This project is going to be for my daughter Tracey, which came about from a phone call with her during the Summer. At that time I was working on a Christmas preset for my granddaughter Audrey, which was the wooden blocks and box. We were discussing what to put on top of Audrey's wooden box (a stencil of some kind) just to add a little something extra. And during that conversation, Tracey said that she wouldn't mind having a box of her own, just because she thought it would be cool. Well that got me thinking and here I am making a second box.

This box will be similar to Audrey's except for the species of wood. I'm making this one out of black walnut, hard maple and a small piece of Goncalo Alves. I used Goncalo Alves on the salt & peper keepers if you'd like to see what it looks like. The size of the box will be 18 1/2" X 12" X 4 1/8".
 

I'm using two vises here which makes it much easier to hold these longer pieces while I'm machining. BTW, I'm working on two pieces below.
 

I'm roughing down the thickness of all my pieces before I put them through my Dewalt planer. Why? Because it's much easier on the planer this way. Otherwise I would have to run the boards through it so many more times because the planner doesn't remove very much at a time. But my milling machine can make a 1/4" deep cut with no problem.
 

I set my work-stop on my planer to 1/2" and it worked great. The actual size was .501" to .502" which is really good in my book. However, something happened while I was using the planer this time. For some reason I had small 'steps' on each piece that measured a few thousandths deep and I don't know why yet. My guess is that the knives are chips but I'll have to take the planer apart to find out.