As a gift, I wanted to make a decorative wood box. I had a piece of red gum lying around, so I resawed it to get enough pieces to make a splined mitered box out of it. Well, it was tall enough, I ended up sawing the finished box in two and getting two boxes out of it.
For the lid and bottom, I used white oak with bark enclusions. I engraved a large rooster into the lid, since the recipient loves roosters. It was a free vector that I picked up from freepik.com and had to clean up a bit before I could use it…but it turned out great.
I can post another one to talk more about settings if you’re interested.
Also, I made a video about it and it’s on my YouTube channel. Give it a watch if you have a few minutes:
Thanks! Cut into that stuff…you will be happy you did!
I used some padauk I got from Inventables to spice up one of the free ornament designs someone shared. I did most of it out of walnut plywood, but then baby Jesus out of padauk. It was a nice touch!
Thanks so much! I debated using a different wood for the splines, but I’m pretty glad I went with the walnut now that I see it. I cut the original box of red gum in half, so I still have another one I can make. I might try walnut for the top and bottom and make the bottom thinner on this next one.
Thanks for saying that…means a lot! This wood is red gum. I’ve never worked with it before, but the grain is just amazing! One person commented on my video that it looked like mountains. I didn’t see it until they said that, but I can totally see it!
Thanks so much, Tom! Appreciate you watching the video and for the nice comments. I love my shop…just needs a good cleaning pretty much always. ha
Thank you! The rooster would not have been my choice, but it sure turned out nice. The cool thing about splines is that they add a lot of strength/reinforcement to the miters, which is a pretty poor quality joint using simply glue. It is an awesome bonus that they add some decoration too! ha ha
Absolutely AWESOME box, and GREAT video! Most of my morning I got sucked into watching videos of yours, and the guy you got the drain stick idea from.
I subscribed, and look forward to more of your videos.
Wow! Thanks, Michael! Sorry to make you waste your morning, but I appreciate you watching and for the nice comments.
Yeah, Mark from GunFlint Designs is a great guy. He and I started a podcast together not too long ago called We Built A Thing, in case you need something else to waste time on.
I’m hoping I can be more consistent with video output this year. It’s tough.
