So one day I was walking in the forest that surrounds my neighborhood. I often look for various spalted wood.
There are black bears, coyotes, raccoons, cougars, etc so I have to be careful.

Heck! .... bears and their cubs walk down the middle of our street.
When I was a kid we'd collect dry leaves and decoupage them onto wood boards. So I got the idea of making a pine box and laminating a dry maple leaf on the lid. I collected a few, took them home, and let them dry out for a few weeks.

This is what the maple leaf looked like after laminating on some pine.

 

 

Everything was done with hand tools of course! Here, I made the lid using moulding planes.

 

 

I made an invisible wooden hinge.

 

 

Then I made a nifty little pull out of a couple pieces of dowel. Oh!.... and I made the dowel too!

 

But heck! What is this box for you might ask...?

 

 

My wife is Scottish decent and she gave me these wood carving chisels that went back 3 or 4 generations in her family tree. Her grandfather used them when he was 10 or 11 years old. That was in 1889. They were wrapped in a rotting canvas.

So now they have a new home!

 

 

Thanks for looking! 

 

Cheers!
MrRick

That's a cool idea!

 

I made some scroll sawn trivets using leaf patterns.  

Yes lew!.. it's a very neat technique. I wasn't expecting a childhood memory to yield such cool results. It doesn't look laminated. It looks like it's been raised out of the Pine. 

That is way cool Rick. It looks amazing. Thanks for sharing the project and the story.

Your welcome Grandpadave52!  The things we did when kids.. right?

When I was a kid we lived in Hampton, Virginia. They didn't have anything in the way of snow equipment back then and we used to get buried in snow. Once it was was so deep that the snow drifts piled up as high as the rain cutters along the edge of the roof. 

We used to climb up on the roof and somersault into the drifts. 

That got stopped fast. My mom was livid..

Lol.

1 hour ago, MrRick said:

When I was a kid we lived in Hampton, Virginia. They didn't have anything in the way of snow equipment

Being from Pennsylvania, and stationed at NAS Oceana, I used to laugh at the locals when it snowed. It was like the Apocalypse! 

Yeah.. I get ya! Hampton didn't usually get much snow but in the early 60s they got alot and most didn't know how to handle it. Everything just shut down. My grandparents lived in Titusville Pa. and would get 8 feet overnight. Now that was alot of snow. But they were used to it. 

 

 

Somehow the little pull got left out in my post up above.

 

"Then I made a nifty little pull out of a couple pieces of dowel. Oh!.... and I made the dowel too!"

 

Edited December 5, 2025Dec 5 by MrRick

Excellent work but amazing story too. Appreciate you sharing!

48 minutes ago, SigmundJake said:

Excellent work but amazing story too. Appreciate you sharing!

Haven't met you before SigmundJake! Thank you. Glad you like it! 

Hey I’m Jake. Pleasure to meet you sir! 🤝

12 minutes ago, SigmundJake said:

Hey I’m Jake. Pleasure to meet you sir! 🤝

Nice to me you Jake! The pleasure is mine. 👍

Beautiful piece of work, great idea on the laminate. 

Thank you aaronc!