Michael Ryan, Mooloolaba, QLD

Salt box
Huon pine, blackwood, Queensland white beech
100 x 100 x 95mm h

Concept
At Christmas we were given some sea salt. This gave rise to a request from the cook for a salt box. 'And not one of your slow jobs, please.' So I turned to my leftovers bin for ideas.

Materials
Huon pine, blackwood and Queensland white beech.

Method of Construction
I turned up a huon pine board 70mm wide by 5mm thick and long enough to be useful. An offcut of Queensland beech from a bookshelf had possibilities as a base, and a length of 10mm cranky blackwood that had a bad trip through a thicknesser had a salvageable centre section which had possibilities as a lid.
The sides form a square 85 x 70mm high. After sanding, the corners were mitred on the sliding mitre saw then glued up with PVA using the masking tape and roll-up method. I then made a cradling jig to hold each corner at 45 degrees on the router table to pass over a 4mm straight cut bit to create slots for mitre keys as reinforcement for the corners. The depth of cut was set so the slots do not show on the inside of the box. The keys are blackwood, glued in with PVA and trimmed flush when dry.
Some interesting knots feature on the front of the box.
The base is a 100mm square of 20mm Qld white beech. A rebate 12mm wide and 5mm deep was cut on the router table creating a raised section which fitted snugly inside the finished box sides. The edges of the base were then rounded over using a block plane. After sanding, the base and sides were glued together.
The lid began with a 100mm square of 10mm blackwood. As the box sides are only 5mm thick I decided not to use hinges. The underside of the lid was first rebated on the router table in the same way as the base to create a keeper.
Next a shallow slope 25mm wide by 2mm deep was planed round the top edges with a Gordon smoothing plane. A gentle fair curve was drawn on thin cardboard then cut out. The resulting template was used to mark the curve on the sides of the top. A coping saw was used to cut the curves. Indentations for finger grips were made using a round rasp and sandpaper wrapped round some dowel. Finally, the lid was sanded to 400 grit to soften the curves.

Finish
The inside of the box has no finish applied, to avoid tainting the sea salt flakes. The outside of the box and the top of the lid had three coats of wax burnished by vigorous rubbing with a soft cloth.

Photos by Michael Ryan