I finished up my "Christmas" box. The box is made of mahogany and walnut. I don't normally use exotic hardwoods, but a friend-of-a-friend gave me some scraps of the mahogany a few years ago, so I put them to use.

Pictures are below. The last picture shows the miter splines waiting for the glue to dry.

I'm going to rebuild one of the first woodworking projects I ever did. I had no idea about how wood moves with the seasons when I built it, and I wrapped the entire tabletop in a solid walnut border (check out the first picture below). This created a cross-grain glue joint in the process. The joint is coming apart, and given that the mortise & tenon joinery wasn't so great either, the table is going to be cut apart and rebuilt. But, it was a good effort for a novice I guess. And...I got lucky when I bought the maple for the top. It has some nice figure in it. So I'm going to rebuild it (properly), and I think I'll end up with a pretty nice table.

Before I get into my "real" to-do list, I'm finishing up the year building a small box. It's nice to take a break from a bigger project and make some stuff that can be done in a matter of days vs. weeks or months.

The second (slightly blurry) picture below shows the box glued up and clamped. The last two pictures show a miter spline jig built to cut the spline kerfs in the corners of the box. The jig is a nice by-product of the box-building process. It can be re-used for more boxes later and has other uses in frame building, etc.