Charcuterie Board 1

I had some scrap pieces leftover hanging out around the shop and I had a bit of free time, so I figured I would put together something for the etsy shop. This is made of cherry and walnut. I had some cherry that was long enough to cut in half. Then I found a few narrow cutoffs of walnut to provide some color contrast. I think the end result is pretty cool

Rough cut/glue up

the bottom

Tried to cut a rabbet into the edge - didn't go so well

I needed some weight to attach those risers

I started out by making the cherry pieces exactly the same. Have to be a mirror image for this setup to work. I used a can of spraypaint to get the curve marked for the corners and cut them out on the bandsaw. Then setup a rabbet bit in the router table for exactly half of the thickness of both pieces. Of course they weren't exactly the same thickness, but it wasn't off by more than a millimeter or so. When you route out half of the thickness of the outside pieces and take the same rabbet depth on each side of the middle piece the top has to be flush. it's math. Also, I used a small radius roundover bit to put an edge on the top.

Plus adding the rabbets gives you a ton of glue surface. I also sanded some walnut risers to get the board off of the counter a bit. If you have a level countertop and the risers are the same thickness then you will end up with a level board that is easy to pick up! I also routed the rabbet over the ends - there was some damage to the bottom of the boards that I needed to hide so putting that lip on the ends cleaned it up nicely. I had to use a fence on the router table to keep the rabbet even.

Starting to finish

So this guy is up for sale on the Etsy store. I looked through the first 20 pages of listings and couldn't find my own product, this category is pretty competitive. I finished the board with food safe finishes, again going through the entire rotation of sanding grits (80, 120, 180, 220, 320) before putting 5 coats of tung oil on the bottom, and 4 coats on the top followed by 3 coats of butcher block conditioning wax + oil. The finish is food safe, cherry isn't particularly hard but you can use a knife on this board. More than likely the purchaser (or gift recipient or my wife) will just use it as a serving tray. Load this bad boy up with meats & cheeses, or fruit, or even sushi.

This was a really fun project. It only took a few hours to pull the woodworking together, and longer for the finish to cure. I'm really looking forward to playing around more with edge joinery and making some more of these type of boards.

It's a box!

I've been trying to sell some lately, I mentioned a while back that I opened an Etsy store and put out a craigslist ad. Still haven't sold anything on Etsy, but the CL ad was quite profitable. The first sale, however, came on Nextdoor. A super nice guy named Mike was looking for someone to custom build a wedding present for his soon-to-be-bride. He wanted a box made, sized to hold a bottle of wine and love note, with a lock on it and a countdown clock to his anniversary - what a sweet idea! I knew this needed to be a family heirloom quality box and really needed to put together something special.

I went to a Woodcraft store and found a sweet piece of cherry, some stop hinges, and a latch. I wanted to use continuous grain and finger joints to pull this together. Also wanted to steal an idea I saw on a tv show and make a floating bottom for a subtle cool effect. One of the neat things about cherry is that it gets darker as it ages, so the color of the box will actually change the longer they stay married. Very cool.

one board - cherry

Here's how you lay out the finger joints

First I ran it through the planer to get an even thickness and lighten the box weight some. There was also a little wane that I needed to smooth out too. I squared the end of the board, the first piece cut off was the top. Remember, I wanted continuous grain to wrap the sides of the box. Then I used the thickness from the top to gauge the finger size. I wanted the fingers to be proud out of the corners. Remember you want the long sides to contain the fingers that cover the top and bottom of the joints, and you need any interval size that will give you an odd number of fingers, I chose 5 fingers at 1" each to keep the math easy. Lay out the fingers on the board before you cut, allow extra length to cover the kerf of the saw blade and some sanding, and draw out the layout above. Then cut pieces to length on the miter saw, then cut out the fingers on the band saw.

Fingers are all cut out

Takes a lot of sanding to make everything fit

with the top on - just a dry fit

I used a roundover bit on the top

with the lock and clock from amazon

I ran the top through the router table with a roundover bit to put a nice dressed edge on it. After cutting out the finger joints on the bandsaw, I had to do a lot of sanding to custom fit those things. It took forever. You really have to put a lot of work into those joints to get a tight fit.

I didn't get any good pictures of it, but to get a good bottom you have to cut a slot into the bottom of the side boards before final assembly. I used the table saw for this, better to use the router table if you can. I cut the groove about 1/2" up from the bottom of the boards, then cut a rabbet into the bottom board which is 3/4" thick. This means after fitting, there will be another 1/4" of the bottom sticking out - you don't want to see this in the final product! I used a raised panel bit in the router table to cut an extra part away from the bottom of the bottom. It hides the visibility completely! So after you get that fit inside of the groove, you have a final fit that is ready for glue.

In the clamps for the glue up - no metal in this box yet!

