RMB
Member
This is a jewelry box I made on commission for a philosophy professor. He saw a pen that I gave to my MIL and inquired about who made it. He told me the size he wanted, three drawers, and cost is no concern, he wanted the best work I could do, he even insisted on paying me more per hour for my labor than I initially told him. My kind of customer.
So I made drawings, collected materials, approved the designs with him, and set to work. It took me two weeks working most evenings and a bit on weekends, with the bulk of it done the last few days. It was almost double the work I anticipated, but it was fun. I entirely missed that it even was Halloween until about 10pm Friday night when I finished it, our pumpkins went uncarved.
So here it is:
Body and top out of marblewood (very hard, planes well, GREAT figure, but smells like rotten eggs when worked with powertools). Base and top moulding is cocobolo, with ebony accent stripe, and hand carved ebony pulls.
Drawers are hand dovetailed mahogany, mahogany partitions, black felt lined bottoms, maple slides. They where all fitted very carefully, sanding by hand until they just barely fit, one can feel the air being pushed out as they're slid in. they can be pulled to about 1/2" from coming out until they start to sag.
Finish is about 6 coats of gloss laquer, then 3 coats of paste wax, buffed to a nice gloss. The wax alone can create a nice looking finish on these woods, but scratches far too easily, so I did the laquer first, then wax over that so the finish can be easily restored (just re-wax and buff).
I decided to throw in a matching set of pens as a freebie (and advertisement) because this was such a good commission. So I made two sierras (actually the Monets, from wood'n whimsies) with segd coco, ebony, and marblewood. The Marblewood is IMHO, best turned crossgrain because of the "marbleing", which runs the length of the grain, would probably only show up as a tan pen with a brown stripe or two in a pen sized peice, whereas crossgrain, it shows up in a random marbley web pattern, darn hard to turn though. Anyways, I glued up and turned the pens while the laquer was drying.
I delivered it last Sunday, in Fresno, CA. The recipient was very pleased, both with the box and the pens. He wrote me a very generous check (farvmore than I was going to ask for!) with a smile on his face. It is for his wifes birthday, which is the day after Christmas. Up till now he tells me, she's been keeping her jewelry in one of those clear plastic divided boxes.
Sorry about the poor pictures, didn't really have time to do a proper job.
So I made drawings, collected materials, approved the designs with him, and set to work. It took me two weeks working most evenings and a bit on weekends, with the bulk of it done the last few days. It was almost double the work I anticipated, but it was fun. I entirely missed that it even was Halloween until about 10pm Friday night when I finished it, our pumpkins went uncarved.
So here it is:
Body and top out of marblewood (very hard, planes well, GREAT figure, but smells like rotten eggs when worked with powertools). Base and top moulding is cocobolo, with ebony accent stripe, and hand carved ebony pulls.
Drawers are hand dovetailed mahogany, mahogany partitions, black felt lined bottoms, maple slides. They where all fitted very carefully, sanding by hand until they just barely fit, one can feel the air being pushed out as they're slid in. they can be pulled to about 1/2" from coming out until they start to sag.
Finish is about 6 coats of gloss laquer, then 3 coats of paste wax, buffed to a nice gloss. The wax alone can create a nice looking finish on these woods, but scratches far too easily, so I did the laquer first, then wax over that so the finish can be easily restored (just re-wax and buff).
I decided to throw in a matching set of pens as a freebie (and advertisement) because this was such a good commission. So I made two sierras (actually the Monets, from wood'n whimsies) with segd coco, ebony, and marblewood. The Marblewood is IMHO, best turned crossgrain because of the "marbleing", which runs the length of the grain, would probably only show up as a tan pen with a brown stripe or two in a pen sized peice, whereas crossgrain, it shows up in a random marbley web pattern, darn hard to turn though. Anyways, I glued up and turned the pens while the laquer was drying.
I delivered it last Sunday, in Fresno, CA. The recipient was very pleased, both with the box and the pens. He wrote me a very generous check (farvmore than I was going to ask for!) with a smile on his face. It is for his wifes birthday, which is the day after Christmas. Up till now he tells me, she's been keeping her jewelry in one of those clear plastic divided boxes.
Sorry about the poor pictures, didn't really have time to do a proper job.
