Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I made a box today; my first “real” one that was intended to be kept rather than just a throw-away test piece. It was a three piece carving — a lid with a carving on the top (a polynesian pattern with a Dr. BME raised in the middle), a bottom panel with a raised skull, and a riser because the board was quite thin.

The skull and Dr. BME designs were essentially two dimensional so they didn't look the greatest, so I re-carved them by hand with a Dremel, which greatly improved them. The recessed edge on the bottom of the lid (to make it sit in place) was carved with a Dremel and then cleaned up with a file (which a wise person once told me was “the poor man's milling machine”).

I glued it together (which you can see happening in the background above), sanded it all so everything fit nicely and it was smooth, and stained it (three colors; the skull and Dr. BME are lighter than the box itself which is sesame colored), and put some rubber feet on it. The picture isn't really very accurate in terms of color but you get the idea.

It's far from perfect but I think it turned out fairly well for a first attempt. It really does look nicer in person, but here's a shot of the final piece.

I probably got a bit lazy and should have done a touch more filing and sanding, but now that I've done this, I have lots of other ideas… I really need to do picture frames because that's why I got it in the first place, but little things like this are a lot of fun so who knows what I'll make next…

Tomorrow I'm thinking about going to the ROM because they've re-opened the dinosaur exhibit…