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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.
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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.
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). ![]() ![]() ![]() 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).
I'm happy, they're happy and Ol' Dave is, too! |
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