Whiskey Gift Box

On of the firemen on my crew is turning 40 this weekend. I’ve had him since he was just a pup and we’ve worked together from his first day, on and off for 12 years. If everything goes to plan, he’ll be with me until I retire in a few years. He’s a simple guy, very hard working, but never wants to take credit. He’d rather get a bottle of whiskey in a brown bag for his birthday than something wrapped in paper with a card. That said, I picked up a nice bottle with him in mind when we were in Scotland a while back. But I wasn’t going to just put it in a bag, so I knocked together a simple box for it. 

I’m pretty sure the wood is redwood. It came from some very old fence boards I picked up on the road at some point. Could be cedar, but it doesn’t smell like it. Either way, it’s been a while since I worked with softwood. Forgot how easy it is to work!

I milled down a bunch of the boards to 1/2”. Several of them were split, so I needed to work around the defects when laying out. I used the 1/4x1/4x1/4 method on the router table with a couple small deviations for jointing. Simple and clean. 

The fit was about perfect, but since it’s supposed to have a sliding panel I pared down the sliding joints by hand. Once again, gotta love softwood! Also got to use my new block plane chamfering jig!

A little bit of laser work for flare, some minor clean up and I glued it up. 

Simple finish with Danish oil for a simple man. I’ll give it a day and a bit to cure a little and probably buff it up on the Beale wheels just ‘cause.