Oilstone box for Washita

[Luke Dupont]

Just finished making this:

WashitaBox1.JPGIMG_0250.JPGWashitaBox2.JPG

It's a box for my vintage Pike Washita, made from Cypress. I applied two coats of Danish Oil, and two coats of Orange Oil & Beeswax to keep the oil and metal shavings from staining the box. The hardware is kind of cheap, and I didn't inset any of it, but I think it will hold up well enough, and doesn't look bad.

This is currently my favorite stone, by the way, and I'd highly recommend one to anyone interested in natural oil-stones. It's nearly twice as fast as any Soft Arkansas that I've used, and it leaves an impressively fine edge for it's speed -- nearly as fine as a hard (white) Arkansas, and very responsive to a plain leather strop. It also resists loading a lot better than my soft arks, and find that I get equally good results with water as I do oil. I prefer to use it with a thin mineral oil as I do the rest of my stones, though.

[Stew Denton]

Nice Job Luke.

Nice grain for the top, and clean lines.

Very nice job.

Stew

[Luke Dupont]

Nice Job Luke.

Nice grain for the top, and clean lines.

Very nice job.

Stew

Thanks!

The cypress is actually scraps from my grandfather's shop. He used to make cypress rocking chairs when he was alive.

I only had access to a few of the scraps at my apartment, the rest being elsewhere, so I chose the best piece for the lid. The bottom is one of only a few pieces I had in the needed thickness and is less dense, really soft, and a bit gummy though, so I didn't get as good of a surface finish as I would have liked. That's not really apparent unless you look *very* closely, and not visible in the photos, though.

All the surfaces (except the endgrain) are straight off the plane. I felt like sanding this wood would not really produce good results. Really soft pieces of cypress like the bottom half require really sharp tools though, I find.