My fist commission

People loved the tea candle holders I posted last time, in fact I was actually commission by several friends to make some for them. I learned an important thing while making them, You have to be really careful pattern routing end-grain Purpleheart.

Cherry, Bubinga, & Purpleheart tea candle holders.

Wine Rack Pt. 1

My next project is for the kitchen, and will be my first project that incorporates lots of curves, and mortise & tenons. That’s right, I have yet to make anything that uses mortise & tenon joinery. My design is based on a photo I found on woodstore.net. My design will be a little more complicated to make, but I think it’s more aesthetically pleasing. I’m going to use Peruvian Walnut for the vertical boards, but I’m not sure what wood I’m going to use for horizontal boards. Right now, I’m considering either Purpleheart or hard Maple.

Purpleheart Doorstops

Every now and then I get a request for a really simple item, and they are always A joy to make, because they require no planning. On Friday a friend asked if I could make a doorstop for her office, and I said sure no problem. I think this little project, took all of 30 minutes, and 20 of those where spent trying to determine what angle to cut the stop at. I settled on 10 degrees after making a couple test stops from SYP. Hopefully these stops will last a decade or two.

A pair of doorstops

An end grain cutting board

This is my 4th cutting board, and I knocked it out in 5 days, 7 if you count the 2 days I let the wood rest. This was a quick project by my standards, but it’s possible to finish even faster. The most time consuming part of making an end grain cutting board is the final flattening. Since it’s end grain, you Cannot (I can’t stress this enough) run it through a typical planer. Thus it pays dividends to make sure the final glue up is as perfect as possible.

In my opinion, there are two ways to safely flatten the board.  The first is with a drum sander,  and the second is with a router sled. The drum sander yields a finished board right off the machine, but it can’t take off much material per pass. Additionally it’s not a tool found in most home shops, but if you have one it’s the best option. A router sled can remove more material per pass, but it yields a finish that requires additional refinement with abrasives. It also make a huge mess, unless you have some extreme dust collection in your shop.

Links of interest:

1. Marc Spagnuolo’s podcast about making an end grain cutting board.
2. Marc’s podcast about finishing an end grain board.
3. CBdesigner is a free (love that word) program I use to design boards.

Examples from the video (CBdesigner files):

• Example 1
• Example 2
• Example 3
• Example 4
• Example 5