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| photo of my zinnias |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The finished keepsake box |
Now, I have to get inspired for my next carved box. Any suggestions?
2 comments:
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.
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.
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