A Bible box for my father-in-law

Posted on June 18, 2020 by jcharbneau

We decided to get my father-in-law a new larger font Bible for Father’s Day. As we got closer to pulling the trigger, we had the thought to build a nice box for him to be able to keep the Bible in.

We started with a basic box with dovetails and a pinned lid. The woods we chose were Canarywood and Cherry for the carcass, trimmed with Paduuk. The lid is a glue up using a highly figured piece of Curly Maple, a thin piece of Paduuk and a nice piece of Cherry.

Next came the inlay. There’s a nice fellow here in the U.S. that makes some terrific solid wood inlay (www.inlaybanding.com). We chose a nice Holly and Ebony inlay that had some decorative crosses, along with some simple ebony stringing inlay. We also added another thin piece of Canarywood to match the face of the box.

We had some ideas on adding a little “pizzaz” to the inside of the lid, and started doing some test cuts and some drawings.

Next we started exploring the options a fretwork cross would allow, and started carving out each sun ray.

The next step was to add a bit of “Heirloom” to it, and we opted to go with getting the lid laser etched. Thanks to Tony over at Beran Laser Engraving & Woodworking.

A couple of mockups later, and we have a nicely engraved lid. The font we opted for was “Olde English” from 1001 Fonts. It was really interesting to see that laser etching in process. So much faster than hand carving 🙂

And now we’re closing in on done. We finished the box and lid using four coats of Danish Oil. We also added a nice velvet sash to wrap the Bible in, and a nice velvet wrapped pad for the bottom of the box.