Please join me for another custom request. My client requested a jewelry box to keep all her large beaded jewelry and rings & things, so this box is going to be larger than usual. She also requested a custom make up box so that she could have easy access to all her make up.
With these boxes I will try something that I haven't tried before and that is an inlay technique. I will be inlaying a raven design onto the lid of the box. This raven image has special meaning to the client, since she took the the photo of the raven herself.
As usual and with good practise, I start out with the design process by first making a few sketches of what the box will look like and a drafted drawing. I also made a very quick and rough mock-up of the box, to easily visualize the proportions of the box. I gave my client three choices of box styles and she ended up choosing the more traditional prairie style box design. This design will have a shaped bottom, dovetails for the joinery and a lock. The make up box will essentially be the same design, but instead of a lock, this box will have a simple latch.
After I have made all the necessary drafting and was happy with all the proportions of the boxes, I jumped right into preparing the boards for the construction of the boxes.
After I have made all the necessary drafting and was happy with all the proportions of the boxes, I jumped right into preparing the boards for the construction of the boxes.After all the boards are broken out into the final dimensions I prepared to make the dovetail joinery, by laying out all the necessary lines. Accurate layout of the lines are very important, because all your cuts will be determined by these lines. An easy way to lay out these lines is with the aid of a dovetail marking gauge. The beauty of this gauge is, is that you can mark out the angle of the dovetail as well as the 90 degree lines in one motion, so no more fumbling with your bevel gauge and square. A marking gauge easily marks the thickness of the corresponding piece.
In the next part I will be cutting the dovetail joinery by cutting the pins by hand and I will also use the table saw to cut the tails.
Thanks for looking!
Roshaan
I used nicely figured Eastern Maple for the box. Notice how I carried the figure to the front of the box? This also complements the walnut I used for the divider and the domino backs quite well.
I added a divider to the box, thus creating a pencil "niche". I think it is a great way to keep the pencil at hand for keeping score!
Fastforward to the glue-up of the box. Since I used finger joints for the box I have employed the same method of glue-up as seen in the 
91 domino tiles!!!
Here I have set up my Dremel rotary tool in a router table attachment to cut a v-groove in the center of each domino tile. You definitely can't do this operation safely on a full sized router table.
The v-groove routed in a domino tile. The Dremel set-up is a great way to go with a close-fingered operation such as this.
Here I'm using the same router bit to put a slight bevel on all the edges and corners of each tile...uhum...that's 91 tiles!
All the parts layed out to make the maple top and contrasting walnut bottom. I have grouped 4 tiles together on one rectangular piece of maple.
Using my right angle alignment jig (as seen in my book Simply Wood) to make sure the paper pattern is pefectly positioned on the maple as it is glued down.
At the drill press drilling many, many holes!
Still at the drill press! This time I'm using a countersink bit to champfer the drilled holes to add some dimension to the plain hole.
