She Said Yes!

I proposed to my girlfriend yesterday, and despite her better judgement, she said yes. I kidnapped her in the morning and told her we were going for a drive to look at the fall trees. The place I wanted to propose was in Galena IL. So I had a couple hours drive to get out there. She eventually knew where we were going. couldn't really keep that a secret for long. When we finally walked over to the place I would do it, she was pleasantly surprised. I however, felt like I might vomit.

 Anyway, I built a small ring box to present it to her. Hit the jump to see some more pictures of the build.

I started with a piece of bocote. The wood was really eye-catching and wasn't too expensive. I found it among other exotics at Rockler.

I used the table saw to cut out a few pieces for the top and bottom. After matching up the different grain patterns, I picked the 2 pictured above. I loved how well the grains matched.

With a quick jig I set up on the router table I was able to cut out the insides of each piece. I only took about 3/32" at a time to be safe. Scary Router... The hole drilled into the jig was to allow me to raise the router bit slowly without removing my jig.

Here is one of the pieces after finishing the routing. After I was done routing, I used the table saw again to cut some angles into each piece. This piece above was a test piece I worked on first to make sure I wasn't making mistakes. This one has angles on the edges that line up with the other side. I decided to omit this from the final piece.

With the two pieces aligned how I wanted, I clamped down the two in place while drilling for the hinge. After screwing the hinge in place, I sanded the sides to make everything flush. The screws intruded into the box, so I used the dremel to grind them down. Then instead of staining, I rubbed the whole thing with linseed oil to give it a little shine and bring out the detail.

Oh, Nerf darts, you served me well. I was in a rush and didn't know what to use. I thought a foam cylinder would be perfect and immediately thought of nerf.

Took a trip to Joanne Fabrics and grabbed some, uh, fabric. Sorry, I don't know enough about fabric to say anything else. I wrapped my little nerf-dart-block-of-wood-thing like a present. Using hot glue, I secured everything together and into the box. Applied a little dusting, and it was finished.

I spent a total of 8 hours working on this box. I had to to rush after work for two days before the weekend. It is kind of silly that this box only held the ring for a few hours until I proposed. But a precious little ring deserved a precious little box for it's short journey.

I am really happy, and can't wait to build other trinkets and furniture for out future home.