Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Inspiration Stagnation Liberation

photo of my zinnias
top of carved cigar box


 










I’ve heard of writer’s block, but I wonder if there is such at thing as carver’s block.

I had this beautiful discarded cigar box made of thick cedar wood.  It was just aching to be carved, but the box sat for weeks because I had no inspiration what-so-ever about what to carve on it.  I could use one of those graphic Japanese crest symbols, or Celtic designs, but this box had a certain elegance that seemed to cry out “flowers”.  I went through images of flowers on the internet, but nothing popped out.  I then decided to go through my own file of flower photographs that I had taken myself.  Bingo!  I found a nice photo of zinnias taken in my front yard. 
 
With some tweaking, the design seemed to fit the box well.  It had nice detail, but not too difficult to carve. I printed the photo on plain paper and then simplified the flowers by selected the elements of the design that I thought would make a good carving on the lid of the box. 
As I mentioned in a previous post, these empty wooden cigar boxes are available from my local cigar store for just $1 each, so I carve the design in the lid first, before I attempt to work on the rest of the box.  If the carving doesn’t work out, I just discard the box without wasting time on the finish or interior of the box.  Well, this carving turned out pretty good, so I went on and finished the box.  I added the black walnut corner inserts.  This was the first time I did this on any box.  I used a special jig that I built based on plans in a box making book.  I cut the thin walnut corner inserts to an 1/8 inch thickness to match the kerf slot made by my table saw blade.
 
interior tray
I finished the box by using the interior cedar side spacers that came with the box to construct an interior tray.  Like anything else, the more of these interior trays I make, the better they turn out. I’m pretty pleased with the resulting box.
The finished keepsake box
Now, I have to get inspired for my next carved box.  Any suggestions?



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dad - it's me Dave. Just had to comment that in all the wood working shows I have watched one of the few things i told myself I would (could) do when I get around to crafting myself is the splined mitred corners... I like how good they look for so little (I assume) effort. Wait, did I just deflate your work here, because I didn't mean to. Your interior looks great and the top has those "relieved" sides/edges... did it come that way or did you add that detail because it looks good.

John M. Casteline said...

Dave,
The relieved top edges were part of the original cigar box. I didn't create them. The box had a great shape to start with. By using the sawing fixture/jig, the splinded mitered corners were a lot easier than I thought they would be. The hardest part was accurately cutting the splines.