Contemporary Keepsake box- tiger maple

[Dave Jett]

Here's my first project using tiger maple and zebrawood. Learned you get tearout on figured woods. Solution was to dampen the maple with water then plane in tiny increments. The plan from Wood Magazine called for using a belt sander to shape the legs, which burned the Zebrawood. Next time I'll bandsaw close to the desired profile and beltsand to the final profile. Used 3 coats of polyurethane with steelwool buffing between coats.

[DonHo]

Unique combination of woods, don't think I've ever seen them combined but it looks great.
Good work.
DonHo

[Popeye]

Now that is really sharp. Pat

[mater]

It looks very nice. Good work.

[JimD]

Nice. I wondered what you did about finish. At Christmas time I started two jewelry boxes, also based upon plans from Wood magazine, that turned into 4 jewelry boxes. The wood is quilted maple with walnut accents. The magazine used wenge. I followed the recommended linseed oil allowed to dry a week and then lacquer. That makes the quilting stand out a lot but yellows the wood and may cut down on the "shimmer". I later made a couple of drawers to finish a jewelry chest in the wall for my wife and finished the drawers with water based poly. The quilting is not quite as pronounced finished this way but it still looks nice.

The two boxes became 4 because the wood was so nice I could not throw away the scraps. I used the BT3100 to reduce 3/4 inch boards to the required 1/2 inch thickness and ended up with pieces about an eighth thick left over. These became veneer on plain maple boards for a couple extra boxes for the grandmothers.

The local guy sorts his maple and gets extra for all the fancy grained stuff. I think I paid $10/bd ft for one board and $12 or $15 for the other more figured piece. Was yours this much? More recently I bought a nicely figured board for the normal "soft maple" price at another dealer. It is not as fancy but less than $5/bd ft is a lot nicer price.

Jim

[Wood_workur]

Looks really nice.

[just4funsies]

If you can get the figured wood for the standard pricing, you are fortunate. Most dealers know the extra value in the more "charactered" pieces (as do most of their suppliers).

[Crash2510]

looks awesome

[John Hunter]

Looks great.

[drumpriest]

Very cool. Figured wood is a pain in terms of tear out, one more reason for a drum sander. ;-)

[lrogers]

That is so cool, from the shape to the choice of woods. Very well done.