Cheese board madness continues. Continuing from Part 1, I chopped down the remaining over sized boards into a pile of nicely sized cheese boards.
They got a good sanding, a round over on the router table, and yet more sanding. Who doesn’t love sanding.
I love how everything changes as soon as you hit it with oil. Some of the purple heart turns brown, but otherwise everything else deepens, darkens, and becomes more wonderful.
I made a comprehensive video for the care and feeding of wooden cutting boards.
Long grain boards have grain running parallel to the table. They are not good for chopping but look gorgeous as a cheese board or display platter.
End grain boards have the grain running up and down with respect to the table. They are excellent for general kitchen cutting of meats and veggies.
Long grain boards should be oiled occasionally with either mineral oil or an oil with wax.
End grain boards must be oiled regularly with mineral oil to keep the water and bacteria out. Use a generous amount of oil flooded across the surface and let it soak in.
In both cases if water appears to be soaking into the board, it is time to oil.
Both board types can be cleaned in the same fashion. Use hot water and soap to clean the surface as you would anything else. Do not soak or immerse the board, and never use the dish washer. Dry immediately after cleaning.
A few days before Christmas we noticed Honey the bunny was plucking some of her fur out. Oh no, that is nesting behavior and indicates a pregnant bun. A quick trip to the vet later, and we had this: 
If you look carefully you can see 5 little spines and skulls in there. Later that night, she popped and our collection of rabbits grew.
Two of the poor things didn’t survive the first 24 hours. I don’t know what was wrong with them, but I guess this is why they have big litters. After a few days they started getting fuzzy and growing rapidly
Unfortunately the little black one was lagging behind. We don’t know why, but after a 12 days he was half the size of his siblings. We started trying to feed him and keep him inside on a warming pad. It was not to be. He died before two weeks hit.
On the bright side the other two appear very happy and healthy. At about 16 days they started opening their eyes and exploring a bit. They are fuzzy, playful, curious and very jumpy! We dubbed them Luke and Leia in honor of them being twins and the new star wars movie. Check out this video of them being cute as can be.
Papa Tyrion got his snipping moved up and is not going to be making any more bunnies in this lifetime.
My latest round of cheese boards appeared very successful, but it wasn’t all perfect. I bought a few cutting board templates from woodcraft and was some fun board. For example this pepper below would have looked great red padauk. 
The idea is that you double sticky tape this MDF shape down to a piece of wood. Use a saw to cut away most of the excess, then use a flush trim router bit to match the wood to the template. That was the idea at least, it had issues.
Everything was going ok until I got to this thicker area. The bit dug in and shifted the pattern despite all the tape. Ok, no big deal, I just need to go slow, and I can smooth that out on the sander.
Nope. It caught again on the other side and split off a big hunk of the board. This one can’t be salvaged any more.
Things didn’t go well with the padauk, but it some odd grain in places and that shape had tight turns. I decided to try a simpler fish design in walnut. There were no tight spots or harsh curves, so I figured this would work better. Plus I did a good job getting everything really close with the bandsaw.
That looks good, let’s give it a go.
Even with the edges tightly trimmed it still dug in hard and shifted the template. I used a lot of carpet tape, and bought a decent template router bit. No idea what the problem is, but I would issue some caution to anyone wanting to try this for themselves.
Our new living room deserves a really epic picture for above the couch. We went to ikea to get a copy of their giant wave poster, but they were out. Not deterred we checked the as-is section. Ta-da, there was an assembled copy of exactly what we wanted. The only problem was the fact that it is over 4 feet wide and 6 feet long assembled and had a tear out on the one side. I figured out we could disassemble it, cut down the frame, and re-assemble with the blemish cropped. After some negotiations we got it for half price. Here she is.
And here is the blemish. The scale is hard to tell, but the circle is about the diameter of a quarter, and there are some stains around it.
The frame is simple extruded aluminum with plastic corners. The canvas wraps around the frame and is held in place with plastic wedges. A hack saw took a quick 5 inches off the width, and we were ready to re-assemble.
Once put together I trimmed up the excess from the right side and installed it on the wall. The picture added a lot of character without making the room feel any darker.
Always check the as-is section of ikea! A few minutes of work got us an otherwise out of stock item for half price.
Another holiday break has rolled around which means it is time for me to get off of work and kick my own butt with some serious house renovations! This year, the living room. The before pictures make it look a little more like a dark dungeon than it really was, but not much more. Dark paint, dark flooring and light bulbs that were a little under powered.
The remainder of the vinyl flooring came up, and the paint came down. Originally in the house a roll on orange peel texture was added. I don’t know if it reached the end of its life, or wasn’t mixed well or what. It was turning to powder, and the paint would peel off in sheets if you looked at it wrong. I peeled it all off and sanded the texture right back down to the drywall.
