CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, November 06, 2019

How to Build a Shadow Box

This Old House: Precious objects from our past have an unfortunate habit of ending up squirreled away in the attic or basement, neglected and forgotten. With a glass-fronted shadow box, however, those collectibles can have a worthy display space, safe from dust and dirty, clumsy fingers.

4 comments:

Olav Carter said...

I think this is a useful article, even if you aren’t necessarily building specifically a shadow box. I think that the techniques the article describes are incredibly beneficial to anyone building things. For instance, many people neglect to address the use of glue in woodwork because they think that screws will just keep everything together all dandy and fine. Such is just an example of a technique the article discusses that could be beneficial for someone to pick up on. Onto the idea of a shadow box though, I think the idea of a shadow box is cool, and it does exactly what the description says it does - makes it possible to see special items of yours while simultaneously protecting them from dust and various other aspects. I can imagine various like childhood toys and figurines and such that I’d likely keep in one of these boxes, and it’s cool that I could build one too on my own, just with a trashed door. 10/10 would use this article again, better than WikiHow.

Elliot Queale said...

I enjoy many of these step by step guided projects for many reasons, but most notably I enjoy watching others' approaches to projects since they are more often than not different from mine. Depending on the tools, time, lumber, and skill things can change drastically. While this project is relatively complex for a beginner, Tom and Kevin break it down so easily that I truly believe that anyone with the equipment and time is capable of building a shadowbox. I will say, though, that properly stripping down an old door can certainly be a challenge and, depending on the style, unusable for this particular project. I do, though, appreciate the creativity of using reclaimed furniture and wood in projects, and think it can hold a lot of sentimental value. For example, I could see this meaning a lot if it came from a childhood bedroom door as a way of preserving personal affects in a shadowbox. Overall, I enjoyed watching the process that the pair used to create the box, and appreciate their detailed yet easy-to-follow instruction.

Hsin said...

This is just a delightful article to go over, I found all the steps it are useful. Not only in building a shadow box, but all the terminologies, the sequence of the steps and how to describe process of doing a certain task. Among all the skills we practice daily in school of drama, the one that reign above all in my opinion is the capability of walking people through of anything. Since we are building different set, focusing for different angle and creating different context for every show, the only method to accomplish them is through communicating well. The other aspect to appreciate this article I did is evaluating how efficient it is to do it step by step. I always enjoying doing planning practice by alternating the procedure and mapping out the solution of doing it the other way, and with this article I found much fun in it.

Mattox S. Reed said...

Shadow boxes really don’t make sense to me. As someone who isn’t necessarily a collector of any kind I never quite understood why people want to hide their objects in a box where they can’t be used or held. I remember a couple of years ago I saw someone had instead of building a shadow box used a clear Ikea shelving unit with white foam core and leds to display their collections and I thought it was ingenious because its all you needed. It displayed their objects in a clean way clearly and openly and it allowed for them to easily use and access their stuff. Aside from all the stuff about shadow boxes I do like the format that this project is in. Although I may not be in the typical demographic for This Old House but I do love their content and these sorts of projects and little ideas I know from experience are great ways for getting people into woodworking.