Ring Box part 2

In my last post, I showed the process of building a small wooden engagement/wedding ring box. Obviously it needs some lining to be fit for use.

The original sketch had a note next to it about an LED in the lid which I definitely wanted to do, but there's some space constraints to consider, namely where to fit batteries in the box while still keeping the traditional ring box appearance.

To create the padded sections, I used some leather offcuts, rolled up with the suede side exposed. The front "pad" is literally just that.

The rear pad has rolled from a 'L'-shape piece of leather, like in the illustration. When rolled, this creates a small hollow in the tube, where the batteries will reside.

Electronics
The circuit is very simple. A white LED in the lid of the box will be powered by two G3A batteries (v. small cell batteries), and triggered by a normally closed reed switch. (i.e. putting the switch near a magnet breaks the connection).

The reed switch is carefully placed in the hinge near a small magnet (hidden under the leather), so that when the lid is closed, the magnet holds the reed switch open.


G3A is not a common type of battery, I just happened to have a lot that I recovered from some recycled electronics. As a result I couldn't find a battery holder for them, so I adapted this CR2032 design from Thingiverse.

The battery holder. View on Thingiverse.

The LED itself is just mounted with hot glue, angled down toward where the ring will be situated. The wires run down the inside of the lid to the hinge, where the reed switch is positioned.


On the base side of the hinge, is the small magnet which triggers the reed switch.

All of this is covered by another strip of leather, which is glued - suede side up, to the inside of the lid, and runs down to the hinge, overhanging it into the base (see photo). This overhang is tucked behind the leather roll containing the batteries, hiding all the wiring, but meaning it is still accessible should the need arise (to change the batteries, for example).

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The finished box

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A moving shot to try and illustrate the sparkling of the ring under the LED light.

Ring Box part 1

Between the sign and the cake stand, and now this, my projects seem to be very wedding-focused of late.

Originally this ring box was going to be a project for the same wedding as the other two, but unfortunately due to various circumstances, it didn't materialise in time for the big day.

So when my brother got engaged recently, I gave him the designs I'd already sketched up and he picked this one for me to build for him.

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The woodworking component of this is pretty straightforward.

The wood I used is oak for the main body, and a darker hardwood (of the well-known species 'offcuttus miscellanei') for the sides, to provide a nice aesthetic contrast.

I was referencing an existing ring box for scale,
and purely by coincidence, the wood sections
I was using were a spot-on size.

Because of the small scale of the box, it's difficult to do any advanced joinery, so the pieces are simply glued, but the wood is light enough and small enough that the joints are still sufficiently strong.

Once all the glue-up is complete, it's off for some sanding to ensure everything's cleaned and squared up, leaving us with a sealed hollow cube.

Some work in progress shots of the ring box. This was certainly one of those projects that at times seemed a mess and you had to keep faith it'd look good when it's done. #diy #maker #woodworking #handmade #wedding #ring

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With that done, the cube needs to be cut. Typically, it seems, most ring boxes are about 50-50 (half the height in the lid, half in the base). However, I've opted for a 25-75 split, leaving a larger base, as the plan is to include a small LED light, and I'll need space for batteries and wiring.

I took the hinge from the existing ring box I was using for reference. To fit it, I drilled out a small cavity in the back of the box for it. As the wood is only about a quarter inch thick, this was the most nerve-wracking part of the whole project.
Once I got it fitted, I sanded off the top of the base-back and the lid, so that their edges didn't collide when opening.

When satisfied with the opening mechanism, I epoxied the hinge in place.

Then the rest of the exterior is just a case of shaping with the sander and a coat of danish oil to finish.

Then onto the interior...

Wedding Cake Stand

Off the back of the "Dutch Courage" sign that I made for the wedding, I was asked if I could also help with a custom cake stand for their wedding cake.


They're not having a traditional wedding cake, instead they've opted for brownies, in 7 different flavours, so the cake stand needs to accommodate them all and at the same time be able to differentiate between them.


In addition, there's a multi-colour theme to the wedding, so that needs to be included with the design.

The obvious thing to do was use different colours to separate the flavours, and my initial ideas centred around something like a painter's palette.



I was looking at a segmented circular design, but it was looking a bit strange with an odd number of segments, so I opted for six segments with a smaller platform in the middle to provide for the 7th segment.

