The Plus Box
This new box is a special project made from highly figured Koa wood that a mentor woodworking friend gave to me. In 1999, I was 20 years old and I spent a summer in Los Angeles working in Mike Fair’s wood shop. I worked for him by day as an apprentice in trade for free use of his tools in the evenings. It was my first experience seeing woodworking in a professional setting and it left a huge impression on me. Last year, Mike traded me a few boards of his prized Hawaiian Koa wood for a special box. The top of the box features my first sucessful atempt hand planing wide pattern wood veneers called "Yosegi-Zaiku". More about this here.
Solving this box first requires finding some almost invisible sliding parts. Then you get to navigate a nice mechanical riddle to unlock the inside. After that, the box may be reconfigured to an easy, medium, or hard setting. Doing this is tricky, but also reveals all it's internal mechanical secrets such as miniature mazes and wooden click-springs.
A very special thanks to Mike who let me roam free in his wood-shop at nights and trusted a young math student not to lose any digits.
-Kagen Sound
June 14th, 2021
