Jewelry Box Plans: Impress Someone Special

How to Make a Jewelry Box, and Three Ideas for Making One That’s Unique
If you have been flipping through woodworking magazines and websites lately in search of jewelry box plans, the first thing you’ll notice is that there are approximately one million of them in circulation. You will find everything from “How to Make a Jewelry Box” to “How to Make Jewelry Box Drawer Pulls.” Wooden jewelry box plans abound, and most of them are wooden in the other sense as well – they lack personality.

Box-making should be a skill-building process. If you are beginner or intermediate, start the technical piece with our “Box Builder’s Handbook,” which includes plenty of plans and is also a comprehensive guide to all of the major processes you’ll need to think about as you make your own jewelry box. Then consider these three ideas as ways to stretch your skills and conceptualize something new:

1. Make a jewelry box that utilizes beautiful joinery. Our “Dovetailed Keepsake Box” is just one example. Finger joints and keyed joints are other options that show off your skill while also showing off the wood.

2. Go curvy. Use your bandsaw and make a jewelry box that stands out from all the square-cornered furniture in the house. Our “Twister Box Plan” might help get your imagination going on this.

3. Use veneer to achieve dramatic finish results. Wood jewelry box plans usually focus on hardwoods, but that’s only a fraction of what’s possible when you consider veneer use. Project 21 in our book “Box by Box” gives you a good sense of how to start learning this skill.

A friend of mine, whose wife is an even better woodworker than he is, was asked on their second date to make a dovetailed jewelry box, right then and there. Hopefully you are not up against that kind of pressure, and you have a few hours to consider several ideas. That’s how to develop some personality in your project. The main thing is not to follow run-of-the-mill, free jewelry box plans step-by-step, but rather to learn how to build a jewelry box and then develop your own design with a special piece of wood or a unique fit and finish.

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