Jarrah and glass display box

This beau­ti­ful box was my first prop­er attempt at mak­ing a fine dis­play box. I spot­ted the jar­rah boards, which had a breath­tak­ing grain pat­tern which made this par­tic­u­lar board real­ly stand out from the rest of the jar­rah in the tim­ber store. I was so enam­oured with the wood that I felt a strong respect and respon­si­bil­i­ty to do it jus­tice, and make some­thing real­ly nice with it. I cut the boards and then ripped them to ‘book-match’ the lid. Then I hurt my back mid-work and the boards warped a bit in the ten to twelve months I was out of the workshop.

Under the tute­lage of a friend from the Bal­larat Wood­work­ers’ Guild, I got it back square — although the book-match­ing suf­fered some­what, it’s not very notice­able — and I was so stoked with how this box turned out. The won­der­ful grain of the jar­rah is allowed to shine with the sim­ple geom­e­try and glass top not dis­tract­ing too much from the beau­ty of the wood. The keys in the cor­ners are Huon pine, cho­sen to con­trast the deep red-brown of the jar­rah. I lined the inte­ri­or with a kan­ga­roo leather insert with a mut­ed com­pass rose design in the cen­tre. The case now holds my Navy medals and oth­er fine keepsakes.