And, here’s how I turn a tree into a precision slide top Safe Box.

There is quite a lot of precise work here. You need sharp cutters and a steady hand. This isn’t a CNC shop, so when that mill cutter gets to the end of it's cut, my muscle memory has to know if I spin the wheel left or right to go onto the next leg. Well, it depends which direction you are going and if you are “Standard or Climb Milling” at the moment. Recall wrong and you have ruined the box.

Hope you enjoy seeing it.
Gary

I love the wood work gary . I’ll bet it’s a lot easier on tooling and clean up too .

Thanks
Kurt

On the shop wall, near a front window ... it reads .... “Rust-oleum Lacquer = Rubbery”. I love Rust-oleum products, but I keep getting caught by their Lacquer! Hope I see the sign enough for it to stick! And cause me to use the OTHER ACE HARDWARE brand. Different products shine in various usage. It’s easy to forget which goes best where, especially if you run a mixed operation shop.

You need to sand/steel wool between lacquer coats. Lacquer dries quickly under normal conditions. Many times you can use two or three coats as a base wood sealer. Then wool. Then top coat. But companies and retailers have changed so much. Many products were replaced by water base duplicates. RUN FROM THEM!!!!! Retailers like Lowe’s stopped selling lacquer based sealers. They’ve just messed up wood finishing. Even the things which appear to be traditional, have been changed. “Lacquer” is as old as Time. . What could be messed up? Well, Rust-oleum has found a way to make it take far longer to develop a really hard film. Sand between coats and you get little rolled up cigars of material.

I even baked the item with 4-5 coats in it, and it still produced cigar rolls instead of dry dust as residue. In addition, the coats seemed thicker then I recalled. So; what happens when you mill grooves for a lid to track in, and then finish both the lid and grooves with Rust-oleum Lacquer? Right; they stick, drag. Bummer. Delay.

And so I sanded. This time with a half dead left arm. COVID second shot??? Or multiple bone spurs in my neck from 20 year old surgery? Don’t know. But back in the grooves, I needed scrapers. And it was difficult to get a clean reach into the box and into the groove. Thankfully I found these milling rotary knives from 1997 which I had made to create pockets for a trigger block in a PCP Pistol. They made a clean job of scraping.





When all fit well, and when all was smooth, I completed a fine paste wax finish ... using the early coats as a good sealer coat.





Nothing to it. Just how I did fine work in 1974 when you could buy good lacquer sanding sealer and Minwax paste wax top coat. The box is complete in record time. Hopefully it will be enjoyed.

Best!
Gary



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2021 11:55PM by barnespneumatic.

I am sure it will be enjoyed and show to everyone ! Very nice job. That is a sweet piece of walnut, with a great finish on it.
Hope the arm gets better soon. Seems most people have a harder time with the 2nd shot !
Enjoyed the picts !

Bob

The box is beautiful and is a outfit fit for the mammoth scaled knife. Alice loves it. Another great Barnes work of art, simple and functional.

Keith