From the Workbench 1:- 09/07/24 - Inlaid boxes
Inlaid Boxes
I have a fascination with anything made from wood. I look at it, studying how it is formed and frequently end up trying to work out how it is made. Pretty much anything well made in wood draws my attention, be it the beautiful woodwork to behold in the making of a Spirit yacht, to the use of laminated wood increasingly used in construction. So much so I can be found floating on my back admiring the soaring trusses of laminated wood in my local David Lloyd gym when I should be doing lengths!
My contribution to the world of wood comes in smaller items, namely boxes. I made my first box when at school. It was a simple veneered box with sapele veneers over a beech carcass which my sister still has. I even made a few boxes in a 42nd floor apartment while living and working in Shanghai. Now I make and sell solid hardwood boxes feeling that there is an authenticity to them. Each is hand-made and they are always unique, sometimes similar but unique and I endeavour to make them as personal as possible. While I greatly admire the veneered boxes of some high end makers I have always thought them to be vunerable in that the veneers are frequently thin around 0.6 mm often placed over an mdf base, hence inlaid boxes.
An inlay as opposed to a veneer consists of a precisely cut socket into which an equally precise and mirror image carving is inserted. In the case of the boxes I make these are a full 5mm in depth and if damaged can simply be sanded to restore them.
All the best
William