WIP Presentation box set

After further discussion with Shane from Kelly country I am going to do the three knife handles and 1911 grip sets in different woods as a "this is some of what we can offer example", so after the call, I had a time of reflection on the different wood colours and it seems that they may be best shown against different coloured box linings so I have decided (I will tell Shane later :)the first set with ebony will have the box lined with the blue, the second set will be with walnut with green box lining and the third set will be the fiddle back macrocarpa shown above and that will show best against the red lined box.
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I spent a couple of days making jigs so I can do the box inserts to hold the knife, pistol and mag and had them all just right when the nlyon collar on the dewalt rounter base let go and I ruined one of the jigs, so am getting the engineer to make me one all in steel which will put me back a few more days on that side of things as I have asked him to make it with the collar only having a stand off of 4mm instead of the 15 that the dewalt nylon one had. This has necessitated making all new jigs which I have now got done with the primary insert cut out and will wait till I pick up the new collar on friday before I cut them for the stand off.
Needing some way to hold the 7 rounds of 45 acp I cut and drilled these ammo blocks then duncked them in the BLO tin for ten minutes. They will sit at one end of the box and should look the part when it is all together. Only had 3 rounds but enough to show the easy grab eft above the block.
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Have these four all ready for hand sanding and etching(2 random and 2 ladder pattern), and hope to pick up the router collar tomorrow and a new dovetail cutter to move forward with the boxes. Ground a pair of field scalpels and a tool I hope to use to shape the 1911 grips with so they have been hardened and in the tempering oven at the moment.
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Have my router back in working order now after picking up the new steel collar. I asked him to make it with a much smaller collar for the 6mm bit so with a 9mm hole and a 14mm outside dia, I ony have a 4mm standoff as opposed to the 15mm standoff for the nylon collar. This is as I recieved it
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And after a bit of re-modeling

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Made some more progress today with the jigs finallised and the first prototype sorted out. I had made a couple of boxes with mitered corners as it was quicker but will dovetail the actual boxes. I need to change the bearing from the 34 inch to 1/2 inch to suit my dovetail table.
This is how it all needs to be done to get to the finished form.
First I needed to decide how the items would fit in the box and to make it small enough to be practical while not making it too crowded. Draw onto thin board and cut out the patterns.

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From there I needed to transfer these marking to a jig board and add the stand off for the collar after checking that the cut out was still the right fit for the items.

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Because there had been a few failures with the jigs I ended up making a separate jig for each item although with the first collar having the 15mm standoff the cut outs ran into each other so it was necessary

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A few failures for the scrap bin

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And when it all came together I was abe to mock up the first box athough having to use a replica 1911 for now. I have made the cut out for the 1911 slightly oversize as it will have to accomadate most of the different makers offerings and I had to take this into account.

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Wow Gruff, I remember seeing this when you were first talking about and from what I see so far this is going to be just that a "presentation box" and it is coming along very well. Can't wait to see this one finish up. I will be checking back!!
 
Had a good day in the shed today with the boxes all assembled and in the camps for the night. Then I made a start on the 1911 grips. I cut the knife handes and the grips at the same time from the same blocks to keep them as simiar as possibe A set each of ebony, walnut and curly macrocarpa. I had stabilised a pot full of blocks last week to make sure these were all given that extra protection against warping or shrinking.
I glued the slabs together by taping each piece and putting a couple of spots of superglue between them so they are easy to take apart again. This made it easier to cut and sand them to the same profile as the sample ones I had
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I needed a way to hold them while shaping them so made a jig that works quite well.

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From here I used a 60 grit bet to rough in the curved surface and then made a scraper from a bar of 1075 and hardened it . I use the smaller side to check the top end and the larger curve to scrape it to shape. I did the curly macrocarpa set first as they have the most difficut grain to work with and I thought if I could get them right the others would be much easier.
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A bit more to go but pleased to get them to this stage. I have to try and source the correct counter bore bit to get the screw holes to the right diameter.
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Some progress amongst the setbacks. The box inserts I had made were going to make it difficut to do the felt linings so I had to make another set and another jig to cut the 1911 grip and mag butt end out as it needs the full depth of both the main 9mm primary insert as well as the 6mm lower insert where the balance of the 1911 and the remainder of the mag along with the knife handle only need the primary (9mm) cut out. I also made another set of boxes as the first set were a bit cramped depth wise.
They are all sanded back to 80 grit and the edges radiused so ready for the hinges and locks now before the finish sanding. I had intended to put my 3 dot makers mark on the lid via drilled holes filled with black epoxy but decided to use the head of some siicon bronze nais after trying them on a scrap piece.
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Another piece of equipment I needed to make was for something to accurately form the discs to the shape of the knife handle and the 1911 grips so after a coulpe of atempts I came up with this.
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