Small Gift Boxes, continued-The Cedar of Lebanon box

Ok, I'm back.

Time to turn my attention to the cedar of Lebanon box and I must say I'm not please with this one at all. I don't like the color, I don't like the shape, it's not hollowed out enough, and the scent is a little too overpowering for me. This box is like a bad hair cut-the only thing you can do is re-cut it and hope for the best and that's what we're going to do.

Here we go:

Here's the box to begin with. Not very interesting visually:

I put it back on the lathe. I'm going to reduce the outside slope of the box and create a rim on it. To do this securely, I've placed it between centers:

I've marked off a section of the outside for the rim and begun turning away wood from that:

I'm going to cut from side to side to remove wood an reduce the slope :

And I worked in the manner for several minutes. I narrowed the rim and then split it into two beads and cut them down so they would not protrude from the surface too much:

In this photo I'm about to hollow out the inside more:

And here it is several minutes later. The box is now deeper and wider inside and so it will be a little more useable:

And here is the box several minutes later. I've roughly sanded it. It think it looks much better. I'm beginning to get an idea about the color:

Next, the lid portion

I was looking at Richard Raffan's website again and I decided to try to make an onion-dome shaped lid for the box. Looking around the shop, the only wood I had that was close to being thick enough is a piece of pine. It will turn very easily but is it thick enough for the shape I want?:

I made a turning blank. We'll see how this works out:

I did my usual procedure of creating the underside of the lid to fit into the box:

And I placed it on the box to see how it looks. Not bad:

I put it back on the lathe and I began to turn. It was readily obvious that I would not have enough wood for a full onion shape so I would have to modify the shape of the lid:

Here I'm beginning to shape the top of the lid:

I took the lid off the lathe and took a look at it. Without a definite shape to aim for, it's difficult to understand just what it should look like instead. This is going to be one of those "I'll know it when I see it shapes." In this photo, it's clear that the shape isn't exactly there yet. It looks like a giant mushroom sitting on the top of the box. I want to keep the plumpiness of the shape but refine it more. Back on the lathe it goes:

No.

Nope.

I kept turning and removed a small amount of wood from the center of the lid and created a finial and added a little shaping to the area around the finial. I've also given it somewhat ogee shape to the surface. It's beginning to look like something:

I'm going to stop turning this for the moment and spend a day looking at it:

My youngest son just walked in and said it looks like a muffin....sigh...

Ok, I'm going to leave it and possibly shape it more. I may also stain the top and the bottom of the box to match. I think that would improve matters quite a bit. More about that tomorrow.

The last box is the camphor box and that needs some major work as well. I'll try and do another posting later today.


VW