Buckthorn/Spalted Ash Jewelry Box

The youngest of my three daughters turned 13 a few months ago. I had to build her a box to keep her jewelry and trinkets – how could I not after building one for each for her two older sisters?

As I’ve been maturing in my hobby, the possibilities and options I’ve been considering have become increasingly complex and ‘out of the (big) box’. What I mean by that is I’ve been increasingly drawn to experiment with species other than the typical oak, mahogany, maple and walnut that seems to be a limitation of my local HD and Menards – I haven’t yet ventured into the true lumber yards. Partly because I’m cheap and don’t build large projects, other than shop appliances, I’ve been raiding my wood pile and trying to scrounge usable lumber from cheap or free sources.

Trees - or maybe just some of the wood from them

Hinges

Chainsaw

Table saw

Fine toothed hand saw

Sharp chisels

Clamps

Shooting board

Hand plane

Glue

Tung oil

Several years ago I cut down an ash tree in my yard. I kept a few larger crotch and log pieces of it to be milled later and left them in one of the natural parts of my yard to do a little drying – just so I could have something to play with later. At that point I knew nothing of milling logs, stack/sticker, etc.

Two years ago, I decided to get rid of a beautiful 12”diameter 25 ft tree after growing tired of all of its little berries, it’s prolific offspring production - and after having positively identifying it as buckthorn, one of the invasive species scourges introduced to North America. When I cut it down, I could not help but notice the incredible color of the heartwood. An incredible red/orange/pink with stunning grain patterns. Sorry, no exciting action pics of me harvesting the trees…

Skip ahead to last fall as I had to finalize plans for the new box… I decided to make this one entirely from wood harvested from the yard my daughter has grown up in.

The first pic shows the buckthorn in the foreground and a piece of the ash in background. The next three are intended to convey, at least to some degree, the beauty of the buckthorn that caused me to go this direction.

The rough lumber was processed using a router sled to get one flat reference edge. I included the third pic in this step to highlight one of the significant challenges with using yard wood for projects - they often contain screws, nails, and occasionally rocks, embedded deep inside the timber. These objects raise hell with your cutting tools.

There's nothing too exciting about the breakdown of the raw wood into usable pieces. I was able to mentally rationalize the purchase of a chainsaw mill for the project. I used a combination of the chainsaw mill, table saw, and router flattening sled to dimension the lumber to approximate sizes.

I was also able to rationalize the purchase of a Stanley Sweetheart low angle jack plane - which required that I also build a new shooting board - there are many shooting board Instructables and video available, I won't go into detail with that piece. I must say that the addition of these two items to my repertoire elevated my accuracy and precision on many aspects of this project, and since. Anyone who does low tolerance wood working should absolutely make this investment, to elevate your game. Squaring ends and micro adjustments to end grain are a breeze with this set up.

I won't waste server storage and bandwidth with unnecessary pics boxes in clamps while glue dries - there are plenty of those available if you need a reference.

Building the removable interior boxes made heavy use of the aforementioned shooting board to square things up and make fine adjustments to dimensions.

Oddly enough, the installation of the hinges proved to be one of the more time consuming and tedious parts of the process.I used a style of inset hinge that I hadn't previously used and suffered that learning curve. If using this style hinge, be sure to allow for enough overhang of the hinge to keep the top from binding when fully opened. For this, mark your hinge placement such that the inside face of the lid side, of the open hinge) is positioned to align with the outside face of the back of the box. They will protrude a small amount; but, the lid will be allowed to fully open. Use this same technique when positioning for the top hinge locations.

After marking the position for the hinges, I use my drill press with bit the same diameter as the width of the hinge. Set the depth and make a series of plunges from the front of the hinge to the back of the box. Hint - aligning the bit for a straight mortise is best don using a fence on the drill press table or heavily scribe a center-line for the mortise and your drill bit will naturally fall into that groove.

Clean up the mortise with chisel and/or sandpaper - be very careful with the depth; sneak up on it. I've found it easier to go back and remove a little more wood than to add back a little after being too impatient.

All joints are butt joints, I figured with the glue being stronger than the wood, elaborate joinery would detract from the simple lines of the box.

I live in MN, where we are now coming out of winter. I thought I'd throw in a random pic from a Polar Plunge my daughters participated in - yes, even grade school children participate in the madness. I do harbor a sense of pride that my kids have grasped the concept of helping those that can't help themselves, and also happy that they have been able to step out of the comfort zone - at least sometimes.

The drawer is designed to help with keeping necklaces somewhat organized. The removable trays include a variety of sized compartments to allow for flexibility with different content, from ear rings to fully loaded Pandora bracelets.

The field is buckthorn, accents spalted ash. finish is Tung oil. In hindsight, I should have used a finish that doesn’t discolor the natural wood, so much, the contrast of the two woods is slightly more muted than I was after, something like a spray poly might have been better.

My skills as a woodworker are developing – nowhere near master level;
but, developing. With a decent bandsaw and thicknesser (purchased, since this project), milling self-harvested wood will get much easier.