After discussing the base with my "client" (my husband), I'm going with a combination of maple with the walnut I had left from the project. This will keep the same color as I find walnut can have different hues with some more red and others more brown.
Anyway, resawed a maple board (I'm loving my new Timberwolf blade!), glued, and then ran it through the drum sander until it was cleaned up and the thickness I wanted (I think!).
Cleaned up the walnut I glued up previously as well
Cut these down to have small reveal
Need to decide on some edge work before glue up. Thinking a small bevel - top only, or top and bottom?? 🤔
Beveled both edges (deeper on the very bottom for more of a shadow line) and will ease the sharp corners tomorrow once the glue dries.
Next will be figuring out the screw placement to attach the base to the box, and then attaching the cross to the top. Considering using CA glue for that...or maybe should just stick with Titebond (as always open to suggestions).
Getting there slowly but surely. Looking forward to putting on the finish as I'm really liking the board he picked (hard to go wrong with walnut!).
Thanks Lazyman. The chamfer was adapted from various YouTube. I placed mine in a groove to allow for some wood movement. I use that profile on most projects so adding a chamfer felt right for the urns too.
I completed the base. I centered it using box itself and marked that outline with blue tape. Then without the box in place, I penciled in the 5/8 depth of the walls so I could then mark the location for the screws. Not sure if I need to go back and enlarge these (for wood movement). I used a Rockler drill guide I bought a while back when the "jig" was on sale and have to say I really like it. Allowed me to not angle the drill and was pretty easy to set up. Much better than my drill press. Used larger size bit to create a countersink.
I then attached the base to the box with double-sided tape in order to drill pilot holes into the sides as well. This ensured I had everything perfectly lined up for future attachment of the base.
That was followed by more sanding to clean up any marks I made while handling the box and base. The final touch was to chamfer the top edge. Since the cross was attached, and the top is raised, I couldn't use my router table. I could have used my handheld router and ran the router up the side, but decided to use more meaningful (to my anyway) approach by using the little plane I was given that had been my grandpa's plane. Had to make several adjustments and tests on scrape, but finally got it so I could take a couple passes to get a small chamfer.
The final post will be under projects with the finish applied - here's a sneak peek (still need to do the final buffing...but this walnut did not disappoint!!).
