Indexing

With the weather at only around OdegC today I decided last night that I'd be up early (at around 7.30ish) and put a bit of heat on. By around 10 o'clock or thereabouts it had warmed up to a pleasant 5 or 6degC, so wrapping up in thermals, fleeces and a woolly hat I was fairly happy all day working on my latest project.

The first pic shows a process that's going to happen a lot in this job...shooting the pieces to size. The bits in the pic are for the long sides of the lid.

The next shot shows the next jig in action on the router table, which is used to make the grooves to give the appearance that the box is made from several separate components, when in fact they're not...the strip of ebony is simply inlaid into the groove. If you look carefully, you can see that both sides of the lid piece have been done...this is because when the lid on the finished box is opened, you'd expect to see a mirror pattern of the outside...it all adds to the illusion.

Cunning or what?









The final shot shows the small bit of ply that's been nailed (eeeeeeeeek!!...nails in my 'shop) so that it acts as an indexing piece to space off exactly 55mm, which is the size of the burr elm squares on the front. The sides and lid are done in the same way, except that the distance is slightly less at 48mm.

I finished off the day by shooting in all the little bits of 4mm thick ebony and gluing them into the grooves...not as tricky as it sounds.

All will be revealed in the next exciting episode!