Lots of hole patching, and a coat of primer later and the walls are starting to look a lot nicer. The previous owner had used a considerable number of drywall anchors for me to fill! I was able to finish a majority of the tile in a day which meant I couldn’t do anything else… Time to go see Star Wars!
With the tile able to be walked on I finished the painting, worked on trim, and eventually did the grout. Grout and baseboards really make the room feel like something.
There always ends up being a day of painting trim, touching up this, reinstalling covers on that and such. Worth all the little efforts.
Finally after a little over a week of solid work we were able to push the big soft couches back into our little space. I missed our comfortable evening hangout spot more than I thought I would.
This room feels a thousand times brighter. The light tile, bright walls and new phillips daylight LED bulbs make it feel like a million bucks. Not bad considering the material cost was only about 700 bucks. Now, by contrast, our kitchen looks even worse. Oh well, next year’s project!
In the beginning of December I took a look at my wood pile and decided to kill two birds with one stone. First, get rid of a lot of one off boards I have lying around, and two, make a ton of gifts. I made a big pile of handles for pizza cutters, ice cream scoops and the like on my lathe. Every once and a while I want a quick gift, and bam, there it is. Lets start with my smattering of wood.
I later added my roasted hardwood to the pile. Everything got planed down to an even thickness. I started to take a picture of each board glueup, but I started going through them so quickly I forgot the pictures. The plan was to run them through the thickness planer, so I didn’t need the top or bottom to be perfectly aligned. This let me just use side clamps and ignore cawls. It was quick and easy, and I had enough clamps to do 4 or 5 sets at a time.
I glued together everything I was going to make in three big waves. Many of them I made long enough to cut into 2 or 3 cutting boards. Much more efficient than doing each one individually.
After glue-up
Cleaned up from the power planer
I took about half the pile and moved forward. I was running out of time before a big house renovation and wanted some to get finished before Christmas. Everything got squared up on the table saw, and a nice round-over on the router table.
After a minimal sanding on the faces and round overs, they were ready to get oiled. I like to use howard’s butcher block conditioner on these long grain cutting boards. It has a little wax in it which works better for long grain in my opinion. I love how the colors come out when you just start to hit them with oil. Below is a shot of each one half oiled so you can see the before and after color.
I have already given most of these away, and will have to get started on the next batch soon. I also plan on making a nice video to discuss the care and feeding of these cutting boards for anyone that has one.
Tis the season for merriment, delight, and cooking wood. No, I haven’t been hitting the egg nog too hard, but I did read a great article in popular woodworking recently. It turns out you can roast some hardwoods in your oven and get a lot of great effects out of them. I started with cherry (left) and maple (right).
It turns out they couldn’t all fit in my oven. I might have to get a rib rack or something to stand them all up next time.
In they went for 4 hours at 360F. There was an odd smell, and a mild smoke that was given off in the process. Luckily the weather was good enough to have the doors open. I wouldn’t attempt this if you don’t have some means of ventilation.
The results were quite striking. Everything got darker, but it didn’t do so evenly. Some boards have a really neat gradient across them. The insides are a bit lighter than the surface, but not a lot. The cherry is my favorite!
Maple
Cherry
One issue with using roasting wood is warpage. I left them to re-stabilize in the shop for a few weeks before working with them. Regardless, they were warped and twisted, and had a lot of internal stresses on the table saw. Be really careful when cutting and make sure the splitter is properly in place.
I should be posting a project soon that used up some of these beauties.
My most wonderful wife has really knocked one out of the park by passing her Professional Engineering exam. It takes years of experience, many referrals, and an all day examination. Her year of studying really paid off. Once you are a “Professional Engineer” you can legally put PE after your name, kind of like being a doctor.
I thought she could use a new name plaque for work that showed off her accomplishment. The day she left for the test I found a nice looking piece of padauk, her favorite wood, and got started.
My first attempt was to mill in the letters and infill with black color. My black infill resin has gone bad. It came out kind of chunky and left a ton of voids in the infill.
After that failure I planed off the messed up inlay, and started over. Instead I tried painting the top surface black, then did a relief cut around the letters. It was going ok, but the edges were left with a lot of fuzz and fraying. Sanding the edges was ruining the black surface, so I planed all the paint off. It looks good as all one color, so lets go with it! Tons of sanding the mill marks off later, and I had this.
It took a few weeks of working on this while she was out of the house, but luckily for me it takes the PE board months to get back about the results. Finally this past week she got the got the good news and I was able to deliver her new desk trophy. Congrats dear!
The last two years I have used a pair of red and green converse to give myself some festive footwear. I took it to a whole new level with some zazzy laces. 
Barely a craft project, but I am so happy with these that I had to share. I have an alternate left/right pair so I can switch off every day. Next year? Bells!
Kilted Craft Works 