A Fun Little Hobby

It's the little things that I really enjoy about this hobby of mine. What started as three simple pieces of Oak this morning, has now transitioned into a new item! pictures coming soon...

You Want a Cardio Workout?

Oh, I've got the workout for you! Grab yourself a palm sander (the manual kind, not some plug in jobbie) get three grits of paper (I used 100, 150 and 220) and something roughly the size of a cutting board. I bet you know where I'm going with this! After almost an hour of sanding down, not one, but two cutting boards, I'm covered in dust and sweating like a pig. And unlike Richard Simmons, I was listening to Metallica crank through the iPod rather than the oldies.

So I've got two boards that are ready to be wiped down with a tack cloth and have the first coat of oil applied.

oh, and my interview on LumberJocks has now been posted!

You Want to Interview Me?!?!

I was contacted the other day by Martin Sojka, the creator of LumberJocks.com. He asked me if I would be his next Jock to be interviewed! Trust me, I was just as shocked as you! I submitted my interview to him today, so I would expect it should be posted sometime this week. You can click here to go directly to the interviews page.

I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous about the whole thing. I don't have anywhere near the experience or skill that the other "Jocks" interviewed have got. But to be included with such an amazing group was not something I could pass up.

More Cuttingboards

I think I might have found something I'm good at. I can glue smaller boards together to form a larger flat (most of the times) board!!

Here are some new cuttingboards that I have in progress (though I'm not sure how well the fomatting is going to look):

This is the board that I was complaining about yesterday. That 32 grit sand paper (kinda like rubbing a handful of pebbles on the board) I picked up yesterday at Home Depot helped even things out a bit quicker.
Today I got the ends trimmed and evened off and I routered a 1/4" round-over on the edges.
This board is made up of Cherry, Walnut and Red Leaf Soft Maple.





This board, made of Cherry and Red Leaf Soft Maple, is next up in Line. I've arranged for the stripes to run the length of the board on this and the next few boards.
Tonight I planed the faces of each of the boards to get this one ready to be glued up. I hope to do the glue up tomorrow.







Here's a shot of one of three cuttingboards that I have rough cut. All three have the stripes running the length of the board and are all complosed of Walnut and Red Leaf Soft Maple. The other two have the outer edges starting with the maple.

All of the cuttingboards I have done and have in progress are roughly 11" x 15" x 1.5" in size.

Why is it...?

Why is it that the second version of a project always seems to be about 50 times harder than the first? It must be the woodworking God's way of keeping me in line. Making sure I'm not getting over-confident...

It's not that the new cutting board (go figure, I'm having trouble making a flat board!!) is coming out poorly, it's just that this one isn't going as smoothly as the first. My biggest problem, looking back on this project, is that I didn't pay as close attention to making sure that each strip was close enough in height. I've had some wicked hand planing and sanding to do over the past couple days.

After some focused work tonight, it's getting better though. Tomorrow should put me back on track.

Cuttingboard

Last night, I cut the board to final width, hand planed the highspots, routered a roundover on the edges and rough sanded the whole board. Tonight, I did the finish sanding and applied a coat of BLO (Boiled Linseed Oil) for the finish. I really like how the BLO shows off the grain of the walnut (the darker stripes) in this picture:


Here's a close-up that shows off the grain in the red leaf soft maple:


This was a fun little project to do. I think I'll be making more. Christmas is coming and there were several family members that showed some interest... we'll have to wait and see.