Go with the flow

There are few things I like better than joinery with continuous grain. The unbroken flow lends a particularly mysterious look to a piece, even more so when the wood I’m using is particularly figured. 

For a new box project I wanted exactly that, so I rummaged around my stash of Good Stuff I’m Saving to see what I could find.

What I found was the last piece of spalted maple from a set of boards I bought several years ago. You’ve seen wood from this particular stash before. It’s among my favorite that I’ve ever bought, and this last one was perfect for the project at hand.

Since the box was still in the conception stage and I wasn’t yet bound by specific dimensions, I decided to use the wood at its full width while making the mitered corners. Then, I’d glue it up and slice it in half to make two boxes. Even from the first set of miters I cut, I could tell that the flow of the grain and spalting around the corners would come out great.

The figure on these boards is stunning. I’d cherry-picked the ones with the best figure when I started going through this set of boards, meaning that this last one was the least figured of the bunch. Maybe I’ve forgotten how nice those earlier boards were, but this still looks awesome to me.

I’ve tried over the years to find stock with a similar pattern and have moderately succeeded, but I’ve never quite been able to find any that I’ve liked nearly as much as this. Wish I had bought twice as much.