These little busy bee boxes ended up being more of a to-do than I was expecting, but that’s pretty much been the case for every single other thing I have ever built, so what are you going to do. Anyway: curly “Lie-Nielsen” maple, spalted maple, curly teak, brass, shellac. Hard to tell from the pictures, but the sides are grain-matched to run continuously all the way around each box, which was extra-exciting since the material wasn’t resawn. There are a few other things I would have done differently (which I will keep to myself, thank you), but for the most part I am pretty happy with how these little friends turned out. And, if nothing else, they gave me an excuse to make something combining maple and teak, which I had seen some other folks do at CR and always thought looked super sharp. This set is spoken for, but hopefully I will get to build more of these at some point down the road.
Side note about the wood: I brought some back with me from Maine after teaching a box class with John Cameron at Center for Furniture Craftsmanshipundefined. Apparently it had been given to the school by the guys at Lie-Nielsen Toolworks down the road (who I think was probably using it for fancy plane-sharpening demonstrations,) where it then sat in the basement for who knows how long. I remember people half-heartedly picking through the pile and kind of shrugging and wandering back to their benches. And without making any sudden movements I squirreled away two pieces into my Klein bag, so as to not create any kind of ruckus due to people having passed over a gold mine. (I fully understand and acknowledge that none of this means anything to non-woodworkers. But it’s fun when wood has a story to it, even if it is rambling and pointless.)
