The case and all its contents. There are four racks, each made of a different wood. From front to back: purpleheart, yellowheart, cherry, and Lyptus, a wonderful Brazilian farm-grown hardwood from Weyerhauser. Lyptus is very hard and dense, and offers a very attractive iridescence when coated with clear finish. Because of its density, we also used this wood for the tiles, and for the trays (in back).

The easiest piece in here was the yellowheart; it just cut and shaped without any complaints. The most frustrating had to be the cherry, which -- I discovered to my dismay, this being my first time working with cherry -- stains very unevenly because the wood grows in random densities, and so you need to apply a shellac grain sealer before staining. It came out okay anyway. The purpleheart looked really good, too, until I finally started cutting it -- whereupon it started chipping and tearing like mad. At the suggestion of Jeannette at Woodcraft, I made a filler paste of purpleheart sawdust and wood glue. It worked okay, but it tended to stain a bit.

At some point I had thought about assigning each tray to a character from the show -- purpleheart for Buffy, yellowheart for Xander, cherry for Willow -- but I couldn't figure out how to deal with the Lyptus.

The moneyholders are all from 20's-era mah jongg sets culled on eBay. Some people make jewelry from those sets, and sell the leftover pieces to help pay for their expensive hobby. All from this set were brass-plated steel, and some were fairly corroded. As a result, we decided to try and electroplate these pieces, ordering a brass plating kit from an east coast company -- except that it was early December, and they couldn't ship the brass plating kit by air! Ah, so we got the gold plating kit. Except, the gold plating won't work on brass or steel -- but it would work on nickel. So we got the nickel plating kit.

Neither of them really worked. We're going to try again later.

One last thing about the case before I go. Remember I mentioned that our neighbor has a laser engraving machine? We're going to get the side of the case engraved...