Music Box for Brittany

With my new found woodworking hobby and a fiance with a birthday coming up, what is a wood worker to do? Go and buy jewelry right? Or a new tie, oh wait that's father's day.

I should build her a music box I thought, and I'll use finger joints cause I haven't done that, she will love that my first project using finger (or box) joints was done for her, isn't that romantic? (I think it is.)

I drew a picture roughly of what I thought it might look like.

I started with a piece of oak from my local Home Depot. (Note: I'm using OAK here not pine, another rather newish thing for me.)

I cut the pieces roughly down to what I wanted them to be for the front and back and sides.

Then I used a box-joint jig that I made using a dado stack on the table saw that I built to cut the box joints and I cut the dad around the bottom using my router table.

Some test fitting...

more test fitting...

The glue up, and people wonder why I always want to buy clamps when I go into Harbor Freight? Because you can never have enough clamps.

Here's the box after the glue had dried. The blue tape marks the top and outside of each piece. I had added this before I routed out the dado to hold the bottom of the box.

I made a template of the bottom of the music mechanism.

Transferred the marks to the box bottom and drilled out the holes very carefully.

Here's the box as its getting lacquered up.

Here's the box lid after the lacquered.

Some pictures of the finished project.