Archive for July, 2009
Getting Re-focused
I haven’t hit a lick in the last four days because I somehow found myself in Ft Walton Beach Florida over the weekend. My wife is originally from there and went down on Wednesday to hang out with her family. I headed down Friday and chilled out all weekend.
The weather was wonderful all weekend and the seafood was abundant. We have a little local place on Santa Rosa Island called “High Tide” that we have been eating at for 30 years. It’s not fancy, but the seafood is fresh and wonderful. It’s one of those places where you feel right at home in shorts and a t-shirt. We did our normal shopping routine in Destin at the Silver Sands outlet stores and spent a couple days hanging out at Destin Commons. The water in Destin was blue and clear, and the boats were out in numbers.
I can’t think of many other places where I prefer to get my batteries recharged.
Today’s Activities
I finally got the custom board done today. These extra large boards are a challenge for me because I am set up for smaller ones. For example, my drum sander is 16” wide, but is an open end style so I can do up to 32” wide by making two passes. This method requires me to take very light passes each time so one side doesn’t get ahead of the other. It also takes a real steady hand to make sure it starts through the sander level. At 28 pounds, a good grip is warranted. It turned out smooth and perfectly flat, so I was very pleased with my efforts today.
My next challenge is to figure out how I am going to package it to ship to California. I carry shipping boxes for my standard boards, but not one for this size. Like everything else, I am sure I will come up with something.
Learning New Things
I’ve been a full-time woodworker for almost 8 years, so I’m pretty experienced in most areas. Over time, projects become easier because in many cases, I have done that same type of project for other customers. It’s kind of like when I started selling custom closets. The very first one took twice as long to install as they do today, because I have a better and more efficient process. I use to take a long time to resolve an unexpected challenge during installation, but there are very few unexpected surprises today because I have seen most of these problems before and know immediately how to correct it.
The same holds true for cutting boards. I have made hundreds of boards over the past couple of years in all different sizes and patterns. However, the current one I am working on has presented new challenges.
This is a commission piece that is 25” x 32” x 1.5”. It is a monster of a board and the largest one I have made to date. Because of the size, I had to make the strips up in sections. In fact, I have had to do just about everything in sections. I probably stared at it for about 30 minutes today, trying to figure out the best process to apply the glue. I knew it would be a longer process than I was use to with my normal smaller boards, but I needed to make sure the glue didn’t start drying too quick on the front end before I got to the tail end. I can’t use my regular clamps and cawls, so I had to break out the long clamps and piece together cawls to keep the strips from slipping when applying pressure.
Tomorrow will be the defining moment when I run this monster through my drum sander. I have a Jet 16/32 sander so I will have to use the open end function and make double passes. The big challenge is holding the board steady during this operation.
This is the board drying in the clamps today.
Large Glue Up
Latest Happenings
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last entry because I just didn’t have anything to say. I’ve been lazy since getting back from Tennessee and haven’t had anything going in the shop, by my choice. I may have experienced a little burn out because every time I went out to the shop, I couldn’t make myself do anything constructive. I have a show at Virginia-Highland tomorrow and I have a lot of product, so I really didn’t need to do anything except pack the truck.
I received an order for a very large custom cherry board this week. I made a little progress on it today, but realized I didn’t have enough 6/4 cherry, so I have to make a trip to the lumber yard Monday. This thing will be 25” x 32”. It’s going to be pretty heavy, but should handle any job thrown at it.
I got a chance to play around with some new cutting board designs this week also. A few of them look promising, and hopefully I will get some feedback on them tomorrow. One of the designs has been done by many, but I have never done this zig-zag design before. It involves cross cutting a glued up board at 50 degrees to the saw blade. Then, like the end grain boards, flip every other one and glue the whole thing back together.
This is a small 6” x 10” board made from cherry, walnut, and maple. I can already see the possibilities by playing with different wood combinations and angles.
Zig Zag
