This week we learned about several different wood construction and post processing techniques and were tasked with building a box. The advanced assignment was very open ended on the needed size of the box, and so I took the liberty to model it after the size of a cigar box I have on my desk. It’s roughly 7x7x4in. I was home for the weekend a few weeks ago, and my brother let me have a few of his extra pieces of mahogany, they were raw square milled pieces that were far from the dimensions I was trying to build.
I took a piece that was about an inch thick, six inches tall and two feet long, and ripped it in half leaving me with two half inch thick planks. I milled these to an exact 0.5 inches on the planer, jointed one edge, and then used the table saw to cut them to 4 inches tall. Because both pieces were from the same original piece of wood I had the idea of intentially cutting my wall pieces such that the wood grain would be a continous flow around the box. I cut those planks into four 7x4in rectangles and then used the table saw fence to square them up and tape them together using painters tape.
(taped together wall pieces)
This allowed me to effectively and safely cut a 45 degree miter on both side of each of the pieces. I hotglued a piece of scrap 1×3 to the tape for additional support. Using the fence and the angle function of the saw I cut an even miter across both sides of all four pieces.
(my mitered pieces)
Turning my attention to the floor of the box, I had a large piece of raw mahogany that I didn’t have the tools to effectively mill in half. Instead I opted to cut it into strips and then glue them back together in the shape of the piece I needed. Using the table saw I cut the large piece down into 10 strips.
(a collection of the strips I cut)
After using the planer and jointer to make them all a uniform thickness with square sides, I layed them out in a pretty pattern and glued/clamped them together.
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(I used a number of clamps to ensure an even and effective glueup)
The next day I came back and after sanding/planing off the excess glue, I was left with these two beautiful boards.
(my glued up bottom and top pieces)
I originally had several different ideas for the inclusion of the bottom panel into the box, but settled on a routed edge on both the walls and bottom that would fit together. I fitted a quarter inch slot bit into the router and after testing it on several scrap pieces, cut a quarter inch deep and quarter inch tall slot out of the bottom of each of my wall pieces. I did the same with the bottom plate, and because every piece had an absolute thickness of 0.5 inch, this routed step was a great fit. After some test fitting and slight adjustment I was left with a box that mostly fit together!
(my upside down box taped together)
I glued it together and tightly clamped/taped it to ensure a tight and effective glue up. The next day I came back and attempted to make a lid, but unfortnately my material was damaged in the jointer and I was unable to recover it. It had to be a topless box.
I sanded down my glued box, and realized that I definitely should have sanded the faces that were inside the box to a greater extent before the glue up, but it was too late now and so I just did the best I could by hand and had to call it a day. I had some extra beeswax and mineral oil finish that seemed like a good neutral option to bring out the natural beauty of the mahogany without concealing it behind a stain. 
(some pics of my finished box)
Overall the project was definitely a learning experience. Working with wood is scary, because most every way of changing it cuts or removes material which is hard to recover from if it gets messed up.
Cost
Wood-free in my case but I used about a 1.5 board feet including wasted scrap, at between and 8 and 20 dollars a board foot puts it right at $20
Tools-(Miter Saw, Table Saw, Router table, Planer, Jointer, Orbital Sander, Band Saw)-$50 (TX/RX maker space membership)
Sand Paper-$12 for pack of medium grit
Finish-$10
Total=$92
