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Man Creates Beautiful Wooden Box, What He Does With It Will Make You Smile

By Jeremy Butler
Published on: 00:45 PST, May 27, 2014

It’s always special when one receives a well thought out gift from the one they love. Such is the case when reddit user Polyfractal made up his mind to propose to his significant other and he set out to make a beautiful wooden engagement ring box and a wooden ring as a placeholder.

Posting his creation to the image sharing site Imgur, Polyfactal goes step by step and explains every detail as he hand crafts a stunning wooden box, complete with purpleheart and crushed malachite inlays.

Check out his creation, along with his captions below.

Guy makes wooden box for ring
For Christmas, I made my girlfriend a jewelry box. It was my first serious woodworking project, made out of maple and purpleheart. I worked very hard on the box…
Guy makes wooden box for ring
…but it was a bit of an ugly duckling. I wanted to make her a new, less-shitty box. I’ve been dating my girlfriend for three years, and decided it was time to propose to her. So I embarked on a project of building an engagement ring box.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
The box will be predominantly made out of curly maple, which has lovely “curls” and waves in the grain. Once dyed, the curls really come to life.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Taped, glued and clamped.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Starting to look like a box! The top and bottom of the box are routed to provide a ledge for the top/bottom panel to rest on.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
With top panel added…
Guy makes wooden box for ring
When you glue mitered corners, the bond isn’t very strong. A common way to strengthen it is with splines – little pieces of wood which are inserted into the corners. Here you can see the grooves which will accept the splines.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Purpleheart splines inserted…
Guy makes wooden box for ring
…and cut flush. Contrasting spline colors add a nice decorative touch too.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
But I wanted this box to be special, so I cut some more grooves on my router. What are these grooves for? You’ll see soon…
Guy makes wooden box for ring
But first, we need to cut the box in half! It’s not a very useful box if you can’t open it.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Much more useful. Now about those grooves…
Guy makes wooden box for ring
The grooves are to be filled with crushed malachite, a very pretty green stone. The bag contains coarsely crushed stone, and I ground up some finer powder with a mortar/pestle, which will be used for filling in gaps.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Sprinkle some stone into the gaps, add super glue to keep it in place.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
And repeat for all sides. Eventually you have a box that is sprouting malachite moss. Time to break out the sander (and respirator)!
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Much better! Sanding malachite really sucks. You have to use very coarse sandpaper, which mars the wood. And it takes 3-4 applications before all the gaps are filled in. Finally you have to sand down to very fine grit (~600), because less fine-grits leave green streaks in the wood pores.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Hinge and neodymium magnet installed (the magnet holds the lid shut). Added some foam as a ring-holder.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Finished box! The final box was sanded, lightly dyed and then lacquered. The lacquer was then polished with pumice powder and rottenstone, and finally waxed/buffed for a nice finish. It definitely has some ugly-duckling aspects, but it’s a lot better than the Christmas gift box!
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Alas, I don’t trust myself to pick out an engagement ring by myself. So I decided to make a placeholder wooden ring to propose with instead. Three thin blanks were cut. They will be stacked and cut to for the ring.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Glued in cross directions to provide extra strength
Guy makes wooden box for ring
And clamped with the might of a thousand gods.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Hole drilled in the center….
Guy makes wooden box for ring
…and edges cut roughly with a dovetail saw. Starting to take shape.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Mounted on a forstner drill bit and spun at high speeds while I applied sandpaper. Basically a poor-man’s lathe.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Finally, a ring emerges! Lacquered and waxed like the box.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
Project complete! The ring sitting inside the box, ready to propose to my girlfriend. But after dating for three years, I wanted to make it extra special.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
So I arranged around 100 mason jars in a big field. Each jar held a little LED tealight. Once it got dark, I told my girlfriend there was a meteor shower and we should go watch.
She said “no thanks honey, why don’t you go without me?” ?
Since my first angle failed, I fell back on plan b: I told her that I instead had a surprise for her because I sorta forgot our anniversary a few months earlier (semi-true story). She acquiesced and followed me to the field…after all, who can say no to a surprise?
At the field, it started to rain lightly. I held her hands, gave a sappy little speech and dropped to a knee, proposing with the box I’d spent the last month working on. She said yes!
Guy makes wooden box for ring
After proposing, we went ring shopping together and picked out a real engagement ring.
Guy makes wooden box for ring
And now I have a fiancee. The end! ?
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