24 | AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 | TCFF
TCFF: And the boxes, what have been the greatest
challenges with those?
SF: To make them light enough, you have so little material left
behind. There is no margin for error. I wanted something you
could fish with and not feel like you had a brick in your pocket.
But it needed strength, so it had to be thick in all the right
places.
He fetches some of his first prototypes and explains how
heavy they were. Then he brings out a later model which he cut
in half, and shows me the wall thickness (less than 3mm).
Shaun leaves the corners thicker where the strength is needed,
and then he pushes the envelope and gets the wall thickness
down to where it needs to be for a lightweight box. Getting the
two halves to sit together was another challenge. Some of the
highly figured timber can move. Shaun says he can’t predict it.
For the sake of beauty, he is seeking out the most highly figured
timber that he can find in order to have intricate grain. The
downside is that it has a lot of stresses. Fine twisting grain is
mostly caused by stress, and certain factors release that stress.
He shows me a wild olive box that gave him trouble. “I made it
in the coastal humidity of February and then it went to Joburg
in the winter and turned into a Simba chip.” Shaun starts
making a box with an initial “drill out”, and once he has done
that he leaves the piece of timber for several days to see if it will
move after he has cut into its surface tension.