Finishing – and pictures of the finished box

I have a soft spot for beeswax finish – it brings out the luster in the wood, and it can be polished to a nice shine. It also preserves the feel of the wood; a sensation you simply don’t get from a slick polyurethane coat. And it smells great. Woodworkers tend to develop a certain fondness for the scent of turps… no judgment!

I applied a liberal amount and massaged it into the wood, then left it to cure.

After the beeswax had cured, I gave it a light buffing using a soft rag.

Here’s the finished box:

The slight shine shows up nicely in this image – and notice the VERY tight fit of that rabbeted bottom!

I filled the box with the Manna cards – here are some pictures.

And with that, both the box and the article is finished.

Thank you for reading my blog – and be sure to check out the other articles while you’re here!

This was a small but fun project: very little material required, yet a great opportunity to practice several techniques. Finding good ways to hold such small parts while planing proved especially challenging, and therefore especially useful as an exercise.

I’ll leave you with a quote I’m fond of — one that applies to many areas of life. My daughters, aged seven and nine, sometimes struggle with their homework. Feelings of inadequacy can arrive quickly when learning a new language, or when one notices that the other manages something more easily. We all have many branches representing our talents and skills. Some grow dead straight, most have a few bends and kinks, and a rare few resemble a corkscrew hazel (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’). With time and practice, most branches straighten more and more.

This was perhaps not the message Lewis originally intended, but it works well as an allegory nonetheless. And the quote itself is genuinely thought-provoking on many levels. It goes like this:

A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.
– C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”

Thankfully, in woodworking we do have a few tools that help us when we truly need dead-straight lines.

Till next time!