And yet another box inspired by Japanese woodworkers. Its a cube with no obvious way of getting in. It actually has 10 small dovetailed drawers.
It's made from marine plywood, veneered with a quilted burr veneer - not sure what! The highlights are abalone and gold mother of pearl shell. It was quite a complex structure to glue together!
Getting into it uses an idea that I have 'played' with for a few years - rare earth magnets. We often use them instead of catches to hold things closed, as they have a strong attraction for each other. But on this project I have used the fact that if you put two close together with the same poles facing each other so N to N , then they strongly reject each other forcing what ever they are held in apart.
The starting point for getting into the box is to push down on one of the 9 segments on the lid. This uses a spring loaded catch to push the top drawer up. As this rises, a magnet in its side forces a drawer in the bottom layer open a little way.
Pull out this drawer and more magnets on the side of the drawer force another drawer open.
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Pull this one out, and yet more magnets force another drawer open. So all three drawers on the bottom layer are not open
Now we lift the top drawer up to the next level, and repeat the process to open the drawers on the middle layer. Lift the top drawer again and it activates the drawers on the top layer in similar fashion. So we now have all 10 drawers open!
Clever? Yes!
Problems? Well yes again!! Don't muddle the drawers up when putting them back in. As the polarity of each drawers magnets are unique, if one is placed in the wrong hole it will attract the other drawer as it is pulled out rather than forcing it open!! Getting them back out again is then almost impossible!
So, the last thing I did was to put a number on the bottom of each drawer and a corresponding number on the bottom of its opening. I sold the box in July ….... so hope the new owners remember the instructions!!!
DK - I decide that the quilted veneer that I had covered the box with was just too bland. So as an after thought I decided to add a bit of embellishment using squares of pau shell and gold mother of pearl shell cut from laminated shell sheet! I've did this before on my wife's jewellery box where a large expanse of bland veneer needed something to lift it. These were little squares of coloured veneer, again put on as an after thought.
