1.

Once the idea had been formed, HW|D went to work selecting the the right lumber for the project. The focus was, of course, to pick three African wood grains that not only compliment each other, but also contrast well to really draw out the dove tail joints.

Originally, the target grains were African Mahogany and Wenge; but once at the supplier, the golden seam you’ll see in later images of this Paduk was hard to pass up.  A few on the fly searches later confirmed that Paduk is native to Central Africa and the game plan revision was made.

2.

The boards were run through the planer, removing about an 1/8th of an inch off the faces – really enhancing the paduk in particular.

Then they were cut to size and paired off into couplets two — yielding the materials for 5 boxes.

One piece of paduk and one piece of wenge were aligned so that the end grain of the paduk set perpendicularly to the edge of the wenge and a line to define the depth of the dove tails and pins was drawn.

3.

From there, the dovetails were measured and outlined. Using a “rustic” 1 in 7 grade jig, I cut along the outlines with the bandsaw. Then  any rough edges were cleaned up with a file. After that, the end grain of the dovetails (in paduk) was placed onto the uncut wenge and traced the outline of the dovetails to determine the outer edges of the wenge that needed to be remove. Once all the outlines were drawn, the bandsaw was used again to remove the excess material.

4.

Next, a groove was placed on the top and bottom of the paduk pieces; the top groove aligning with the very top of the front wenge piece, and the bottoms sitting equidistant to the bottom.

After that, the each piece of 1/8th inch African mahogany was custom measured and cut to fit their boxes.

Deciding on the design of the paduk pull tabs took a few different iterations before landing on the final product. The bandsaw was used to cut these smaller pieces of paduk to create the thin outer edge piece and the thumb tab on the top.