Dan

Christmas Traditions

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Dec 232012
 

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! I love this time of year. There are many wonderful traditions surrounding the many holidays that coexist at the end of the calendar. It seems everyone has something to celebrate. Whatever your inclination, I hope this time of year is wonderful for you and yours.

Growing up, my family had so many traditions around Christmas. We used to hike into the woods and cut down a Christmas tree (always cedar). There was inevitably a bare side we had to disguise with something. Christmas morning, we had to make our beds, get dressed, make breakfast and have the table ready before we could wake Mom and Dad. Then we had to eat breakfast together before we could go see the tree and what Santa had brought. What an excruciating experience for a young child! Those few minutes seemed like weeks to me.

Many of my childhood traditions have hung around for my own family. We have a caroling party every year. We invite a few families over and we wander the neighborhood, singing to anyone who will listen. Once we get cold, we head back to the house for lots of goodies and hot chocolate. I remember doing this for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, we did it Christmas Eve, probably as a method of killing time and tiring us kids out. I remember some of our neighbors checking with Mom and Dad early in the month to make sure we were coming, as “it wasn’t Christmas without the Strattons coming to sing.”

Another tradition is having little green army men hiding in our Christmas tree. That started the year Toy Story came out and our son received a Bucket Of Soldiers. Santa Claus took a few extra minutes out of his schedule to hide them all over the tree. The tradition stuck. Every year, no matter how much I protest, soldiers show up in our tree. We are down to only one this year, but he is on guard, up near the top, next to a silver ball. His lonely vigil is almost sad, yet wonderful. I hope we don’t lose this one.

That is the challenge for this week. Honor your family traditions. Make a few new ones. Step outside your comfort zone. Let us know your favorite traditions we might incorporate ourselves. What are your favorite memories? Please share!

 Posted by at 6:00 am

Cutting Boards: Finishing Up

 Social Woodworking  No Responses »
Jul 252012
 

If you are just joining us, we are building cutting boards in a concept I call social woodworking. First, we planned them and then went shopping for wood. After cutting wood strips, we assembled the boards. Today, we finish them up. If you would like to buy a cutting board, they are available in the Store. 

To finish up our cutting boards, we next round over the edge and corners. To finish over the corners, I loaded a 1/2″ round-over bit in my router and mounted it in the table. To round over the corners, I stood the boards on edge and ran them through the router.
 The result is a nice, round corner.  
 Next, we want to round over the edges to make them easy to pick up and keep them from splintering. Rounded edges are visually appealing, too. I like to have the edge rounded over to nearly half the width. These boards ended up about 3/4″ thick. If I used a 3/8″ round over bit, it would have left the edge looking like a half circle (3/8″+3/8″=3/4″). To leave a slight flat spot on the edge, I used a 1/4″ bit (1/4″+1/4″=1/2″ leaving 1/4″ flat side). It adds a little more “bulk” to the look of the board.
 As you can see, there are a few sides to smooth over. It takes awhile. There are some burn marks on the corners. They are a result of my not moving the wood through the router bit quickly enough. Since It was on edge, I moved it slowly to control it better. However, the slow speed allowed heat to build up and the wood burned. It is easy to take off the burn marks with sandpaper.  
  Speaking of sanding, let’s do some. You can see the nicely rounded edges and corners. Looks much nicer. I used some 100 grit sandpaper in palm sander and took off all the burn marks and the other unevenness. The results were very nice. I could have sanded them with a higher grit, but honestly, it doesn’t make that much difference in a cutting board  used in a kitchen. These aren’t fine furniture. 100 grit sanding is good enough.
 Here is a great picture of the edge of a board. You can see where the 1/4″ flat side has some burn marks from the table saw on it. I was able to quickly remove these with the sander. I don’t know what I would do without a power sander. It takes forever by hand.  
  With the sanding done, it is time to apply some finish. Cutting boards are used around food, of course, so we need a food safe finish. There are a few to choose from. I like mineral oil because it is available everywhere, inexpensive and completely safe. Walnut is another I have heard of being used. I have a friend with an allergy to walnuts, so I never really warmed to using it for fear of causing someone harm. Mineral oil’s downside is it doesn’t last very long. To keep a board looking its best, it will need a thin coat of mineral oil rubbed on every few months or so.
Mineral oil is dead easy to apply. Pour a small amount on the board. Take a paper towel, fold or wad it up and rub.  
   You can see how quickly the beauty of the wood appears with just a little oil on it. This is the first coat of oil of three or four I apply when finishing it for the first time. It will soak into the wood a little more with each application.
 It is quite therapeutic to apply finish this way. There is something about watching the oil absorb into the surface and the way it feels in my hand. Sometimes I think I perhaps do it a little too much, but it can’t hurt the wood. Get yourself a board and some mineral oil. It really helps to remove the stress of a rough day.  
 Here are the finished boards. They turned out very nice. There are five different patterns to choose. Which do you like the best? I would really like to hear your favorite. Let me know in the comments, please. If you would like to buy one, they are available in the store.

