My original DB200 box is a fine grained softwood. My first inclination is that it's Ponderosa Pine, but softwoods are notoriously difficult to ID positively. If the box was made in Europe, it's unlikely to be Ponderosa. (I do have some background in wood taxonomy).?
All that said, this box has survived for 50 years and there is no reason a box made with similar materials and methods today shouldn't last as long. If I was going to make such a box, I would put the top and bottom in captive grooves rather than just glueijg and nailing them on as that method was inherently failure prone due to cross grain wood movement.
For the sides today, I would probably look for straight grained Douglas Fir to resaw to appropriate thickness, then finish with a blond shellac to get the amber tone of the original box.?
On Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 10:34 PM Pachyderm <mirafone186@...> wrote:
Tamra, my two boxes are solid wood sides with plywood on top and bottom. I can make box joints fine and have all the tools needed for this. I am trying to identify the wood used in my box. It is very stiff and very light. Under the stain, it is a honey-blond color.
I already have my design laid out and the table saw is ready to rip. I supposed I need to take the two-hour roundtrip drive to the "good" lumber yard in my area and have them identify it (and sell me what I need). But I wanted to try to pick the wood up locally at our "less-than-good" lumber yard. They won't know what it is, but they can get me whatever I want to order and then do the basic ripping to save me some saw time.
If I find out *for certain* what it is I will post back here. I was just hoping we had a carpenter or cabinet maker amongst us here who knows this specific box. I don't need it to be an exact copy, but using solid wood with box joints is a part of the plan, as is the nailed-on top, hardware, and the Unimat tag. I will probably stain it walnut, as one of my two boxes has that and it looks great to me. (The other is a more reddish-brown that I like a little less.)