Big & Small

Every month my online woodturning club (https://woodturningzoom.com) has a challenge that members show on Zoom on a Wednesday evening. This months challenge was ‘Big & Small’ so to make anything you like and a smaller identical version of it. I decided to compete in the challenge with the large piece being the box I showed on the 7th June. I decided to make a smaller copy of this box that fitted inside this one.

There were some challenges along the way as the small box is only 32mm by 32mm. This meant that I had to use a 2mm cutter rather than 3mm to make the basket illusion on the side of the box and there was only room to get one repeat of the pattern on the top and bottom of the lid. I also did not have a suitable set of gears to make a barleycorn pattern on the base of the smaller box. The final challenge was that the larger box had a curved inside to the base and the small box would not fit in and allow the closing of the lid. I had to remount the large box on my conventional lathe to put a flat bottom on the inside. To prevent marking / damaging the already finished box I 3D printed a split ring the suitable side to fit my chuck jaws and the base of the large box and this was successful.