Like A Box of Chocolates

If you will pardon the cliché, wood is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.   I buy most of my wood rough, as it comes from the saw mill, and plane it myself because it’s less expensive this way.  The downside is you can’t really see the grain patterns in rough wood.  It has heavy saw marks, fuzzy texture, and is usually very dirty.  It’s not until I run each board through my planer that I can see what I bought.  I push the board into one side of the planer and anxiously watch as it comes out the other side.  Sometimes it’s ugly, but most of the time I get a nice piece of wood.  Occasionally, I get a surprising exceptional piece.

I was running some 6/4 walnut through my planer today was pleasantly surprised to see beautifully figured patterns come out the other end.  It’s always great to get figured wood for the price of non-figured.  Now I can’t decide what project I want to use it for.

These are both from the same board.  The one on the right is what it looked like as it came from the lumber yard.  The one on the left is after I ran one of the boards through the planer.  The one on the right looked very much the same way as the other one once it was planed.

Laid Back Day!

Every once in a while I get to take a break from making saw dust to work on related tasks that don’t require running a noisy saw and dust collector.  I just crank up my IPod, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy a quiet day.  Today I had to start putting the first of three or more finishing coats on a new group of bank boxes.   I’m anxious to get these finished because I am using Butternut and Quarter sawn oak in a few of the boxes for the first time and they are looking very promising.

Once the boxes had their first coats on, I started the ardent task of cleaning doors for these boxes.  I mixed up a batch of ammonia and Coca-Cola to soak the doors.  After about 30 minutes, I take them out and clean each one with a soft steel brush under running water.  Once dry, they get sprayed with a clear acrylic to keep them from tarnishing again, oil the locks, and tag each one with the combination.