Tea Box: The Pine Tea Box-Discussion and Plans, and The Blue Period Returns!

Good Evening All,

Well, it has begun to snow again here in Minnesota this afternoon and evening. It's supposed to rain and snow all night tonight and into tomorrow so we may have some snow on the ground tomorrow morning.

Snow or not, it's time to talk about the next project: the pine tea box and here is a photo of it from several days ago. It's the yellow block in the left of the photograph:

Discussion

I've been wanting to make tea boxes that have a more curved exterior than the ones I usually make and I've also wanted to begin experimenting with some exterior adornment. This block is comprised of several oddly placed pine blocks that were laminated together with the hope of carving the block. The grain patterns don't match up well so I think this might be a good block to experiment with. I also have a 2" thick solid pine block that I can use for a lid and both are a pleasant vanilla yellow color.

Plans

I'm going to turn this into a tea box that has the capacity to hold about 3 oz of loose tea leaves. So first I'll cut off the corners of the block and then mount it on the lathe. Next I'll shape it into a cylinder and from that I'll sculpt the outside of the block. Lastly I'll make the lid for the box. When this is all done it will have to be sanded perfectly smooth and the tools will have to be kept super sharp to prevent tearing of the wood as soft woods are prone to this.

I've got a head cold at the moment and it's supposed to be cold and rainy tomorrow so I probably won't do any turning till Sunday.

Blue Period Returns

Those of you who have been following the blog for a while will remember that about a year ago I tried to stain a couple of dried flower vases blue and wound up with flower vases that were kind of a puke pink color instead. I'll spare everyone the details of that. This time I'm going to paint the body of the box a blue-grey color and leave the lid natural pine color. So with paint there can't possibly be a way for me to screw this up this time (of course with all of the coffee scoop projects that have all gone bad, this may be too much to hope for) as I'll find someone to mix the color for me before I begin painting. So keep your fingers crossed, the blue period is coming back.

So if you're here in the mid west, stay warm and if you're elsewhere where it's warm, stay cool and I'll see you later this weekend.

VW