American Black Walnut Tea Tray

[marcros]

This is a present for an 80th Birthday. Size is 480 x 350mm, sides 70mm tall, and 12mm thick. Base 8mm. It is designed to hae a couple of cups and saucers on it, perhaps a plate of biscuits. Nothing too heavy or large!

Next jobs are to plane the mating surface of the 2 base panels, and to cut the handles in the end. Then it will have to go on hold, whilst I wait on some inlaying router bits and the parts for a dremel router base. The base will be raised a fraction to fit the 1/4" grove g=created by the record 043. I wanted to use this plane so I could go carefully.

There is to be initials and a date put onto the long side, or sides. I may do a band of inlay around the top inside- I am yet to decide if it will be a bit much. The inlay will be boxwood stringing, because I have some.

I may dye the wood to even out the colour a bit, then I think i will give it multiple coats of tru-oil. I may have to mask off the lettering with some sanding sealer. I will try dyeing some scrap and seeing what it looks like.

 

[No skills]

Looks good so far, band clamp looks very handy for that. Done some 'router' work with dremel type machines a couple of times, their light weight seems to make them prone to following grain direction or being a bit skittish.

 

[marcros]

i have to say, that is the part i am not looking forward to. The boxwood lines that i have are 1.75mm square, so I am aiming for 1.8mm x about 1.5mm deep channel- ie single router width. I dont have much margin for error- although i have some maple veneer, so if i go a bit wider, i could cut some from that. If the absolute worst happens, I will have to put a silver plaque over the attempt! I have some scrap to practice on, and will try weighting the base a bit, see if it helps. the curved letters and numbers will be the worst.

I cant thing how else to so it, unless i mark it out with a scalpel both sides, and flick the short grain in between the knife marks. I will try that the next time i am out there. Any other suggestions?

I have been playing with dyes tonight on an offcut to even out the colour to a dark milk chocolate and to warm it up. The combination of transtints: dark walnut brown, red mahogany, and honey amber look good- more or less what I wanted. Wet sanded tru-oil on top fills the grain well, but i cant quite decide whether i prefer a coat or two of shellac before the oil. Going to put a couple more coats of oil on before i decide. Not many people seem to use dyes over here.

Clamp wise, i will go with the band clamps. I think i am going to use some veneer pins in half the mitre, snip off the heads and put the joint together- more for alignment than anything, i am not too keen on the clamp. I dont have any size 0 biscuits, and dont want to risk it blowing out the surface.

 

[devonwoody]

Myself I would accept the wood grain pattern as is, its natural.

Looking forward to seeing the finished tray.

 

[No skills]

A knife line will help for sure, maybe make the cut in two passes to get to depth - or maybe three, if you cut too shallow the bit wants to jump out the cut and too deep makes it follow the grain. Last thing I did was my daughters name in a toy box lid (routed out, filled with contrasting filled and then sanded) - knife/chisel and a lot of slow work with the dremel to define the edges.

Not sure how I'd deal with the glue up, might try to dry assemble it with tape on the joints to line it all up, unfold it, glue the joints and fold it back up.

FWIW