Woodworking project

A while back, I purchased a bunch of 8" wide cherry boards for a large CD tower project I was doing. They come rough cut, 4/4, and so you never really know exactly what you are getting until you feed them through the planer. Well, I was running them through the planer and this highly figured board appeared. Curly cherry. I pulled it out of the pile and set it aside. I knew that it was far too good to end up as just another shelf that would never be seen.

So I made this box. 12-1/2" x 6-3/4" x 4". Hand cut dovetails, Brusso hinges machined from solid brass stock, sliding tray, ebony lift, oil and wax finish. The figure is amazing and quite 3D. It moves and shimmers as your perspective changes.

Nice work! Love the cherry.

The wood is gorgeous. Nice work!

I have been musing what wood project I could have made with all the cedar and pine fencing that has been sitting free for the taking in neighborhood trash piles for weeks now. Alas, I'm not experienced with woodworking.

Beautiful piece of cherry and very nicely done.

pmbug said:

The wood is gorgeous. Nice work!

I have been musing what wood project I could have made with all the cedar and pine fencing that has been sitting free for the taking in neighborhood trash piles for weeks now. Alas, I'm not experienced with woodworking.

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Grab all the cedar you can and make yourself some raised bed planters. If you do not have the room for raised beds, you can always build railing planters that would hang off your balcony railings. You won't be able to grow potatoes in them, but they would be fine for herbs and peppers. I made some raised bed planters out of retired oak fence boards for my wife. She has a crop of turmeric growing in them.

Here's one I made out of black walnut. This one is taller (note the additional dovetails) and has no sliding tray. My wife claimed this one for her own and she's using it as a tea box. It holds four boxes of her tea perfectly.

Another one recently finished out of black walnut. Gaboon ebony lift, Brusso hinges, oil and wax finish. Finishing up the last of this style of box. Couple more to wrap up and then I'm shifting gears into 2026 to do a different style.

Do you use a jig for cutting your dovetails?
I can never get the perfect fit like you have there unless I use dovetail jig.
My hand cut dovetails look like crap.
BF

PS: Is the lift handle wood or metal?

Bottom Feeder said:

Do you use a jig for cutting your dovetails?
I can never get the perfect fit like you have there unless I use dovetail jig.
My hand cut dovetails look like crap.
BF

PS: Is the lift handle wood or metal?

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While I own a Leigh D4 dovetail jig, I only use it for large projects like blanket chests and stuff like that. When I make boxes, I try to keep the gap between the tails small enough that I can't pass a dime through them - leaving a dovetail jig out of the question as there is no router bit with a shank of .020". I cut the pins first and then mark the tails directly from the pins so they are guaranteed to match up - even if I get an angle a little off. Also, I never try to saw to the base line with the fret saw - I try to leave about 1/32" of waste that I then remove with a chisel. Since the base line is scribed with a marking knife, the chisel's edge registers itself and makes it easy to remove material right down to the baseline exactly. This is shown below in photos 5 and 6.

The lift is made from Gaboon ebony. I bought a pile of it 20 years ago before CITES made it so difficult to buy. I have enough 8/4 ebony to last me the rest of my life.

Damn, you do fine work, kid.
I cannot afford to build things out of exotic wood, I'm too clumsy and waste too much.
I'm more of a oak, poplar and maple constructor. Bookcases and cabinets, stairs and walkways, no cool stuff like you're doing there.
BF

Bottom Feeder said:

Damn, you do fine work, kid.
I cannot afford to build things out of exotic wood, I'm too clumsy and waste too much.
I'm more of a oak, poplar and maple constructor. Bookcases and cabinets, stairs and walkways, no cool stuff like you're doing there.
BF

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Thanks. But I assure you that I went to Lowe's and bought a bunch of cheap poplar when I was learning to do dovetails. I made a lot of mistakes and made a bunch of kindling before I got halfway proficient.

I really like working with maple and cherry and, to a certain extent, black walnut because they are soft enough to allow me to fudge my joints on the tight side, knowing that they will compress a bit and look like a really tight joint. When you get into the harder exotics, there is no squish factor, and I find myself making joints that won't go together, and I have to start paring the pins with a really sharp chisel.

Nice work Kid!! Nice tools too!

Very nice to see a finished product. I've been more interested in the trees around here and started walking some of our woods. Do you know specifically what type of Cherry that was? We have quite a few Black Cherry trees growing. No walnut or Hickory. Sadly of course, lots of dead Ash trees and a couple Oaks.

Voodoo said:

Very nice to see a finished product. I've been more interested in the trees around here and started walking some of our woods. Do you know specifically what type of Cherry that was? We have quite a few Black Cherry trees growing. No walnut or Hickory. Sadly of course, lots of dead Ash trees and a couple Oaks.

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If you are referring to the reddish hardwood in post #9, that is not cherry. That is Padauk. It is a hardwood from Africa.

I live in Virginia so most of the cherry that I buy comes down out of Pennsylvania. Most of it is very nice, some of it is ho hum, and some of it is exceptional. I buy it rough cut so it's a crap shoot as to what is underneath.

Edited to add: If you are referring to the curly cherry box in post #1, that was just a freak board that was in a pile I purchased to make a CD tower. It looked like all the others until I fed it through the planer. I guarantee the guy who sold it to me had no idea all that figure lurked under the rough exterior or he would have doubled his price.

Rough cut? So you have a planer?
I do a lot of trim work on my shaper and I just recently bought a new plunge router that takes the ½ inch bits the shaper uses. The last exotic wood I bought was Zebrawood. That was a little tough because the black wood and the tan wood that comprise it are way different hardness. The project was for a coin display, a three ounce Aztec calendar.

Not as pretty as your stuff but I haven't worked small projects very much.