Scary...

I was approaching this part of the Inghamish box with a small amount of trepidation (and that's stating the case lightly)

What you may well ask?.. setting in the top!

Normally, this is fairly straightforward...make the rebate and shute in the top taking some care in the process.

Here though, the top has been fitted into the rebate dry (so that it's a tight fit) and then the grooves for the inlay have been routed in situ, using the sides of the box as a reference for the router fence.

This, believe it or not, was a fairly brown trouser exercise as the slightest slip up with the router would have mangled the burr elm. I had to do it this way (ie, not taking the lid out and machining separately) as I needed to get the inlaid grooves parallel with the sides of the box and not the sides of the plywood top, if you follow. However, as you can see from the first pic, it all went to plan without a hitch...more's the wonder!

The rebate round the outside is going to be filled with an ebony banding mitred at the corners, not least because otherwise the end grain of the four corner posts is going to show on the finished box.

All that remained to do was to extract the top, flip it over and route the grooves in the underside to match up with the sides...simple enough and not quite so critical.

The base has also been routed in and that also went smoothly, so the whole thing is coming together quite well.