Lee's Wood Works

Jewelry Boxes

	My wife has been after me for a while to replace her store bought jewelry case with one that is larger. After several lengthy discussions about size and design, we came up with this plan. Much of the cherry came from a couple of hunks that Dominic Greco gave me at a Five Barns picnic a couple of years ago. The rest of the cherry came from my neighbor's mantle that I salvaged from the burn pile. The curly maple came from my local wood source and was specially selected for this project. The first photo shows the case closed. The doors are held closed with a couple of rare earth magnets. The pieces of wood in the doors were resawn on my 14" BS and are book matched. The hinges are the simple pin hinges. In the second photo, the doors are open fully flat on each side giving her full access to all her necklaces. The top opens to reveal the top tray (false drawer). My wife didn't want a mirror on the top panel, she preferred to see the curly cherry. The drawer fronts are solid cherry and made from consecutive parallel pieces from top to bottom. The drawer boxes are also made with curly maple. They are lined with an adhesive backed felt from the local craft store. The drawer boxes have locking rabbet joints at each corner and the bottoms are 1/16" plywood also from the craft store, set into dados. The drawer runners and dividers are all dovetailed so they can move with the seasonal changes. The maple vertical pieces that form the sides of the drawer compartment are set into the bottom board and back board with dovetails. The drawer pulls are solid brass pulls from Woodworkers Supply. The back is made up of two book matched pieces from the mantle. No my neighbor hasn't seen it yet. The trim piece at the top was required to allow the top to lift open. The base board is dovetailed into two side pieces of molding. this will allow for seasonal wood movement. With all the dovetails, most of the box could be assembled and disassembled with out glue during the course of construction to check for fit and function. The finish is Deft semi-gloss clear wood finish which allows the natural color cherry to show through and enhances the curly nature of the cherry. There are 3-4 coats on all pieces, sanded flat and then hand rubbed out after the final coat. I expect that it will darken some with age. I probably have about 50-60 hours in this getting things to fit right and to work out design details so that the hinged doors and lid would work the way I wanted them to. I also had to work on it around other projects. Size wise, it is about 18" tall 10" wide and about 6-1/2 deep


	This is a cherry and maple jewelry box I made for my grand daughter as a Christmas present . The three trays are removeable and when removed expose a larger divided compartment below. The center partition of the lower compartment is removeable if desired. The wood is all natural color with a clear semi-gloss lacquer finish.


		Created: 4 July 2006 Updated: 8 January 2009 By: Leon Schierer email me at us71na@earthlink.net