I've started work on another small box.
I'm making this one out of plum from a tree which fell down in our garden last year. I think it's rather attractive wood and is nice to work with. Unfortunately the tree was quite rotten so the box will be rather small!
These are the side pieces (I've employed Rob's coloured stickers approach to see how that goes):
I'm thinking of doing a veneered panel for the lid, which I will make flush with the sides using some inlay strips to hide the join (like I did with the maple box I put up another thread on). This is where I have some questions.
I'd like to have a go at using this piece of the plum to make the lid from:
Questions:
1. Assuming I can cut and plane a veneer down to, say, 2mm, should I use 3mm or 6mm ply as the substrate to give a 7mm or 10mm panel (allowing for veneer on both sides)? 7mm feels like a sensible overall thickness but I'm worried 3mm ply is too thin to constrain the wood movement in 2mm thick veneers. (In fact, will 6mm even be OK?)
2. My original plan for the stringing inlay was to use a dark wood (I have a piece of African black wood which I used on my other box). However, I wondered if I could use the very pale sap wood from the plum as it would be nice to make the whole box from the same wood. It feels quite hard, and I'm only looking at 3mm wide strips, but am I asking for trouble? Here are some examples: