I made this box for my lady friends birthday. The box isn’t so much the present as a container for the present. I bought her a pendant and I wanted more than a cardboard box to give it to her in. So I whipped this out.
The woods are ambrosia maple and padauk. I had already been planning on using the maple. She likes maple and I had this nice piece sitting in the shop. The idea to use the padauk came from Phil’s Oak Box with Padauk Lid project. I really liked the colors and thought the padauk would work well with the maple.
The decision for the tapered sides came from the book “Box Making Basics by David Freedman”. I knew the same old straight side box wasn’t going to cut it. I had to jazz it up a little. The tapered sides and top give it a little different look and hopefully make it a little more visually interesting.
The box is made as a standard straight walled mitered corner box with standard identical miter keys top and bottom. After the glue dried I raised the table saw blade as far as it would go, tilted it 6 degrees and sliced all four walls of the box. The lid is tapered at 10 degrees. The lid is short compared to the box so I had to give it more taper so it didn’t look straight up and down.
The finish is a single coat of pure tung oil thinned 50/50 with turpentine.