He started out with curly maple wood, which has lots of cool designs that would really pop when the box was dyed.

Once the cutting was complete, he glued, and clamped it together.

He made sure to route the top and bottom of the box to have something for the panels to rest on.

Here it is with the top panel added.

To strengthen the corners of the box, he added splines: little pieces of wood that are inserted into the corners. But first he had to make the grooves for them.

Then the splines were inserted...

Later trimming them to be flush with the box. Not only functional, but looks great too!

And he's not done yet! More grooves are then cut throughout the box.

And of course, a box is pretty useless if you can't open it, so he cut it in half.

Now this is starting to look like something that would fit a nice ring.

Now it was time to fill in the grooves. He chose malachite, which is a lovely green stone, and ground it up into fine powder.

The stone was sprinkled into the gaps and held in place with superglue.

Soon, all the gaps were filled in, and it was time to sand it down.

It was a hard process to sand down the hard malachite without marring the wood, but he did it!

A hinge, magnet, and foam base were added soon afterward.

After sanding, dyeing, lacquering, waxing, and buffing the box, it was finally ready...

But he wasn't done yet - he didn't trust himself to pick out the perfect ring, so he decided to make a placeholder until he and his soon-to-be-fiance could go together to pick out the real one.

He glued three thin pieces of wood together...

...and drilled a hole in the center.

Once the edges were cut with a saw, it was actually starting to look like a ring!

He got creative and mounted it on a drill bit while he applied sandpaper to smooth it out.

Finally, after waxing and lacquering, the ring was ready!

But the surprise wasn't finished just yet...

To set the scene, he arranged 100 mason jars filled with LED tea-lights in a field and convinced the love of his life to follow him there. He dropped to one knee, popped the question with the ring and box in hand, and was met with a resounding "YES!"

Of course, the ring they picked out later was beautiful, shiny, and perfect...

...but in terms of thoughtfulness and effort, I don't think this guy could have put on a better proposal!