I got one made like this years ago from one of my sisters, came from costplus or similar. My mother-in-law saw it and liked it, so I decided to make her one. And since I was making one….

I actually have ten of these assembled. They require lots of sanding; even a slight irregularity 1/64” or so makes it look weird. I quickly grew tired of that, so I finished the best four. The rest will be worked on later and will make birthday gifts or something. Or maybe next year’s Christmas presents if anyone particularly admires them.

The most complicated part was drilling all those holes, and keeping it straight which ones are which size, which way they are counterbored, which go through. Finding three different drill bits all roughly the same length so I didn’t have to re-do my setup and introduce errors was also a pain. The smallest one that the pegs are glued into was one with a hex shank for cordless drills.

I cut a set of blocks for my almost-two year old nephew over the summer. (Have you ever priced those things?!) Turns out adults like to play with them, too. Somewhere in my websurfing I stumbled across a set of “Executive Blocks.” It seemed like a good gift for our pastor. We envision him sitting in his office trying to write a homily and suffering from writer’s block. So he can play with these to exercise the other side of his brain. And if he doesn’t care for the blocks, he can use the box to store his collar tabs, or all the other junk his parishioners give him.

The box is Cherry, to match the pews in the church. The blocks are all sorts of stuff: cedar (left unfinished), walnut, oak, maple, lacewood, some scrap stuff I have no idea, and olive. The black ones are ebonized mystery wood, stained with india ink. I used General salad bowl finish, since I had plenty left from my nephew’s Christmas projects.

I cut a slit in the wood, then cut off half of that on a bevel. I shimmed the bevel with some .020” styrene and glued the piece back in. The rest is pretty standard, a rabbet for the bottom, mitered corners, sand and partially finish. Then I carefully sliced through the sides to the slit to free up the top. Then the rest of the finishing. The mitered edge keeps the top centered, doesn’t need hardware. I cut it using a thin kerf blade on my micromark miniature table saw.

Finally finished the mission style trivet I made for my wife for Christmas. It should have been easy, but trying to work on it when she won’t suddenly walk in slows things down.

It’s some scraps of 3/4” Oak. I stained it using Minwax Golden Oak, just a little bit so it will match our kitchen table. 4 coats of General’s Salad Bowl Finish (It was already out for some other stuff). The tile is from the mission gift shop; my wife went to the Mission High School next door. I glued the tile in with gorilla glue and a huge stack of books for weight. The glue swelled up underneath and forced the tile up to level with the wood frame. Clever, huh? My rabbet is even, the tile is a bit irregular. The grout came from Home Depot. It’s some premixed stuff in a tub. Why they allow returns on half-used grout, I couldn’t guess. But they had a half-used tub with a markdown tag on it for 2 bucks.