05/20/2026
Now that I have given my friend this birthday present I can finally post about it. I wanted to share this lovely box i made for a coworker of mine using wood i got from DeadwoodSawmill . The top piece was made from one of many pieces of maple burl that I got as a package deal of multiple maple burl chunks of various sizes, some with more figure, some with spalting. I stabilized the burl pieces using a darker tinted cactus juice resin then resawed to butterfly twice for a threeway bookmatch lid. One of those uploaded pictures shows about â…” of those stabilized maple burl pieces. The rest that aren't pictured are the spalted pieces which I plan to do a double dye resin for other projects.
The sides and bottom were all made from an extremely warped but highly figured (quilted) maple. You can clearly see in the before pix how bad the bow, cupping, & twisting was.
This project was made to replace a coworkers surgical loupes (magnifier glasses for the operating room). I noticed his box was all scratched up, banged up, dented and made of the cheap ¼" plywood with stain that comes with the surgical loupes when purchased. After 20+ years of use that box has seen its fair share of abuse. So, as a suprise, I decided to make him a box using the exact dimensions of his current box using more durable and much nicer hardwoods and actual dovetail jointery to hold the entire construction together rather than the box joints the original has. And actually using dado grooves to hold the lid and bottom panels in place, not just being glued on to save cost like the original. Everything on this box was made with quality and nicer joints that looks much fancier & pleasing to the eye.. He loved it!
I do plan to make more of these boxes in case others are interested in purchasing. Send me a DM and we will talk about price, dimensions, wood choice, custom boxes for headlamp/loupe set up if that is what you'd like.
