Oak Box

Hi All
A few weeks ago, I was walking around a shop that sells bric-a-brac and I found a small plank of 1inch thick oak. The price was only £2 so I dug deep into my pocket and purchased it. At that time I didn't know what I would do with it but I thought it would come in handy some day. Well, that day has arrived.

I decided that I would make a small, rustic box from the oak and inlay a couple of oak leaves into the lid. I also thought it would be nice to carve some acorns from wood and stick them on the top. Carving small acorns will be a first for me, so if you follow the rest of this project you will see how I get on.

The first thing I did was sketch the oak leaves that would form the inlay on the box lid. I did the sketch in some detail because it helps with the pyrography work later on. By this I am referring to the shading, which I doubt I would get right first time. If I just jumped in and did the shading with my pyrography iron it would be a disaster especially after I'd cut the inlay. So I sketched the leaves in pencil first and this gave me ample opportunity to practise the shading. Below is the finished sketch.

To produce this sketch there was a fair amount of erasing before I was happy with the composition and the shading. If you look closely at the left hand side you can see some shadow marks where I didn't erase some of the pencil marks properly.

Having produced the sketch my happiness was short lived when I realised that the wood I was going to use for the lid was only 4 inches wide, so my design was to big. The only thing I could do was start again and do a new design that would fit the lid better.

Now you may well be asking what the red dot at the top left hand side is for? That is where the blade entry hole will be drilled when I cut out the inlay. I have mention it before but just to reiterate, Scroll saws will cut sharp corners, but not as sharp as the corner on the end of the leaf stalk. So, by drilling a hole in that position I can cut all the way around the rest of the design without having to worry about sharp corners and end up back at the entry hole.

 You may have also noticed that there is a strange black line going through the acorns.This will be my cut line, and it saves me having to bother with the sharp angle between the two acorns. I can get away with this because I am going to carve two acorns out of wood and they will sit neatly above the curved line.

That's about it for this post, but in the next one the project will get underway and I will start cutting. In the meanwhile, if you want to see some more of my pyrography or scroll sawing work, or even find out about my books, including free offers, please pop over to my website.