You can see the bottom in there now

with the hinges and latch in place - see how the bottom floats?

We put a black felt liner in the bottom with batting to cushion the wine

now with more clock

The finished product on the counter at the engravers shop

In the end, I think I gave Mike the heirloom quality box that he wanted. Perhaps it could have been nicer, some of the design details could have been different. Everyone designs boxes like this to be slightly unique. I absolutely love the way this one turned out. See how when it's sitting on the counter it looks like it's floating? that's the 1/4" extra thickness sticking out of the bottom board. I've been wanting to use that detail for years. More importantly Mike absolutely loved it, and I believe his bride did as well. I hope they have many happy years together and get to enjoy this box for a long, long time.

update: I forgot to mention that I finished this box by sanding everything inside and out with 80, 120, 180, 220, and 320 grit sandpaper, then added 7 coats of tung oil buffing with 0000 steel wool in between each coat. The end result was super smooth!

Some Milling

Quick post - I had to take out a dogwood tree and the logs ended up kind of long and straight-ish. I thought maybe I could try my hand at milling them up on the table saw. Dogwood isn't exactly supposed to be worth cutting into boards but I thought I could try anyway just to see if it would work. I started with this

Couple of logs

in the end, I ran it through the table saw a couple of different ways, split in half, and ended up with a handful of boards.

Not a lot, they aren't in great shape, still some bark on there. I could actually see water coming out of the boards while they were on the table saw, that's how green it was. After letting these dry out for a few months I'll run it through the planer and see what happens. Maybe I can get a picture frame out of it or something.

Couple of Tables

Made a couple of really cool tables recently, since I worked on them at the same time I figured I would blog about them at the same time.

I made a live edge slab table for my front porch that turned out great. So great in fact, other people wanted some. When we got that slab, there were 3 others in the stack so they all made their way back to my shop eventually. Then, we had some trees taken down in the front yard, and I got my little electric chainsaw out and cut a cookie off of one of the stumps. That turned out to be pretty interesting by itself!

before the power planer? hard to tell here

The cookie

because you haven't seen my face for a while - still in tank tops in October

that's a lot of polyurethane, y'all

 Yeah, that last picture has the floating shelves for my youngest, the next pine slab, and the cookie all getting polyurethane at the same time.Pretty interesting

To prep these live edge slabs, you have to (stay with me here) work the wood. I start with a power planer to get level faces, and a spokeshave to debark the sides. Once you can get all of the parts relatively level, it's time to start smoothing. For the flat faces, I start with 80 grit on the belt sander, then 120 grit. The live edge parts still have to be smoothed over, but you don't want to make them flat. Leave the interesting parts and some color. Next I hit 180 grit paper on the random orbit sander on all sides, then 220 grit.

Then you start in with the polyurethane. Put about 5 coats of the wipe-on stuff on the bottom, sometimes hitting the sides too. Then put at least 8 coats on the top, 10 would be best, again hitting the sides. So the live edge sides get doubled up some.

I didn't get any finished pictures of the big slab, but I put some of the same hairpin legs on it as the first table I did. the cookie got pipe legs, I think it turned out pretty good!

Installing the legs

These turned out great! It's a nice addition to the porch, the pipe legs let me get the table exactly level, and the hairpin legs look great too. These were both really fun builds.

Muscadine's gone, man

I finally finished setting up the boat building area next to the deck. Still need a couple of strong friends to help me move that thing over there, but at least there are now rocks on the ground. Here's the before:

A loaded set of vines in the summer

6 vines on 3 trellis

starting to come down

When my grandfather retired he moved to a farm and grew muscadines. Every house we move into I plant vines, they take a few years for the grapes to come in. This time I planted some of the same varieties that he grew. The reality is that these would produce tons of grapes at a very small size and the bugs or birds would get them all. Every year it looks like I will fill 5 gallon buckets with these things, and I get nothing in the end. This year I got 4 grapes. From all 6 vines, not even 4 grapes per month. 4 grapes total. I actually left the front trellis standing for about 2 months longer than I really wanted just to let the last 2 grapes ripen. they were delicious. And I still cried every time I cut one of the vines down from missing my grandfather so much. He passed away 21 years ago from cancer and it still hurts.

Small, not ripe

getting there

After building the porch, it created a bottleneck between the brick column, the rain chain, and the first trellis. After I took down the back few trellis' I was able to build that deck to assemble and paint furniture (that's working out really well). So the bottleneck had to be opened up.

No more vines, and a teenager surfacing a slab table

I did actually connect those lines of rocks too

Eventually we are going to landscape this yard around the porch, and put in a brick paver pathway from the driveway all the way to the shed. Right now we're enjoying decorating the porch, and I'm super busy building stuff.

For fall, all setup for thanksgiving

and all lit up for Christmas!

Next Christmas we'll have some trees, shrubs, and mulch in there.