USA or China?

Ok, so you can buy a lazy susan at Wal-Mart for $20 or can buy one from me for $75.  Is there really that much difference?  I happen to think so.  I detest buying anything from China because I know that some poor person is making fifty cents a day making these things in huge volumes.  Of course, it goes without saying that the quality of their products just doesn’t meet even the basic standards.

A couple of years ago, my wife bought a bamboo lazy susan from Wal-Mart for our kitchen table.  It worked fine and served the purpose until recently when the top just fell off scattering all the stuff we keep on it all over the place.  Upon closer inspection I was shocked at the simplistic and cheap construction.  The bottom was attached to the top with one screw and used a cheap plastic bearing assembly that was really too small for the top.  I suspect this was the reason it was leaning slightly to one side.

This is what it looked like.

Of course, this confirmed the country of origin and the culprit selling this junk.

This is mine.  Notice the difference?

Aside from the fact that I use figured domestic and exotic woods to make these very unique, I also use higher quality bearing assemblies.  The bearing assembly is attached with 8 screws, four on the bottom and four on the top.  So when considering your next lazy susan,  ask yourself if you want one that you will throw away in a couple of years, or one that your grandchildren will one day be using?

Making An End Grain Board

The most popular questions at my shows seem to be “How do you make these end grain boards?” or “What is an end grain board?”.   I also spend a lot of time explaining why there is a significant price difference between the face grain and end grain boards.  In this post I am including a video by Marc Spagnuolo, affectionately known in woodworking circles as the Wood Whisperer.  Mark has a wonderful web site dedicated to woodworking, and people like me get a lot of enjoyment out of his articles and videos.  There are many different design layouts for end grain boards, but Mark came up with one a while back that has become very  popular with my customers.

This video is in two parts with the first one covering the construction and the second covering how to season the board.  This video is part 1 and shows the most important aspect of what it takes to make a board.  The only thing Mark doesn’t show is selecting the wood, planning it down to size, and cutting the strips to width before the glue up process.   This is simple stuff, but just adds more time and labor to the process.  Enjoy!

Wind, Tent, and a Sledghammer

This weekend is the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Conyers International Horse Park.  I spent most of today over there setting up my tent, twice.   I got there around 11 AM and had the tent set up in thirty minutes, but a big gust of wind came through and turned it over.  My tent is a heavy professional model which I bought so this type of thing would not happen, but never the less, it did.  This was with 400 pounds of concrete weights on it!   I had to disassemble it just to get the top turned back over and sitting back on the asphalt.   I didn’t take pictures because I was too mad and embarrassed by the whole thing.

The wind just kept pounding the area and numerous tents went flying all over the place.  I have stakes for securing it the ground, but not to asphalt.  So I ran over to Home Depot and bought heavy steel stakes and a sledgehammer.   After pounding these stakes into the asphalt, raising the tent again, and tying it off, I was just about out of juice.  My plan was to have all my products set up and ready to go, but I only had enough energy left to get the tables and shelves set up.  I’m going back over early in the morning to set the rest of the products up.  Fortunately my trailer is sitting about 30 feet behind the booth, so I don’t have to carry them very far.  I had planned to be back home by 2 PM, but I didn’t pull into the driveway until 5.  Thank goodness for the crock pot!  There was a beef roast and potatoes waiting on me that I started this morning.

Saturday is supposed to be nice and sunny, but the forecast is for rain and thunderstorms for Sunday.  This will probably make for a packed show tomorrow.

New Bookmarks

My most popular product last year was the wood bookmarks.  They flew out of my booth by the handful and continue to sell well online this year.  Because of the popularity, I have added a few new ones to my normal selection.

I hunt around through my local lumber supplier, as well as Ebay and other places for unique exotic woods that I think would make eye catching bookmarks.  I let some of my wood finds stand on their own, and others will receive some domestic trim pieces from my scrap pile.  Many of the pieces I use are purchased as pen blanks or turning blanks.  They range in length from 5 to 6 inches which is the reason they tend to vary in length.

The ones in the picture are the new ones I have added this year.  From left to right are:

1. Quilted maple and jatoba
2. Burl walnut, cherry, and maple
3. Florida grapefruit walnut and jatoba
4. Hawaiian mango
5. Quilted maple and bloodwood

The Big Leaf Maple

As a follow up to a couple blogs back, “Maple, The Untold Story”, I finally got a few 16” lazy susans finished using the Oregon Big Leaf maple that I scored a couple of weeks ago.  It’s interesting that I used figured West coast maple for the top, and figured East coast maple for the bottom.  It’s kind of a East meets West thing.  These are also listed for sale on Etsy.  I have two more 12” ones finished, but I am waiting on the smaller lazy susan bearings to get here.  I use 9” bearings for the 16” and 4” bearings for the 12”.    These are stunning.

I also made up some wine bottle balancers from the narrow pieces of Oregon maple.  These actually work and turned out really nice.  It amazes me how stunning this maple is once it gets hit with the oil finish.

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