovetails after doing some research on this website and seeing Derek Cohen's post about it.
The best part of the project was seeing the spaliting in the maple come out as the wood was planed and then sanded and then finished with a simple finish. I got good use out of a Veritas custom smoothing plane with a 50-degree frog. It did a great job at taking thin shavings without tear out as the maple does have some figure to it. I bought the plane about 15 months ago and I had wondered if I really needed something as nice as that. But I really appreciated it on this project as it was up to the task.