Wooden Boxes

Randy continues practicing his “Sawdust therapy”. He has made a second “Animal Cracker” Noah’s Ark gave it to the Bishop’s family as they are departing our ward for Las Vegas and Nellis Air Force base even though the bishop is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corp. He will be a Marine Corp liaison officer there. We had reports that the children enjoyed playing with the ark. (picture from bishop’s kids)

Randy found another book in the library entitled “Boxes for the Scroll Saw” that inspired him to create a few small boxes using the scroll saw. The basic design is to cut the inside out of the box, glue on a bottom, and make a top with a lid. That being said, the book had plans for boxes that look like a leaf, hearts, dolphins, swans, a bonnet, Kokopelli (Southwest native American flute player), tear drop, butterfly, harp, etc.

The first boxes were made from materials that Randy had on hand – Baltic birch plywood and poplar from the Noah’s Arks. These prototypes turned out well. So it was time to build a prettier one.


Georgia suggested an ice cream sandwich box. Randy had some walnut and cherry, but they were only ¾ inches thick – the wrong size. Hardwood lumber is listed as being in quarters of an inch. This is the rough cut lumber before being planed for final thickness. So the 3/4 inch lumber is really 4/4 lumber that has been planned down to almost 3/4 of an inch. That leaves a little bit to be surfaced by the final user.  

Georgia had to do a screening clinic in Phoenix and, at Randy’s request, brought home a 6 foot plank of red oak that is 5/4 lumber which makes it almost 1 inch thick after planing. The new drum sander really works well surfacing the lumber and making it flat.

The drum sander can plane wood down to 1/32 of an inch which gave Randy another idea - making wooden barrettes. Georgia already had some metal clamp parts for the barrettes as she had made some cloth covered ones before. The only problem was that these barrette parts were curved and the wood would need to match that. How do you bend wood? The answer is steam. Randy had read some articles about bending wet wood in a microwave oven. Georgia gave her permission to use the microwave oven in the kitchen as long as there were no termites in the wood. She still remembered what happened in Florida.   

 

Randy had some thin myrtle wood from Oregon that he had already prepped. It ended up being too thick at 1/8 of an inch to be heated/steamed in the microwave. So he sanded it down to 1/16 and tried again. This time the wood bent easily. Randy manufactured a form for the heated wood, put the wood in, and clamped it overnight. It came out dry and in the correct shape in the morning. He then tried it with some walnut that also worked out well. By request, Georgia wore the one made from myrtle wood to Church. We took a photo when we got home.

We have an English teacher in our little Home Evening Group. Since she is the "Comma Queen", Randy presented her with a comma box.