Today was a cloudy day, and the temperature was low, so it was comfortable. It seems that there will be a little less rain over the next few days. Today, I did the finishing coating work on the 5-sun boxes, and I also did the final checks on the custom-order boxes that I made last month and that are already finished. I had been waiting until the humidity went down a little before doing the final checks on these boxes. When the humidity is too high, I feel a little worried about taking the boxes outside. Today’s conditions were good.
After that, I was able to finish the final coating on the 5-sun boxes, and they are now complete. I still need to check them, so they will be available for sale tomorrow or later. This time, only the type with rosewood top panels will be available. I have made several similar natural wood type boxes before, and this is one of the boxes I still continue to make. It has a good balance of price and size, so it is popular. The 7-step mechanism has a relatively small number of steps, but some customers do not need a large number of moves, and this box is popular with those people. Usually, the top and bottom panels are made with walnut, the same wood used for the side panels. However, this time, for the first time, I made only the top and bottom panels with rosewood. Rosewood is a very hard wood, so it is difficult to use it as a thin panel for the top and bottom. For this box, the rosewood was sliced very thin, about 0.3 mm, and attached to MDF board, which is an engineered wood. By doing this, I can use woods that would normally be difficult to use as panels. From the outside, it looks like a single solid wood board. Solid wood can often cause problems later, such as warping, cracking, or shrinking, so this method helps the box stay stable for a long time. Rosewood is darker than walnut and has a blackish tone, but it also has a slightly reddish-purple color. Because of its heavy and elegant appearance, it is a popular wood.
Originally, I made boxes using all walnut wood, such as 18-step and 27-step boxes. After that, I made this two-color type with a 7-step mechanism. I started using two types of wood for the side panels partly because it has become difficult to secure wide walnut boards on a stable basis, but the main reason is to prevent the panels from warping. For a 5-sun size box, the panels are quite wide, and thin panels made from a single piece of walnut are especially easy to warp. By combining walnut with another relatively stable wood like this, I can increase the strength and stability of the panels. At first, I used nyatoh wood, but for the past few years, I have been using agathis wood. Some parts of agathis wood can have striped grain patterns, but for this use, I try to choose pieces that are dense, light, and a little darker in color. I try to make it look close to the nyatoh wood I used before.
