People often ask us how long it takes to make one of our jewelry boxes. The honest answer: longer than you'd expect, and that's exactly the point. Here's a look at what goes into crafting one of our live-edge plum wood jewelry boxes, from raw slab to finished piece.
Step 1: Selecting the Slab
Plum wood arrives at our workshop in rough-sawn slabs, often still showing bark on the edges. Before we cut anything, we spend time with each slab — reading the grain, looking for figure, checking for checks or cracks that might affect structural integrity. The live edge we preserve on the finished box is chosen at this stage. We're looking for a natural curve that will complement the final form.
Plum is a dense, fine-grained hardwood with a distinctive purplish-red heartwood that deepens as it oxidizes. No two slabs are the same color, which means no two boxes will be either.
Step 2: Milling and Drying
Once selected, the slab is milled to rough thickness and allowed to acclimate to our shop's humidity. Wood movement is the enemy of joinery — if wood isn't properly dried and acclimated, joints open up, lids warp, and drawers stick. We don't rush this step. Depending on the slab's moisture content, this can take days to weeks.
Step 3: Dimensioning the Parts
With stable, acclimated wood in hand, we begin breaking down the slab into the individual components of the box: the body panels, the lid, the base, and any interior dividers. Each part is dimensioned to final thickness on the planer, then jointed flat and square. Plum's density means it takes longer to machine than softer species — we take light passes and let the tools do the work.
Step 4: Joinery
The corners of our boxes are joined with hand-fit joinery — no staples, no nails, no shortcuts. The goal is a joint that's both strong and beautiful, one that will hold for decades without glue failure or racking. We dry-fit every joint before glue-up to check for gaps, then clamp carefully to avoid introducing twist during assembly.
Step 5: Fitting the Lid
The live-edge lid is one of the most time-consuming parts of the process. Because the natural edge is irregular, fitting it to the box body requires careful hand-planing and test-fitting until the lid seats cleanly without rocking. We want a satisfying, precise fit — the kind that makes a soft thud when you close it.
Step 6: Sanding
We sand through five grits, from 80 to 220, by hand. Power sanders are faster, but they leave swirl marks that show up under finish. Hand sanding takes longer and is harder on the arms, but the result is a surface that feels genuinely smooth — the kind of smooth that makes people pick things up and run their fingers across them.
The interior is lined with felt at this stage — cut, fitted, and adhered by hand.
Step 7: Finishing
We finish our plum wood pieces with a food-safe oil and wax blend that penetrates the wood rather than sitting on top of it. This brings out the full depth of the plum's color — the purples, reds, and creamy sapwood tones — while leaving the surface feeling like wood, not plastic. We apply multiple coats, buffing between each one.
Step 8: Final Inspection
Before any piece leaves our workshop, it goes through a final inspection: every joint, every surface, every interior corner. We're looking for anything that doesn't meet our standard. If something isn't right, it doesn't ship — it goes back to the bench.
The Result
A live-edge plum wood jewelry box that will outlast the person who gives it and the person who receives it. That's what we're building toward with every piece — something worth keeping.
