The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

Last year, I made a bunch of stained glass jewelry boxes with hinged lids.  I also made 1 box with no lid.

This year, I want to build several boxes with no lids...........as Christmas 2019 gifts to family members.

These boxes are "all-lead" and no copper foil construction.  The lead types I used were:

RH-3                      H-shaped lead for side panels.

RH-3                      Also hand twisted and used for top decoration

RU-90                    U-shaped lead for side panels.

Hobby Lead           Hand-twisted for decoration on 4 outside corners.

When I made a bunch of similar jewelry boxes last year, I carefully cut 45 degree angles on the corner joints.  I tried an experiment on these boxes where I only used the cutting pliers to cut the lead, and did not use a saw. I cut the corner joints at 90 degrees and made them intentionally long. After I soldered the first side, I nipped off the excess lead with the pliers, then soldered the other side.............then filled in the corners with lead also.  This was much faster than cutting 45 degree pieces to exact length, and looks fine on this type of box.

These boxes are relatively fast to make, because there are no lids to make.  Also, no grinding at all is required. Just use the Morton cutting system to cut the pieces all the same size.

Initially, I soldered the outside corners, then soldered all inside 4 corners. I decided the inner solder was not needed, which also saved time.

It is amazing that using only 2 different colors of blue glass, gives such a beautiful looking box. The mirror bottom reflects light through the box sides as well.  The glass came from Hobby Lobby. The mirror glass came from my local Ace Hardware. They sell their scrap glass left over from making mirrors for people.