Thread: Home made gifts

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Very nice Ryan.

In all honesty wood is not my favorite material to work with. On more than one occasion I have told people “give me 2 pieces of metal and I can make almost anything you want……give me 2 pieces of wood and I can make sawdust and splinters”. The sum total of my wood working tools (or tools that can be used for wood) are a saber saw, circular saw, a square that had been dads and a tack hammer and couple of wood chisels that had been granddads. The total of my wood working experience is a semester of HS wood shop 45 years ago.

Somehow a couple of months ago I got the hair brain idea that I should build a couple of “French fit” presentation cases for the pistol, derringer and knife I want to pass to each of my grandsons in the distant future. I took the easiest way out and bought what the store called “hobby boards”; pieces of wood already cut to width and sanded. Of course it was not only working with wood, but getting to stretch felt over the forms I had cut out of plywood.






The one thing I did notice was that just like doing project cars, what starts out simple usually ends up with add-ons you hadn’t originally planned for……like a drawer to store holsters and ammo in,



Then what the heck, lets add a false bottom to the drawer to store cleaning equipment under.



And of course I needed to fabricate a locking bar that would lock both the lid and drawer (I actually enjoyed that part). The first one took about a week to build and the second about 2 days.



I still don’t like working with wood, but there was something about knowing that they would eventually be passed to the kids that gave me a good feeling while I was putting them together.

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