Some of this redwood is from a local salvage yard and some of it I salvaged myself on a renovation in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood. The house was built in the early 70's, when apparently old-growth redwood was still being used architecturally. Being from the East Coast, everything about the redwoods was a surprise to me, and nothing more so than the practice of cutting up thousand year-old trees for 2x4s. And to top it off this particular piece was hidden underneath 4 shades of lead-based paint. Doing what I do, my eco high ground is shaky, but painting over that grain should be a crime.
I glued it up as a closed box, then cut the lid off on the table saw with a high fence. Tear-out was a concern but using blocks on the underside of the cut, and a line of masking tape along the inside of the box helped to minimize it.
I carefully fit the aromatic cedar (not salvaged) to the inside of the box and tapered it from bottom to top just enough so that the top would go on easy and snug up as it seated.
The wood for the top, bottom and sides came from the board I salvaged in Glen Park, and the legs and handles came from another board, bought from a salvage yard, thus the different shades.
I eased the edge along the sides a fair amount to make that horizontal line more pronounced, and left the edges on the leg cuts relatively hard to accent the vertical lines.
The top and bottom were bookmatched just to make the pieces wide enough, although with the perfectly quartersawn grain it only shows as two slightly darker symmetrical stripes.
I oriented the naturally curving grain to work with the coves on the legs to soften the boxy shape.
I used a wipe-on oil varnish blend on the outside, followed by wax, and left the inside unfinished so the aromatic cedar could do its work. I call it a jewelry chest just because of the size; as is sometimes the case with my designs, it was made without a prescribed end-use in mind.