This gem came too be by way of a hard piece of seasoned apple wood. The slab had been sitting in an office for 6-8 years behind a filing cabinet drying out. When I say hard I mean super hard, this material is probably the hardest I have tried too work with. The slab itself, as seen in the bottom picture, was a cross section sample of a tree which had either worm holes or termites crawling around in it. It was going too wind up in the garbage. I just couldn’t let that happen.The difficulty from the start was figuring out which parts of the slab to use on the box. So I took some measurements and calculated the maximum size the box could be. Then I cut all the parts and set up too cut dove tails. I have never done these before so I cut a few practice joints. To complicate things even more there is nothing square or flat about this material, furthermore the slab itself varied in thickness from 1/2″ to 3/4″. I cut the dovetails with an old hand saw and used a set of chisels my wife got me for a gift. With those tasks complete I glued the box up.
Initially I had planned on cutting the top to match the dimensions of the box. After I had sanded everything I ran a coat of mineral spirits over the box to see what the figure in the wood looked like, I could not believe what I saw. The natural figure in the wood had a picture in it. I have been told it looks like a bird, a cow, a baby chicken, a goat, and my personal favorite a wolf. So I didn’t cut it.