EPTStill working on the immortal's shield, it's not done yet. Since it's fairly boring, I'm actually not making that much progress right now, and my wife has banned the stuff from our extra desk unless I actively work on it. Kind of understandable, as she sometimes actually works there.
So, whatever. I recently sold something on ebay and randomly came across an old wooden box no one had bid on. It struck my fancy, so I bid on it, and what do you know, I got it for the minimum price. Cost me 13€ including shipping. And it doesn't even smell bad, which is often the case with old wooden things someone finds in their grandmother's drafty attic or moist basement!
Since I kind of see it as my calling to convince you nerds that crafts can be really simple and all you have to do is pick stuff up and make it awesome, I'll share my restoration diary here. I intend to give the outside a fresh coat of varnish. I'll probably replace the thin and kind of broken inner pieces of wood veneer with new ones, and I'm thinking about putting in an additional floor coated with felt, since I might use it as a box for my role-playing dice.
The wood is quite old and has deep gouges in some places, there is no way I'll sand down the wood to get that deep, so they stay in. After all, they're what give the box its weathered and vintage look. I'd guess from the handwriting on the inside that it's at least 50 years old (probably more like 80 to 100), since that script has long gone out of style.
That's what it looked like when I got it yesterday:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MzNh5mr.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4MzV937.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/oGukDMA.jpg)
Today I sat in the sun for two hours and sanded it down. If you want to do this at home, some pointers on sanding: I used grits 120 (dodgy) and 150 (decent, cf. below) to get rid of the old varnish. I started on the underside to check which grit was appropriate (get rid of varnish with reasonable effort without scratching too deeply, since the wood is fairly thin, particularly the top (inlays) and, somewhat surprisingly, the bottom. I usually start in the middle of a clear area and then work my way toward the edges and corners, which need extra-diligent attention. It just looks plain bad it there's dark spots e.g. on the edges of dovetail joints. Put a straight edge of the sanding paper along the edge you want to properly clean and apply pressure to the very edge with your fingernails while holding the paper against the wood with the tips of your fingers. Note that one of the joined pieces of wood can appear significantly darker than the other due to the difference in grain direction, you will probably not be able to get rid of that. Old wood in particular tends to be darker on the end-grain (in my experience - anyone with profound knowledge of woodworking here?).
Random aside on the topic of sanding paper - man does it ever pay off to use decent tools and supplies! I own two kinds of paper that I keep in a large manila envelope (actually it's three kinds): wet sanding with grits 120-2000 (used for wet sanding stones), decent dry sanding grits 80-150-320 for wood (some 30 cents a sheet) and the most cheap-ass dry sanding paper I ever got my hands on (something like 100 sheets for 5€, which I intended to use for a children's workshop).
Since I didn't use up all of the cheap stuff (by a long shot), I thought I might as well start using it now. Boy is it bad! You go back and forth over the wood for like 5 seconds and it's clogged up already, the grit starts coming off when you so much as fold it up (which you do to get into corners), and you can really just use a fresh piece every other minute. The good stuff lasts much longer, stays reasonably sharp after unclogging it multiple times and you can fold it up to get into corners without a problem. Enough ranting, lesson learned.
So, anyway. After two hours, it looks like this.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ikBgzvn.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Tv7NMHx.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/KHXJ72f.jpg)
