We think of this box as “Sheep 2.0” as our first attempt at a sheep box, made of ash, failed miserably. But this one is better, stronger, faster than he was before. And, in the parlance of “Chopped”, this box is ‘quilted two ways’. First, the exterior has been constructed in the fashion of classic patchwork quilts, and second, the interior of the box is quilted with bright fleece. What else would one quilt a sheep box with, we ask.

 

We built the stack for this wildly unconventional bandsaw box from a series of pine 2x4s, with a long stack down the center and shorter cuts in stacks facing outward to display the end grain. We then cut away the center, as usual in a bandsaw box, and were left with the perimeter of end grain cuts, the swirls and knots and lines of which simulate the whorls of sheep wool, patchwork style. We then cut away the excess from the exterior, and glued in the bottom. The lid was fashioned from a separate large stack of end grain 2x4 chunks. The entire thing, box and lid, was then heavily shaped with an angle grinder, rasps, and orbital and hand sanding methods to further enhance the lumpiness of a sheep body and the whorls of wool. Once we finalized the shape, there were multiple rounds of satin polyurethane finish and hand sanding to achieve the right combination of smooth-to-the-touch yet rustic, undulating form that makes this box fun to touch. For the head and tail, we used cut off portions from the end grain stacks and finished them in the same fashion and attached them with dowels. However, we wanted to break up the look of the pine a bit, and so we decided to give the sheep a touch of color, applying some ebony stain to the head and to the—you guessed it—thread spools that form the legs, making the entire production an homage to all kinds of textiles.