I recently went to the weddings of a few of my friends. Last weekend Tom and Nancy had a “Wedding Camp” celebration, and two weeks ago Andy and Irene got married in their barn. Both weddings were amazing and it was fun to be with some friends

In the pursuit of avoiding standard gifts, I decided to employ my woodworking skills and make them some boxes out of “nice” wood. Here’s some pictures of the building process.

I used cocobolo wood for the top; it is an exotic hardwood. I try to avoid exotic woods for obvious eco-reasons, but I just couldn’t help myself. The wood is beautiful, and I had seen it several times at the Global Woodsource store and just had to buy a piece. It is expensive, and I bought a small $60 piece.

The bottom of the boxes is made out of an american wood — sycamore. When quartersawn, it has a beautiful speckled pattern. Best of all, it is a cheap wood, and $20 bought me a nice huge piece of wood.

Here’s a shot of the boxes in progress:

After gluing them together, I used my newly built router table to route out some slots for keys:

A few hours later, the keys were glued in and dried. I cut them off with a saw and sanded them smooth:

Next the top was cut off the boxes using the table saw. I don’t cut them all the way through, and leave a tiny bit on (seen in the photo) that I cut through with a utility knife.

After a bunch of sanding, I finished the boxes with a eco-friendly water-based finish (sprat on):

The keys are actually centered from top to bottom, but it would have looked better if I centered them up to the chamfer on the top.

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