Jan 14th am

Finished sandign the carcass to 600. I now need to find a small hand to oil the inside since today I learned my hand does not fit.

The necklace tray was sanded to 220. That leaves 2 sanding passes and a lot of oiling and buffing and then its done!

Oh except of course the pulls.... what to do about the pulls.

I have high expectations that this weekend I can finish the box (maybe sunday) I will have to map out an oiling schedule and see if that is possible since the oil needs 12 hours to dry between coats.

Jan 12th am

Box sanded to 120 with all splines being smoothed down to the carcass. Sanded the top dividers to 400 and 600 grits. I need to buy some more 400, 600 and 800 sandpaper. curiosly the dividers were a dark brown and smooth from being planed. When sanded they became more of a red/ lighter brown color I don;t know how this will play out accross the box but I figure I have sanded everthing else so far so I shoudl continue. if i find it happening again I will try and document with photographs.

Jan 9th pm

A slight change of plans and I had an additional 1.5 hours after work to work on the box. With this time I finished fitting the top divider! I also sanded the necklace tray with 120 sand paper. and finally I fitted the necklace tray to the divider. a little dissapointing was the fact that the long divider is not square to the box. I think i inverted which side I was measuring from when I marked up the mortises for each side. Its not too bad but I had to plane the tray so that the two long sides are no longer parallel and now it fits better. Unexpected problem is how does ine remove the tray? there is little tolerance so I think I need to devise a handle. i will have to sketch soemting out for this and work on it.

Jan 9th

The long divider of the top was fitted! That means the 2nd set of tennons got cut and the mortises were cleaned up a bit to better fit the tenons. Overall it is a llittle snug but fits well. The mortises for the shorter divider were marked out on the box and outlined, and the shorter divider was cut. Unfortunately i used the wrong cut line and the shorter divider is now a little too short but I think it may still work as long as the tenons are mear 32nds of an inch. We will see. Either way I am excited for this weekend and the possibility of getting the top complete so we can begin oiling the carcass. Towards this end I roughly planed the uncut spine down to the box and trimmed the remaining filler at one fo the corners. By the end of Saturday I should have the box ready for sanding / oiling. That will be a big relief. These days I have been afforded about 45 min before work to work on the box. I take the latest train in from oakland and then have from about 7:15 to 8 before i feel too self conscious to continue to work. It is a good period of time and I feel like each day I have the routine down and it is getting more productive.

Jan 6th,7th 2009

The past two morning I spent mortising the top inside of the box to accept the divider tenons. I wish for two things - 1 that I did this before the box was assembled, 2 I had a really small chisel or gouge. I did the best I could with an x-acto knife. As soon as I get a small saw I will cut the tonons on the divider and give these a try. I know they are not pretty but I hope they work even though their sides are not perfectly square.

Friday Dec 26, Sat Dec 27

Today I was in rhode island staring to make some of the inserts for the top of the box.

It began with a trip to harry's house to sharpen a smoothing plane and a couple of wood gouges. Harry sharpened them very meticulously and in about an hour. Back I went to with sharpened tools in hand. Carving the wood was a lot of fun! I had never carved before so this was a new experience for me and with the sharpened tools you could really feel each chip of wood that was gouged away.

Next I set up the table saw and ripped a bunch of pieces to width for the dividers in the box. Each piece then got locked in the vice and the edge was planed smooth to hide the teeth marks. I think the overall shop picture best sums up what when on.

The images of the sized dividers are not so interesting so I have not included them here. Below is an image of the rough finished necklace tray.

Sunday Dec 21 (solstice!)

Today the carcass is finished. Well nto really there is still sanding and oiling to do, but it now has all of its spines and the miters have all been clamped. i am not sure I will try and fill some of the larger cracks with a wood glue sawdust paste but we will see.

Today we:

1 clamped and glued a loose miter together

2 filled a large miter crack at one foot with a splinter

3 installed a missing spline (the old one fell out a few days ago). the spine replacement was hand wittled down with an x-acto for tickness and then cut with an exacto to rough size. Carefull attention was made to make sure the grain ened up perpendicular to the joint. I hope to be crfull when doing the final sizing after the glue dries to prevent break-out like we had on the last one.

Up next some of the wood is going on a trip to be sized!

Later tonight I hope to have time to oil the lid a third and final coat and to oil drawer #3 a second coat.