Sometime late in 2018, my friend Randy, up in Indiana, urged me to record some of the stories that I tell in conversation. When I mentioned this to another friend here in town (Tom) to ask his advice on buying a suitable microphone, he encouraged me to pursue the idea. So I did--to the extent, anyway, of buying a microphone and a desktop stand.
   However, I had only recently begun to revise the first draft of the first novel that I've ever written to completion, and I didn't want to interrupt that process to begin oral storytelling; I was afraid I might never come back to the novel. I used the microphone once, just enough to test it for suitability to my purpose. Then I resolved to put the mic and stand away until the novel was finished.

   But I wanted something nice to store them in--something more durable than the cardboard boxes in which they were shipped. I bought some quarter-inch oak for the main part of the project, and I used some scraps of other woods for smaller elements of the box. I drew plans, modified them, and mostly followed the design as I put the pieces together. This box, like the Writer's Box before it (Box #2), is joined entirely by glue, but I did use brass hardware for hinges, latch, and the retaining pin for the USB cord spindle.

   I fabricated a cradle for the microphone by cutting 2.25" holes in four squares of the oak, then cutting the squares along a diameter of the circles and gluing the eight squared-crescents in a row. The cradle is lined with a thin layer of open-cell foam, then covered with suede. I fabricated a similar, smaller cradle for the base-end of the stand's shaft.
   Adjacent to the microphone's cradle, I installed a small block, topped with suede, on which to rest the fitting that joins the microphone to the stand. Opposite the stand's base-end cradle, I installed a block in which I drilled a hole to accept the microphone's join-fitting. The cradles and blocks are glued to the floor of the box.
   A length of 5/8" larch dowel, glued into the box's floor, serves as a spindle for the stand's base-plate. Similarly, a length of 1.25" dowel is glued into the floor as a spindle around which the USB cable is wound. The wood of this latter spindle is a mystery--it was simply a piece of scrap--but the coarse grain suggests fir. I've drilled a 5/16" hole through its diameter to hold a retaining pin, which is a pin from a brass hinge, bent to shape using my vise and a ball-peen hammer.

   The hinges and latch hardware came with wood screws a little longer than 1/4", so I had to install pads to make up some extra depth. I had a half-log of the same cherry that I used for Box #1, so I cut some small boards from that. I planed one board down to a quarter inch and cut the tiny pads from that. I planed another small board down to just over 1/16", which I glued across the top of the lid, where I'd had to join two of the quarter-inch board, side-by-side, to make the necessary width. That joint is smooth, but the grain is mis-matched. The cherry trim covers the mis-match and may even strengthen the joint a bit.
   The box is finished with tung nut oil and sits on a pad of hobby foam. I had wanted to use felt, as I had for my first two boxes, but I couldn't find felt in an appropriate color. The hobby foam is not too awfully obtrusive.