Craftsmanship in Wood

Three pieces of basswood that I have chosen to build from. One piece is 16/4"x9-1/2"x36" and the other two are 5/4"x10"x55". Jack

Most pieces blocked to length and rough ripped. Sides and ends still over length. Top caps still over length and need to be ripped.
Yes, by hand. Jack

What's your design at this point? What's going in the box?

Chris Hall wrote:What's your design at this point? What's going in the box?

I will be working on a committing my design to paper while the wood settles from being opened up. I will be doing mortise & tenon joinery as it is laid out here. What I have plans to build are along the lines of the design presented here. I will make minor adjustments to accept what I have and future purchases of Japanese tools can be accommodated for.
All of the chisels that I posted on What goes in the box will be in there. I have 3 Sashiganes an two chisel hammers to go in. For the present, some of my western tools will live in there. I don't have a formal place for a lot of my tools and this is an opertinity to get some of them stored.

Regards,

Jack

Well with the scavenging all finished up I can finally relax a bit and begin to think about this project. Because the only machines I have electricity for at the moment (the others are 3 phase) are a band saw and a small table saw, I'm looking at whatever options will save me a little hand planing. I found a few boards that are rough milled and that might work. The easier wood to work would be the ash, but it's rough milled at around 28.575mm, so I could either resaw it on the band saw and hand plane one side (hoping it stays relatively flat off the saw) or make a thick box carcass. The other option is what I think is jatoba. I like the color contrast and this wood is milled a little thinner at just over 22mm, but it's really really hard and has interlocked grain. I gave it a couple passes with that jointer plane on edge and it planed fine, but the face would be another story. Even the sound of the blade taking of shavings is crazy, resonating more like steel than wood. argh...

Both choices would yeild about the same outer dimensions of 762mm L x 355.6mm W x 203mm H. Because of my milling limitations I'm going about this a little backwards and first finding what size my materials will yeild and then looking for a basic "kit" to fit into those dimensions.

You can see the detailed picture of the wood I'm tentatively calling jatoba. It seems really out of place here in Japan and no one I've talked to here has even heard of it before. I found a few boards of this during my scavenging including the large 4000mm x 600mm x 30mm board. My experience with jatoba has not been great. I found it to be pretty unstable and so I wonder how it will be for the tool box project. However I'm sure this wood has been sitting for several years indoors and may be more stable that what I've used in the past.

That doesn't look like Jatoba to me. Maybe Narra?

Jatoba turns fairly reddish after its been in the air a while, and when fresh milled is a deeper brown that the material you are showing in those pics....

Chris Hall wrote:That doesn't look like Jatoba to me. Maybe Narra?

Jatoba turns fairly reddish after its been in the air a while, and when fresh milled is a deeper brown that the material you are showing in those pics....

I think the reddish orange appearance is due to my flash and being pretty close to the wood. In natural light it appears to be a much deeper brownish red. I've got quite a bit of narra as well and it's much more tan and not nearly as dense. hmmm... I'm stumped. One thing is for sure, this is much denser than afrormosia and very hard. I think I'll go ahead and try to use it on the tool box. If things don't go well I'll just put it aside and use something else.

I remember years ago we got a load of mahogany that was much much denser and harder than any I'd used before. When I first found these in the dust I thought it was the same. I'm far from a wood expert, but I don't think it's often we run into wood this hard.

Does the dust have a particular small or taste?

Chris Hall wrote:Does the dust have a particular small or taste?

You want me to eat it? haha... First off, while I love using hand tools, this is my first time hand planing boards flat. I can't wait to get my planers juiced because my shoulders are wrecked. Half kidding aside. After planing it's really looking more like mahogany. The shavings are coming off cleanly with large open pores. I did a little sanding to test it as well and the results are a really fine powder. The wood is a lot lighter pink on the inside now and really looks like your mahogany pics after your milling Chris.

Yesterday was the first day I could devote any time to this project so far and half the day was spent cleaning. I did manage to get the three boards that make up the outer sides of the box planed and flat. They cupped about ⅟₁₆" (almost 2mm on each board). I also brought them down from 20mm to about 15mm thick before my arms got tired. I could have resawn the boards, but I think that would have given me more movement and having a little thicker boards doesn't bother me. Besides, I wanted to give hand planing a go.

The hand planing went slow because I only used my no.6 with a 55˚ frog. Kind of a giant smoothing plane. I have a toothed blade in my low angle jack as well, but didn't want to go that route this time. It might have gone faster though.

I will resaw the softer woods for the other pieces.

I had a little more ripping today and cutting to length. All the pieces for the main box and dividers are hand planed flat and out of wind on one side. My thickness planer is at a friends shop so tomorrow I will re check flatness and take them out to the thickness planer. The planes I used are an Old Street fore and a type 11 no. 6 Stanley. I have a straight honed iron in the Stanley but also have one with the same radius as the fore plane.