The Rising

 “The Rising” is the box that started my love for box making. It was the fist box I ever made. It all started over a couple drinks with a friend/coworker. He told me he wanted a box to hold his wifes family bible and he wanted me to design and build it for him.

The size of the family bible had a huge impact on how the box would be designed. I think it was somewhere around 14”x 10” x 4”. Being of such a large size I didn’t want to have a person reach into the box to pull out the bible (it was pretty heavy). Nor did I want them picking the box up and dumping the bible out. To solve this I designed a lifting mechanism that would allow the bible to “rise” out of the box by rotating two cam arms. In the down state the mechanism is only .75” thick. When actuated it will raise the bible 3.5” out of the box…easy to just grab with your hands. The mechanism is hidden under the lifting board to give the interior a clean look. Paduak runners, in the box sides, keep the lifting board running straight up and down.

The main components to the box are curly maple and paduak. The floating panel in the lid was a glue-up and I made the cross shape using a v-cut router bit. During this process I had purchased an Incra fence system…as you could probably tell with the double blind dovetail joint. The lifting mechanism was made from oak. I did want this to last so the yes the pins are wood dowels but I used nylon flange bearing so there wouldn’t be any wood-on-wood friction. The overall design of the exterior of “The Rising” was to have a very solid heavy shape. I wanted people to look at it and know there were not supposed to pick it up.

The name “The Rising” was natural on this one. As soon as I started to design the lifting mechanism the name flew into my head. I also thought it was very fitting knowing what its contents would be.

Hinges are Brusso quadrant. I believe the overall size of “The Rising” was somewhere around 16” x 16” x 8”.

Finish on “The Rising” is tung oil followed by two buffing of BriWax.

"The Rising" is in a private collection.