Playing With Power Tools: Sandy's Box

More then a decade ago, I stopped by one of the roadside firewood venders on a cold Florida night. I'd been thinking for a while that getting one log, complete with bark, would make a great scratcher for the cats. Thomas and Sandy both seemed to like scratching on something rough, and I'd seen other neighborhood cats scratch on the trees outside.

I asked him how much for one log. I have cats and one log would make a great cat scratcher. He looked at me kind of funny, but smiled and said take any one you like, no charge. Thanks. I picked out a log that had some good bark, and looked pretty solid. Perfect.

I brought it home and put it out on the porch. Unfortunately, none of the cats thought much of it. They sniffed it a few times, then walked away. Oh well, it was worth the shot.

Over the next few years it sat out on the porch. After a while we set it up against the milk crates, thinking the more elderly of the cats might like it as a ramp up to the top. Not really, but after Edward drilled a few holes in one end and used some string to tie it to the crates, Sandy did actually start using to climb up on the crates. As her eyesight got worse, she started walking up it with her front paws, and when she reached the top, hopped up with her back paws.

The log remained out on the porch for a few more years after Sandy died, but eventually, we took it down and put it in the garage where it stayed for a number more years, until Jan 2010, when we almost took it with us to the Cabins in Myakka and burned it. At the last minute, I changed my mind. I get overly sentimental sometimes, but I wasn't ready to let that log go, so we put it back in the garage where it stayed for another 12 months, while I waited for the inspiration to hit. What could I do with that log?

This past December it hit me, but too late to do anything for X-mas. In January, I snuck the log to work. I had a plan.

It still took another 2 weeks to get started. I almost waited too long. I was afraid of screwing it up, ruining the wood and my idea. Edward's Birthday is the end of Feb, and if I messed it up, I wasn't sure what I would do. I just had to be careful.

I took the log down to the shop and talked to the guys down there. They gave me some advice on what to do, some do's and don't with power tools, which intimidate the hell out of me, and sent me on my way. This wasn't the first time I'd built something in the shop, just my most ambitious project yet, in spite of it being the smallest. We set up the band saw made the first cut. This one was to give me a flat surface to use as a base to cut the log into boards. Pretty ho-hum grain on this cut, but it wasn't the grain I was looking for, it was the fact that this log we had kept all this time was going to turn into something special. At least that was my hope.

I turned the log 90° and made the second cut. That's when things got interesting. I didn't get the normal wood grain pattern you might have expected. It was dappled and spotted with pale heartwood and gray outer wood for about an inch near the bark. That's when the guys that work in the shop started a debate as to exactly what kind of wood this was. Oak? Maple? Birds Eye or Curly Maple? Buttonwood? There wasn't any agreement. All I knew was that it looked really, really cool.

Now that I had the log sliced up, I needed a more concrete plan. I knew how much wood I had now. "I want to make a box," wasn't going to be enough. I decided on a size to make it and ended up treating it like a stained glass project. I made a mock up of the box from a manila folder, then cut all the pieces out of paper and laid them on the wood. I had enough for the box and still had one extra board. I think Jordan thought I was being a little ambitious, but he was game, he was going to be my main sounding board and advice giver.

The most nerve wracking part was the first cuts. Measure, mark, measure again. Think it out, don't rush it.

Because of the coloring in the wood I wanted to make it so that the gray wood was all at the junction of the top and bottom. There weren't pieces big enough for the flat top or bottom to be done in one or even two pieces. What if I don't get the box square, or the top is, but the bottom isn't? What if they aren't flush? What if...? It kept me awake one night worrying about it.

I got the side pieces for the bottom and top cut, sanded and dadoed. A "dado" is a joint where some of one board is cut away and the other board is fit into the gap. It's a common joint for book cases. In this case the dado was on the long boards and the short boards fit into the cuts. Then I glued them together and clamped them tight.

Next was the top. I took two long boards of the pale wood and sandwiched between them four short boards with the gray wood in them, with the gray wood toward the center in each half. That gave me an interesting pattern for the top. The bottom was just four pieces of pale wood. They all had to be joined, sanded and measured out, Then the top and bottom had to be dadoed themselves to inset into the top and bottom boxes. Neither the top nor the bottom boxes came out exactly square. But I was hoping that I could overcome that in the finishing.

Once that was all glued together it came time to put on the hinges. I measured those carefully, cut and then sanded insets for the hinges, then carefully drilled the pilot holes for the screws. I had a box made by a professional to model it on, so I knew I had to remove some of the wood to get the hinges to work right. The first time I closed the box, it popped open like a jack in the box. Looking inside the screws were bumping up against one another. Sanding more wood only helped a little. Then I tried sloping the hinge slot towards the inside of the box. Bingo. The box closed tight. A little more sanding to get the back to sit close and that was done.

The last hard part was getting the top and bottom flush. I only had so much wood I could remove without bottoming out the dados on the front and back. Part of setting the hinges was to be sure that I wouldn't sand away the whole dado while the back edge was flush. I should be OK. I used two clamps to hold the box while I sanded. First I sanded the over-sized, or proud, wood from the top and bottom, then sanded the sides and front faces so that the top and bottom were flush. Lance wondered by as I was finishing. He ran his hand along the front face and just smiled. The last thing to do now was a final sanding, and varnish it.

The varnish brought out the incredible grain from this piece of old firewood. The first coat of varnish gave it a rich honey-gold color and brought out the depth in the grain. No stain was needed on this baby. The next two coats finished that process. I varnished it disassembled, so that I could set each piece down after it was done. Both the top and bottom rested on 3 nails set through scraps of plywood, so that there were only 3 tiny points of contact as they dried, since I varnished inside and outside at the same time. It worked perfectly. After the third coat dried, the hinges when on for the last time.

When I was young I used to play in my fathers shop, sometimes building things out of scraps of wood with nails, saws and hand powered drills. My grandfather had numerous power tools in his basement, but I wasn't the one he used to show how they worked. I used to watch anyway. When I was in junior high school girls took sewing and home economics. Being able to take shop was before my time. That didn't stop me from wanting to learn some basic wood working. I love to watch Norm Abrams on New Yankee Workshop. I just never had the access to the tools or the knowledge to build anything.

The nice thing about working at an office that fabricates a lot of it's own equipment is they have lots of really cool (i.e. really dangerous) tools. We have a shop that's to-die-for, and guys who know what to do. We're allowed to use the tools at work on a limited basis, as long as we don't get in the way of real work and we don't use up resources. There are wood working tools there that would make Norm proud. Besides, working on something there means it's hidden from Edward as well, and it can be a surprise.

I love to make things and I'm really happy with the way the box turned out. As luck would have it, the box will exactly fit Edward's drawing pencils, or the Market Deck from one of our board games. That wasn't planned, but it works.

So I add this box to the things I've made Edward in the wood shop at work over the years. It started with the DVD cabinet, then the bookshelf, the file cabinet top and now Sandy's box. If you'd asked me a few years ago if I thought I could have made the box from a simple piece of fire wood I would have thought you were crazy. But I did it. And now we have a box, a really cool box. And a beautiful reminder of our friend.