Music box continued: hollowing out the bottom of the box

Hi Everyone,

Well, the weather here continues to improve so many apologies to Mother Nature for not believing it would ever warm up again.

I went down to the wood shop and continued working on the music box. If you recall I had hollowed out the top of the box to a depth of about 1 1/2" and now I'm going to hollow out the bottom of the box with the goal of creating a shelf inside of the box that the music box mechanism to sit on. The shelf will have to be thin enough for the key to protrude for winding but strong enough to enable me to screw the mechanism in place.

Here's today's photos:

So, I went down to the shop and reverse mounted the music box on the lathe and I also set up the tailstock for drilling into the bottom of the box. I like to do that whenever I'm hollowing out something. It helps to establish depth and it also makes hollowing easier to do:

I know, you're wondering why this makes hollowing easier to do-if you look closely you'll see that I'm beveling the edge of the drilled hole. Cutting at an angle helps to keep the box correctly centered on the lathe, the fibers don't tear so much, and it's just easier to cut the end grain in this manner:

In this photo you can see how the underside has enlarged:

Here is the box. I've hollowed it out to a depth of about 1 1/2". I'm going to sand the inside and the bottom of the box next:

And here is the box at present. I've rounded the edges on the bottom so my cousin or her husband don't scrap their hands when they go to wind up the music mechanism.

According to my precise calculations, the resulting shelf inside the box is about 1" in thickness at present so I'm going to stop and wait for the mechanism to arrive before proceeding with the hollowing:

And so here are a couple of photos of the box. You can see it next to a grapefruit in the next photo for size comparison:

While I'm waiting for the music box mechanism to play, I'm going to turn a small keepsake box for a friend who has been very ill recently with asthma and I'll tell you the story behind that tomorrow.

See you Friday.
VW