Wood: Cedar, cherry veneer, cherry plywood, basswood
Finish: Shellac
My grandson Andy graduated from cub scouts to boy scouts in early 2023, and expressed a wish to keep his cub scout badges and other souvenirs. At about the same time I wanted to try my hand at the Japanese kumiko form, as described here. Since I had no other plans for the completed kumiko, it made sense to combine it with a box for Andy.
The local lumberyard (well, half an hour's drive each way so not as local as one might wish) has a crafts room by the entrance. Here, they keep things like about 100 kinds of veneer, plus all the scraps that are left over from other people's wood purchases. It's mostly boring stuff, but I seem to manage to find one board that follows me home every visit. I did not have anything particular in mind, but I thought cedar would be a nice contrast to the basswood kumiko pattern. The pattern is itself open, but I did not want it to stay that way in a box. There's a lot of pollen around her (and dust, of course) and that does not need to fall into the box interior. So my idea was to get some veneer to go underneath the pattern to make it solid. That would fit into a groove near the top of the sides. I seem to have gotten rid of my veneer sheet collection when I moved here, but they have plenty in the craft room. Unfortunately, modern veneers seem to have moved in the direction of just something you would glue on to a surface and they have a paper backing of some kind that works well for that usage. But I wanted veneer that would look good from top and bottom for when the box lid was either open or closed. That cut down my choices a lot, but they did have some nice cherry veneer that works well enough with the other wood. And, as it later turned out, their selection of thin plywood for the box bottom was really limited, so cherry was about it for that as well. Only the frame of the kumiko is glued to the veneer. The pattern pieces are still removable. We'll see how many I have to replace.
The box is simply a square slightly larger than the kumiko frame, with grooves cut into the sides to just fit the box bottom and the kumiko with its veneer backing. The top groove is deep enough that the little tabs on the outside of the frame are hidden. I made sure the piece of wood I brought home was a bit over three feet long, since the box works out to 8 3/4 inches per side. The most accurate way to trim the corners is using my sliding miter trimmer. It's limited to a hair under four inches in height, so the box height was just shorter than that.
After glue-up, I cut the box about an inch down from the top. The kumiko is 1/2 inch thick, and the top groove is down about 1/4 inch from the top surface of the sides. So, this makes it pretty centered in the top of the box. I was not too happy with the corner joints. I tried to do this right, but cedar is a bit hard to work with for me. So I decided to cut two slots in each corner and glue in contrasting keys (poplar) to reinforce them. I added a couple of brass hinges and some stick-on feet for the bottom.
Most of my boxes have been finished with shellac, so I decided to go that route here (lemon). I brushed on about six coats (kind of lost count), wiped on two more, rubbed it out with pumice and then rottenstone, and added some wax. Nice and shiny in person. There's no finish on the kumiko insert, though.
