First of all, I salute your creativity!
I kept thinking about the hasps being unique and then it dawned on me you drew inspiration from and made them to compliment the ends of the hinges. BTW, forging the bottom of the hinges to match the contour of the reinforcement boards around the bottom of the box showed your blacksmithing skill. Curiosity compels me to inquire if you originally planned it that way or if that was the way it turned out?
I understood why you put a board on each side of the lid to keep the lid from racking and to keep the lid covering the contents of the box, but I did not understand why you put a front board on the lid until I saw the picture of the rest of the top hasp. That was Clever.
Your treatment of the leather handles was also a bit different than I normally see, though certainly of a period style and quite novel.
Curiosity also compels me to ask what the dimensions of the lumber was you began with? I can’t figure out from the photo’s if the sides and lid were made of a single board or if you glued boards together to make each side and lid.
Had I not seen your anvil close to the box and had you not mentioned you made some of the nails, I still would have guessed a blacksmith made the box because it looks like the way a blacksmith would have done it rather than a jointer. That is a compliment because it shows influence from a Jointer, but it also shows the taste and thinking of a blacksmith and that is something I personally think we miss in making some reproductions when a particular box is just copied. You stayed true to your trade by making the box the way you did.
VERY Nice Job, indeed.
Gus