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To calculate the size I was told that there will be one tray of brownies per flavour, and that would be about equivalent in size to about a Roses tin, which is roughly 9 inches diameter by 4 inches tall.
Using that as I guide, I based the design on a circle of 18 inches diameter divided into 6 sectors (so 6 triangles with two 9" sides and a 6-and-a-bit" rounded side).
This equates to approximately equivalent size.


Construction

The back segment (red in the original diagram).
This one also has a small solid tip added
as it will overlap the central segment

• The base was cut from some chipboard up-cycled from some flat pack furniture.
• Each segment was cut from 3/8" marine plywood.
• Six 9x4" rectangles were cut to create the face panels, and attached to the sides of the raised segments (2 for the rear segment, 1 each for the other raised segments.)
• Supporting posts for each of the raised segments 
• The central "tip" of each segment was trimmed to allow room for the wooden pole that will support the centre segment.

These were secured to the base of the stand, but could be easily disassembled.



Rounded supports were attached to the underside of the curved edge of the segments. These were made from scrap, and supported a thin hardboard which was curved around to provide a solid outside to the segments. This was attached with staples, as the hardboard was too soft and nails passed straight through.

Each segment was wrapped with coloured fabric, fastened in place with staples and spray adhesive.

The centre segment was a smaller disc with a segment removed to allow the red segment to overlap. The supporting pole was approx 1.5" diameter and attached to the centre segment with a combination of glue and nails.
This assembly was wrapped in white fabric and attached to the base with a couple of screws (so to avoid rotation).

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I'm really pleased with how this project turned out. With a lot of projects, the actual building usually highlights issues not thought of during the design, and so adaptations have to be made, but in this case, the end result came out pretty much exactly as the initial design.

Working on this project also helped develop a new workflow - due to geographical and timing constraints, most of the design discussion was co-ordinated via WhatsApp. It was a case of being sent links and screenshots of ideas, sketching up a plan, photographing it and returning it etc. It was a surprisingly good system and something I'd definitely use again.

Wedding Sign

I was asked to create a sign for a wedding. They're planning on having Karaoke and wanted a sign pointing to the bar for "Dutch courage".

Design


After exchanging a few ideas and a couple of preliminary sketches, we arrived at this design. Most of the graphics came from clipart, and the typeface is "URW Chancery L" in 132pt.


The overall size is  approximately a the size of an A3 piece of paper. As I don't have an A3 printer, I split the design across a few A4 sheets for printing.

Then came several hours of carving out the letters and patterns with a scalpel to create the stencil for later spray painting.









Building the sign
The sign is created from joining 3 lengths of up-cycled pallet wood. As with the Treasure Chest, the jointing was done manually with a combination of hand planing and simply finding lengths of wood that lined up well together.

The supports at the back of the sign for the stand

The wood is glued together, and also there are cross beams on the back - one at the top and one at the bottom.

These also form the mount for the stand.








The wood for the stand same from an old garden parasol that I upcycled. As it's previous life was as an object that hinged at various points and was designed to be folded, it was ideally sized - all I needed was to cut down the lengths. The pivot is nothing fancy, just a single screw.



The entire sign was sanded, and stained with a teak wood stain. An early attempt at stencilling the sign didn't go well, so the front ended up being sanded and stained a second time.
This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as after the second coat the woodgrain was much more pronounced and looked much better for it.

The arrow
Maybe I'm just a cynic, but it crossed my mind that although the venue and location has already been set for the wedding, Murphy's Law suggests that when the wedding rolls round, things will have changed and the arrow will end up pointing the wrong way, so I came up with the idea of making it a magnetic stick-on arrow so it could be swapped around.

The rear of the arrow with metal strip

Magnets embedded into the surface of the sign for mounting the arrow

I cut the arrow on the bandsaw, and painted it white, then a cut a section of flat steel and epoxyed it to the back of the arrow.
Then in the place on the sign where the arrow was to be mounted, I used a forstner drill to drill 3 inlays. In each of these holes I epoxyed a circular magnet so that it sat flush with the face of the sign.


Painting
I taped the stencil to the face of the sign, and applied two coats of enamel white spray paint. Unfortunately the delicate patterns on the edge of the stencil didn't work too well with the spray, so once a couple of sprays were down to mark out the position of the design, I removed the stencil and started painting by hand. To do this I sprayed some of the paint into the cap, and used a thin brush.

The end result

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