21"L x 15"W x 12"H
21"L x 15"W x 12"H
The following is a shadow box I made for my sister as an anniversary / birthday present for her wedding bouquet. The interesting story about this box is that it is made from wood that came from the church in which she and her husband were married. It just so happened that they were remodeling the church before the wedding, and I was able to obtain some of the floor boards and wainscoting from the sanctuary. The wood is fir (as far as I can tell - let me know if you think it isn't) and I estimate the age to be at least 100 years old, seeing as how the church was built in 1908.
The wood was a beauty to work with. It was perfectly dried and ready to go, having sat for years to get to the correct moisture content. Hand planing it was a wonder to behold, after sharpening my hand plane with the *SCARY SHARP* system. The shaving came off in nice long paper thin strips. I thought I was in heaven! Incidentally, the hand plane I used was the one my father found in between the floor boards of the church when they were remodeling. It is an old Stanley - that's about all I know about it.
I started out by first removing all the nails from the wood. Of course, these were the original square nails, and I was of half a mind to keep them and straighten them out, but I've got so much "project" stuff sitting around as-is that I decided in the end to just chuck them.
Next, I sanded all the finish off the wood with my belt sander, and at the same time tried to get a smooth and flat surface. At one point in time, someone had stripped all the paint from the boards using a belt sander, and they weren't too careful with the depth of cut, so I had quite a task ahead of me. (I didn't have my planer at the time). I also used my hand planer, and between the two I was able to obtain a fairly flat surface.
The third step involved ripping (on the tablesaw) the tongue and groove joints from the wood. This left me with wood that was about 3" wide by about 3/4" thick.
At this point in the process, I sold my house and moved, so the project was put on hold for quite some time. Finally, after getting some semblance of order back in my "shop" (a converted half of a two car garage), I was able to proceed. I must put some gloating in here: also during that time I sold my Shopmaster tablesaw and got a Jet contractor style tablesaw. Wow! What a difference.
One other thing happened: I took a look at the wood again (which, at this time, had been all stacked and stickered properly) and decided that it still wasn't flat enough for me. This, combined with the fact that Delta had their 12.5" portable planer on sale, of course forced me to buy it.
So, back to the planer to plane all the wood to just over a uniform 5/8" thickness. Next, I laid out all the wood and arranged it to match as best as I could, deciding what pieces to use where, etc. I marked each piece as to its location, and put direction arrows on each piece to indicate the feed, which I'll explain next.
I must admit that I don't have a jointer, so I once again turned to my tablesaw to rip a nice clean edge on each piece, being sure to follow the feed direction arrows. Next, I ripped the pieces to width so that I had two parallel edges on each piece, once again following the feed direction arrows. These feed direction arrows allowed me to compensate for any error in the tilt of the saw blade. With every piece ripped in the same direction, when they are placed side by side all the pieces match up just fine. (OK, so that wasn't a good explanation, but hopefully some of you people will understand the concept).
Following that, I laid out biscuit slots and proceeded to cut them. I glued up the side pieces and the bottom piece, making sure that they weren't wider than 12". After the glue dried, I ran the pieces through my planer one more time to remove the glue squeeze out. (I used polyurethane glue, BTW). This put the wood at a uniform 5/8" thickness. Next, I did the final glue up for the wide pieces and then hand planed the remaining glue squeeze out.
At this point, I had the required pieces to start putting the box together. I have in the past built boxes with 45 degree miters on the sides, and they were a pain in the butt to glue up and get to match perfectly, even with miniature biscuits for alignment, so this project gave me the perfect excuse to try out my dovetail jig from Harbor Freight (note that I would NEVER, EVER recommend this jig to anyone).
After many hours of practice and repairing and renovating the dovetail jig, I cut the joints for the box. I also experimented with cutting these by hand, but Christmas was coming up, and I was going down to see my family and I had to have this ready by then. I then cut the rabbits to receive the bottom of the box. It was a lot of fun doing stopped rabbits on the tablesaw when I already had the dovetail joints cut. I'll have to remember that for next time and cut the stopped rabbits first.
Finally, I made it to the glue-up stage. Here is a photo of that
process: (You are looking at the box upside down).
(Note that there are four pieces of wood for each side of the box. I was quite proud of
the fact that the sides are almost perfectly flat.)
As you can see, there was a little squeeze out in the joints, which I had to remove with a combination of a very (scary) sharp chisel, a hand plane, and my random orbit sander. The corner clamps were a must for this project. I also had four more that I put on top, and some more clamps that I used to clamp the short sides.
After glue-up and glue removal, it was time to add the bottom of the box. I also cut rabbits in the box bottom to match such that it would not protrude below the bottom edges of the box. I glued the bottom in place along the long grain, and then added a dab of glue in the middle of the short sides (none on the ends of the short sides) to allow for expansion and contraction with changes in the humidity. Once again I did glue removal, and then final sanding, and it was on to the top of the box.
The box top was a simple 45 degree miter joint with a groove routed out for the glass. In addition, I routed a detail around the edges and a small detail in the front for opening the box. I added hinges and a chain to keep it from opening too far.
Finally, I made it to the staining process. I experimented with all the different types of stain and finish that I had at the time, finally deciding on a colonial maple finish, and covering that with lacquer (hand brushed). I put on one coat of stain and then four coats of lacquer, sanding with 600 grit wet-dry between each coat.
I then reassembled the top and bottom (having disassembled it for the staining and finishing), and added the glass. At this point, I was at a real time crunch, so I held the glass in place with glazing points. If I had it to do again, I would rip small pieces of wood to hold it, pinning each piece with tiny brads.
At any rate, here is the finished project: Let me know what you think!
Stephen Bigelow Email
Me!
