Our friends and family know us quite well. One of our wedding gifts was a set of matching toolboxes, and I imagine that they’re the most special toolboxes I’ll ever own.
My parents live in a very wooded area, and as you might expect, they’ve lost some trees in the 27 years they’ve lived there. Some trees are rotting and are thrown into a chipper head first, but when healthy ones come down naturally or a have to be taken down for one reason or another, my Dad has turned to little local mobile mills and had the trunks of those trees ripped into rough usable boards right in our own backyard. It’s not something that I appreciated when I was younger, but those boards that are stored in neat piles in their barn could really be something cool–most of them are 2×8 or 2×10–they’ve been accumulating for almost 20 years. They’re actually one of the reasons we’ve been shopping for a great wood planer over the last few months. With a few passes, I’m sure that most of those boards could become something great.
What’s especially cool about these two boxes is that they’re made from Norway Red Spruce trees taken from that stash on my parent’s property (I guess our family friend, a handy woodsmith, borrowed a few pieces at one time or maybe just for this occasion…I’m still not sure).
From the raw material, he designed each box to 1′ x 2′ x 6″ specs so that we could use it as a rough measure in a pinch, and assembled the boxes with dovetail joiners and absolutely no nails or screws. Good craftsmanship is so refreshing and inspiring.
I wish this was feel-o-vision, because the wood has been planed, sanded, and then polyurethaned into a state of perfection. No splinters or scratches happenin’ due to these boxes.
They’re personalized too, each box sports one of our names on it so there’ll be no quarreling.
They don’t live on our deck, of course, they spend their days in the basement on the workbench, just awaiting an opportunity to work their way into our tool organization (it’s a little too cold to spend a day organizing our messy workbench right now).
Aren’t they great?
5 Comments
*drool*
I mean – ummmm, yes.
Where’s Julia’s toolbox?
Yes they were made for this special ocasion. Remember you’ll alwas have a little peice of home with you.
I helped Mark mill the trees and he has repaid me many times over with milling my trees and other projects.
Put some tools in them !
We love them.