| Blog series by ~Julie~ | updated 12-06-2011 02:30 AM | 4 parts | 7735 reads | 20 comments total |
Part 1: Preparing the Wood
This series of posts will show how I made four condiment totes for a local restaurant. I’m going to show most steps from rough wood to finished product. Most of you will find this basic, but hopefully I can help some beginners see how things are put together. The restaurant wanted holders for ketchup, mustard, relish and vinegar that the waitresses or waiters could take to the table with them. (In Canada, some of us like white vinegar on our fries. On my trips to the U. S., I hav...
Part 2: Cutting the side and end pieces
In the previous post (part 1) I showed how to prepare the wood for the four totes I am making. After the wood was resawn and cut apart with the handsaw it will have a slight ridge down the middle (and often a few scratches from the saw). You can remove the ridges, if you like, with a hand plane, but it’s not necessary. The wood is put through the planer until it reaches the desired thickness, which in my case, is 1/2” 6 pieces are needed for each tote, two sides,...
Part 3: Finishing the inside
Now that the sides, ends and bottom are cut I stain them, on the insides only, before putting the box of the tote together. It’s much easier to stain before glueing because trying to reach your hand inside a box and stain it is very difficult. With pine, I use flecto Varathane’s Gel Stain. It does not require any undercoating and always give me a streak-proof finish. Not all stains work well on pine but I have had great success with this. I rub it on with a piece of old t-s...
Part 4: Making the handle and finishing the tote
Now that we have the size of the handle piece, the actual handle has to be cut out of it.For now I keep the piece as a rectangle, and will do the angled sides after the handle is cut out. I’m using my router and a template guide to remove the area for the handle. First I need to make a template out of hardboard that is 11/32” larger than the actual size of the oval hole that I want. I determined a hole 3 1/2” long and 1 1/8” wide for the handle would be good for t...
