"WoodRat — New Projects and Uses"

	We are at the point where we have to stop what we are doing and plan this project with more details.  There are several things we want to incorporate in making the Tansu Step style jewelry box. Beth and I went over them together.
First, we want to use the spalted maple board and accentuate its grain pattern by "wrapping" the grain over all the outside and make it look like it is one continuous piece. The miter cuts will be tricky on this size board. Beth is holding the small box she made a couple of weeks back. She had made that with the continues grain effect. (click here for how-to on this.)
	Beth holds up a small drawer of the type we will be making for this special chest. It has tiny little through dovetails. The drawer front will be glued on the front of the box with a slight overlap.
We will make the drawer fronts out of a single piece of Brazilian Rosewood. Beth, Gail and I have sliced more than a dozen pieces from a block I purchased months ago. (Click here to go to that story.)
	It's another day and Beth starts by solving a problem — which comes first, the dimensions of the internal case, the outer wrap or the drawer fronts. In this case, since we want to have the finished chest look like it was one piece, Beth is carefully using the calculator to see what the drawer front sizes can be. It is tricky in that she has to figure in the width of the kerfs and the degree of drawer overlap.
Before she makes the individual drawer cuts, she has sanded the square to 400 grit and then used the Menzerna process to give this piece a mirror like shine. It is beautiful. She will have to guard against marring the finish as she saws it into the individual pieces.
	Beth has installed the CMT thin kerf cabinetmakers blade. This will give her very clean cuts in both directions. She carefully measures for her first cut.  Some of these cuts are "rip" cuts and would be easier with the fence, but making all cuts with the Incra 5000 Miter sled will work fine and keep things simpler.
Beth makes the cuts having set a clamp in the T-slot to hold the front of the board. She has set the fence stop to keep the bottom of the board from moving. She eases the piece through the sharp blade. It leaves a square and clean cut.
	At the third cut, the piece is very narrow so in addition to the top clamp, Beth uses the square to hold the piece exactly where she wants it.
To cut for the drawer heights, Beth measures very carefully and sets the fence stop block to use with all the cuts. This view also shows the positioning of the T-track clamp. The piece is too small to have fingers holding it.
	Beth has placed all the cut offs in the order that they were in the board. The arrow points to one that was "folded out" from the 2nd from the top row. It becomes the bottom far right drawer front. Turned around the grain matches surprisingly well. Beth has marked the back of each of these pieces. It is so easy to get them out of order, and that would mean all her hard work would be for naught.    Next, Andrea will be here to cut drawer sides and use the WoodRat to make the tiny little dovetails. Before she arrives, I will make the internal case so that we can make the drawers to fit. This is a fun project.