Here's
a project that gave me some experiences that I had never attempted before.....
A project where there are no square corners or angles in the finished piece.
I found this project for a snack tray that was in the December, 2009 /
January, 2010 Issue of Wood Magazine
(Issue No. 195).
I thought
that this was a beautiful piece that I could not only make for my wife
for Christmas, but for my two daughters and my daughter-in-law as well.
With only four weeks before Christmas, I had my work cut out for me to
get all four of these trays finished in time.
 I
started out with rough sawn lumber that I purchased from an Amish woodworking
lumber mill and shop that is about 25 miles from my house. Seeing
this lumber shop is another story all in itself that I may post on the
site at some point. I had just recently been told about this shop
where I can buy rough sawn lumber of all types for about half of what I
had been paying at other sources (and about 1/4 of the cost at the big
boxes if you can even find what you need there). The photo on the
right shows some of this lumber sitting on top of my table saw after unloading
it from my pickup truck.
Next,
I straightened one edge of each of the walnut and hard maple boards on
my jointer and then moved to the planer to true up the stock. Knowing
that I would have to eventually have widths of each species at a total
of 11 inches wide, I knew I would have to edge glue the walnut boards to
obtain those widths. So, I calculated how much I would need to make
enough panels for all four units. The hard maple board was already
12 inches wide, so I wouldn't need to glue up panels for the maple, I would
only need to cut them to the rough overall lengths needed.
After
edge jointing and planing the boards, I cut all the needed pieces to about
one inch longer than I would need before laminating the walnut tops and
bottoms to the center hard maple blanks. The photos below shows a
couple of views of some of the the walnut boards prior to the glue up of
the panels.
 Next,
I proceeded to glue up the walnut planks into panels. As I said before,
I didn't have to edge glue the maple planks as they were already wide enough.
Although I had more glued up panels than I had proper lengthed clamps,
I did manage to get them all completed before laminating the walnut to
the maple. Sorry, but I forgot to take a picture of the laminated
walnut and maple blocks. That was an experience all by itself!
As the article instructed, I had to make some clamping cauls when that
was done so that I could get clamping pressure to the center of the glue
ups during the lamination process. You can see a picture of one of
the glued up walnut panels on the left.
 After
the laminated panels were dry and out of the clamps, I cut them all down
to the required overall lengths and widths of 11 inches wide by 19 inches
long. At this point and as discussed in the article, I had to make
and outside template and an inside template out of 1/2" thick plywood.
These would be used to drill out the cavities of the trays and to use as
band saw and router guides to shape the trays. A picture of these two templates
can be seen in the photo on the right.
The next step was to trace
the outline of the templates onto the laminated blanks and take them to
the drill press to rough out the cavities. The templates were fixed
to the blanks with two screws on opposite corners during the transfer of
the patterns to the blanks. I used a 1 1/2" forstner bit to rough
out the cavities to about two inches deep. You can see in the photos
below, some of the steps in that process. Boy was this a chore!
I had nice big blisters on my right hand from clamping the blanks on the
drill press table, unclamping them, moving the dad gummed blanks a little
bit and then clamping them in place at the next position. I must
have had to do this at least 150 to 175 times on each blank. You
do the math! This was the worst task in the whole project but the
end result was well worth the time and pain spent doing it.
Ol' Dave getting his
blisters made!
|
A view of the mess this
process made.
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Fully bored out cavities
on one of the tray blanks.
|
After getting all four of
the blanks roughed out, I mounted the inner template back on the
blanks one at at a time using the same two locating screws. I then
used a home made sub base to mount on my router and using an extended collet,
I routed out the cavities a little bit at a time using a bowl bottoming
router bit. When this was completed on each of the blanks, I took
them to the band saw to cut out the shape of the outer profile of each
tray. I cut to the outside of the pattern line so that later I could
finish smoothing out the shape with my Porter Cable belt sander. You can
see the band saw operation halfway completed in the photo below (sorry,
I have no pictures of the routing operation).
 After
the blanks were all cut out on the band saw, I returned to the router with
the sub base, changed the bit to a 1/4 inch round over bit and finished
routing the top edges of the cavities and around the outer perimeters.
With this completed, I finish sanded the entire surface of all the pieces
and applied 4 coats of Watco Butcher Block Oil & Finish that is specially
designed for applications where there is food contact. This is a
great product and produced a great finish! Check it out in the photos
here on the left (without cups) and with the cups that I purchased at Walmart
(on the right).
Want to see what the results
were? Check out the photos below...... I think Santa done good!
Of the four finished trays one was for my wife (no picture of her but the
tray with the cups inserted above is her tray), one for my oldest daughter
(Dawn), my youngest daughter (Carmen), and my daughter-in-law (Debbie).
Oldest
daughter Dawn
 |
Youngest
daughter Carmen
 |
Daughter-in-law
Debbie
 |
I'm happy, they're happy
and Ol' Dave is, too!
Dave
dave@oldaveswoodshop.com |
|
