Of knobs and knockers

This little project is almost coming to completion now and has gone reasonably well. There have been one or two interesting things that have occurred, the first one being that the elm is much softer than the ebony. This hasn't really caused a problem but it has produced the phenomenon whereby the it's very difficult to sand it to a dead flat surface...the elm has been 'sculpted' slightly below the surface of the ebony. This hasn't caused any real problems as the veneer is 2mm thick...had it been any thinner I reckon I might have had a problem.

I've been applying the final coats of hard-wax oil over the last couple of days and finishing it off with my favourite Alna Teak Wax...a lovely soft paste specially made for teak (and alas no longer available as it hasn't been made for the last thirty years) I slapped a couple of coats of wax on the top, started to buff it off and saw that there were some huge scratches in the top that had miraculously appeared...clearly either my finishing technique was beyond redemption or my sanding was way below par. I suspect the latter, so the top's been scraped and re-finished this morning with the first coat of oil drying at the moment.

Handles and knobs always cause me a lot of angst, but for this box I decided to keep to the original Inghamish theme of a simple turned cylinder with a small slither of oak set into a shallow groove. If you look carefully you'll see a tiny chip out of the right hand side of the knob, which is intensely annoying. The plus side is that once the handle's been glued in place, that little chip can never be seen.

With any luck and provided I haven't screwed up the top (again!) this project ought to be done n'dusted on the 'morrow...

We shall see.