This was a quick production of serving pieces for a nice restaurant called Quince in san francisco. I was asked to make 28 of these pieces on a thursday night. I finished up the canapé pieces to deliver on friday and then got started on these after work. My neighbor didn’t like hearing the table saw cutting out the blanks around sunset on a friday night and told me so much, but I was just about finished and had to keep cutting for a few minutes, bless her heart.
Then I made a template to mark the centers of the holes with an awl. Just line up the template and poke two holes thirty times.
Holes bored with a 1 in. forstner bit. Keep the blanks on a piece of wood and the bit will cut clean through the backside. Don’t spin the bit too fast or it will burn the inside of the holes and sanding is a bitch.
Cut in half on the band saw. one piece becomes two!@
30 pieces now ready for finishing (if they ask for 28, make 30 just in case).
Finishing is the most tedious part. The sides were sanded up to 320 with an orbital, inside the groove was sanded by hand.
tmo the cat kept me company while sanding until he got bored and took a nap.
3 stages of finishing, back to front: raw wood sanded to at least 320, first coat of garnet shellac, a few coats of shellac and then a beeswax/oil rubbed in and polished off.
each piece is cleaned off before the shellac is applied. another coat or two and it’s sanded with 600 grit. the shellac keeps the walnut from absorbing too much oil and getting very dark.
each piece is then hand rubbed with a beeswax / mineral oil paste (1:5) and then buffed
These pieces are in service now, made to hold two rolls of something delicious.