Homestead House Memory Box

When we visited the homestead house in July, we found it in pretty rough shape.  The basement walls are starting to cave in.  The interior of the upstairs is mostly gutted and severely vandalized.  Realizing that this might possibly be the last time we would be able to visit the house before vandals burn it or someone bulldozes it for safety reasons, we removed some of the old rough cottonwood floorboards and brought them home with us in hopes of making 4 boxes.  The woodworker decided that he didn't want to sand the old boards down to a shiny finish as he wanted the saw marks on the boards to stay visible.  The nail holes are also not filled in in any way.  This first picture shows a piece of one of the boards before it was used.

Here you can see that the boards have been sanded slightly.  The dovetails for the corners have been cut by hand.

These are some of the tools used to cut the dovetails

Putty is used to fill in the joints

Here they are all puttied and waiting to be sanded.

Now that the box has been made, the top needs to be cut off.

Next a light coat of Danish oil finish seals the wood a bit.

Here are 4 boxes finished except for the hardware.

Once the hardware is attached, the boxes are finished.

Of course, one of the boxes is for us to keep.  We are considering using decoupage to fix a few pictures of the homestead house in place inside the lid.