Cutting Board Pattern 1

Cutting Board Pattern 2

Cutting Board Pattern 3
 

Cutting Board Pattern 4

Cutting Board Pattern 5

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Cutting Boards: Let’s Get Gluing

 Social Woodworking  2 Responses »
Jul 242012
 

If you are just joining us, we are building cutting boards in a concept I call social woodworking. First, we planned them and then went shopping for wood. Last time we started cutting. If you would like to buy a cutting board, they are available in the Store. 

Now that we have a lot of wood strips, the next task is to lay them out in an appealing design. I played around with several. Every four foot long set ended up being different. I like variety. Here is the first one, all laid out on the end of the table saw. It usually doubles as a workbench quite often.
Once I get a design I like, I clamp it to keep things from shifting while moving it around. I really like this design. Lots of little strips that show off the contrasting colors of wood. I make the designs symmetrical around a center board. It is more pleasing to my eye than an asymmetrical design.
Next, we glue it all together. Time is against us. The glue starts drying quickly and all the strips need a layer of glue and to be placed in the clamps before the first strip’s glue dries. I called for reinforcements for this step. My wife and son helped me with the process.First, we squeeze a line of wood glue onto the strip. There is a fine line between too much and too little glue. Both make for weak joints. The right amount just covers the entire strip and just barely squeezes out when clamp pressure is applied.
Here is a new invention I love. I used to use my finger or a cheap brush to spread the glue. Both were messy. This year for my birthday, my wife bought me a silicon glue brush. This is wonderful! It evenly spreads the glue out. When I’m finished, I let the glue dry in the bristles. In a couple days, I just pop the dried glue out without any trouble at all. Best birthday present!The brush really speeds up the process and helped us get the wood into the clamps before the glue started to dry too much.  
   Forgive me for not taking more pictures of the gluing process. We were pushing hard to get it done quickly.This is actually two sets of boards loaded in together. We just left two boards without glue between them so they wouldn’t stick together.The clamps may need some explanation. These are three way clamps that apply pressure from all sides. The top and bottom bars are made from rock maple. As the a black end pieces push inward form the edges, the scissor action pulls the bars together and flattens the boards being glued. It isn’t perfect, but it makes table tops and, in this case, cutting boards much closer to perfectly flat and reduces the mount of sanding later.I have two sets of bars for the clamps. This is the short set and allows about 20 inches of width. On the shelf behind, you can see the long bars I use for wider pieces.
Here is another look at the clamps from the other end. I had lined up the ends on the other side so I could find long pieces on this side suitable for handles.  
   After a couple hours in the clamps, I took the boards out and let them dry further overnight. Looking good! I was surprised how much glue this project required. I bought a brand new bottle with the wood. I usually go through one bottle in about a year’s worth of projects. I ran out on the last cutting boards and had to make an emergency trip to the store to finish up.
The next step is to make the boards flat. The problem with gluing up lots of little strips is they are never the same width. The easiest way I have found to do it is to use a planer. It has a set of long knives that spin above the board, shaving off the top little bit as it is fed through. The glue is hard on the blades, but in this case, it is worth it. Notice the 4 inch tube coming off the right. It is hooked to a very large vacuum and sucks up all the shavings.  
   Lots of shavings! The tube popped off and by the time I grabbed the camera, it had covered the top of the table saw. I ended up with about 30 gallons of shavings by the time I was finished.
Here is a good shot of a board making its way out of the planer. As you can see, it is slowly becoming flater and nicer looking. There is still a couple places that need some more work, in the middle and near the end. A planer is very loud and slow, but is us much faster than a hand planer and sandpaper, which is the “old school” method.  
  All done. Sixteen square feet of cutting board finished up and ready to be cut into individual boards.
 Here is another shot. I love how nicely they turned out. The grain and color really set each other off. I think they are going to be gorgeous, if I do say so myself.  
  First up, we trim off the ends. These are much too wide for the chop saw. I have to do this on the table saw. I have a miter gauge to help me. I don’t have a good picture of it (yet), but think of it as a fence that has a bar perpendicular to the face that runs in the groove in the table. The fence supports the wood slab and makes it easy to cut off the ends at 90 degrees to the edges.
 Here is a shot of a cutting board being separated from his brothers. The black mechanism is a miter gauge. It is finally starting to look like what we want.  

Come back tomorrow for the last installment. We will round over the edges, sand and finish them up. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment and I’ll answer it. As always, if you would like to buy one or more of the boards, they are available in the store. See you soon!

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