This box is one of a series I built to commemorate a group vacation my wife and I and our friends took to Galveston, Texas, last summer.  I built one box for each family from driftwood I collected on the beach. The only non-beach wood I used was the ebony for the keys–the driftwood itself is a mix of unidentified hardwoods and softwoods.  The plank that became the sides provided a fascinating surprise: the surface looked nothing like what you see here; there were only a few tiny pinholes visible on the surface.  When I hit it with the planer, however, the wild worm-eaten interior revealed itself, along with the shells of the tiny crustaceans that had made a home in the tubes.  The wood proceeded to smell rather badly for a week or so (and my planer blades luckily were none the worse for wear).

Sadly, a few weeks after we were there, Hurricane Ike made landfall about a mile farther north from where we stayed and changed that shoreline in a major way.

Launch Gallery