Long ago I was given a plank of Honduras mahogany – enough to make a bathroom cabinet of 8 small drawers intersected by three shelves encasing a square mirror. It became defunct after a house move. What to do with it?

I decided to dismember it and, with the help of some sapele additions, make storage containers out of it. In truth the Honduras mahogany is too posh for such a purpose but there it is. It was wunnerful stuff to work with hand tools, unlike the sapele (woolly stuff, that).

The results: storage drawers & boxes for some of my hardware collection, in the garage workshop; two gothic containers for the ladywife’s stuffed toy making. These consist of a box with two piston-fit trays for her tools; a small chest of drawers for her collection of beast-eyes. “Gothic” seemed an appropriate style for this Frankenstein-like hobby, eh!?

Various acquired odds&sods went into these items. A marquetry lid I got in Spain two decades ago; some old iron handles from a junk shop; and that mahogany of course.

The sapele was brought along towards “mahogany” by the use of Liberon black patinating wax, which fills it’s open grain with black. The mahogany already has its own black grain lines.

Just a matt wax finish as gloss seems wrong for gothic.

Lataxe