The finished product.

I selected my boards to keep a wrap-around grain on the corners. I chose the part of the board with a slight color graduation and maintained that pattern around each face.

A view of the inside with some tea packets.

I made a smaller version as practice before attempting the larger final box. For the practice lid I used a much darker veneer that I had sitting around. I think it hides the effect of the brown thread on the pull, and contrasts too much with the cherry below it, so I'm much more happy with the final box's cherry lid. I do like the dimensions of the practice box, so I'll probably make a new lid for it someday.

I started with very rough cherry stock. These board were cut from a log with a chainsaw more than a year ago. These are a few leftovers from a larger project made with that wood.

After running through the planer, I got about 5/8" thick stock. Here I roughly laid out the parts I wanted for the show sides of the box.

I was shooting for closer to 3/8" thick walls, so I resawed it on a bandsaw and hand planed to final consistent thickness. As a happy bonus, the offcuts from the bandsaw make great veneer material.

After I cut the miter edges, I laid everything out against a straight edge to check for squareness. Where there are gaps, I need to clean up the miters for final box squareness.

Here is my take on a 45 degree miter edge shooting board.

I used the tape trick to hold the whole thing together when gluing up. If it is square laying on the straight edge, it should be square with no gaps when glued together.

The lid is a cherry veneer on 1/4" plywood. This was the most frustrating part, and took 2 tries to get it right. I cut the veneers on the bandsaw and planed the rough side smooth after the glue dried.

I used aspen for the inner dividers and also for the lid pull. This stuff is very soft and tears out if you even look at the grain in the wrong direction.

I love any project where I can break out the router plane.

I built this jig to hold together small boxes. It's a pair of interlocking L-shaped plywood forks that hold a box square for test fitting or gluing. This is one of probably 3 jigs I built in the process of making this box.

All the sub assemblies are ready for final sanding and finishing.

The pull is aspen with brown bamboo cord wound around it. I secured the cord with a couple dabs of superglue on the bottom. To attach the pull, I drilled pilot holes and super glued some wire brads.

Also here is a closeup of the grain for this board. The boards I had leftover happened to be quartersawn, so there is quite a bit of ray fleck throughout the piece. 

Here is a view of the fabric lining on the bottom. The divider is a tight dry fit if I ever need to remove it. The finish is two coats of shellac. I don't like super shiny finishes that look like plastic, so I went over everything with very fine steel wool to give it more of a matte sheen.

I chose this box for the challenge because of the interesting little non-wooden touches to the box. I would not have considered fabric lining or thread wrapped pulls before. I will definitely think beyond just wood in my future projects now.