I see a lot of laminated cutting boards, spoons and other stuff in these boxes :).
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Another guy purchased an oak salad set. He said he makes bowls and would like to offer salad sets with his bowls made from the same wood as the bowls but has no interest in making them. I stopped by his place and now it looks like I have a quasi contract for multiple salad sets :).
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Even a flea market can pay off some times!

Thought I’d post the progress up to this point. I’m going to put this on the shelf for a while as I need to try to make a living here. Yes, I’ll keep y’all posted when I pick it up again.

Here is the steam/lamination setup. Again, as they say, you can never have too many clamps.

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It’s pretty obvious I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to steaming. I’ve come to the conclusion that, although my steam box got the wood hot enough, there just wasn’t enough steam to make the wood wet. The wood came out hot but mostly dry. My son came up with a good idea that I think I’ll build when I get the time. I’m going to mount 2 or 3 of hot water tank elements in an old propane bottle (I’m accustomed to cutting propane bottles – don’t do this at home unless you know what you are doing!) with a large vent on top (for the steam) and a condensation return line near the bottom. The elements will likely burn out quickly since they’re not designed for that level of heating but they’ll be replaceable and cheap.

Here’s the bent keel:

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And here’s why I can’t use it:

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The base is sectioned but too thin for biscuits so I had some trouble with it falling apart. My solution was to make flush biscuits (there’s probably another name for them).

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A close up:

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Sometimes when I’m trimming small parts I’ll use a 1.5” circular blade on a flex shaft. Here’s what happens when you’re in a hurry and not careful. The tape is holding a splint to keep my knuckle from opening the cut. The splint is made of a maple scrap, of course ;).

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Here’s where it ends, for now. The base is on and the outalls (the outer part of the gunnel) are temporarily mounted.

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There’s always a few gaps between the planks that have to be filled. I mixed up some filler using white wood glue (dries clear) and maple sanding dust to use as filler. I used epoxy and sanding dust when building the canoe and that worked much better than the glue. I think I’ll switch back. This shows the filler before it’s dry.

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And after it’s sanded.

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Of course, there’s always obstacles. On Sunday my wife took over part of my shop to assemble her new bee hive.

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You may have noticed the blue tape on the mold earlier. The reason I use it is to keep the shell from being glued to the mold. You can see here several spots where it stuck to the tape.

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This is roughly how it will look when done.

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Marking where the gunnels will go.

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The belt sander doesn’t work on the concave inside surface so I had to use the RO sander. That took a while. Here’s a shot of how rough the wood was.

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Here’s where I’m at now. Sanded to 150 inside and out and the base started.

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I want to put a keel on it that wraps from nose to bottom so I had to break down and build a steam box. I built one out of plywood 1’ X 1’ X 8’ but my Coleman stove doesn’t seem to be putting out as well as it used to so I couldn’t make enough steam to do any good. So I made a smaller one out of stove pipe. That seems to be working fairly well. Note the kettle modified with a piece of steel conduit and steel handle.

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Well, only one week to go. There’s still a lot of work to do…

At this point, things got pretty slow. While doing the tip, moving down as well as moving up, I could do 4 planks at a time and have the first one dry by the time I finished the 4th. Then I could start over and just keep going. Once the tip was done, I could only do 2 at a time and then had to wait for the glue. So I kept myself busy making a couple clamps from scrap wood:

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This is as far as I got by Friday night:


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Today, the bottom is done. Now I can start sanding (oh joy, the fun part :o).

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I have a pretty small shop so in order to work with the long lumber on the band saw, I had to move it. Note the crude stand to get the saw table to the same hight as the other surfaces.

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The cut using the band saw was way too wobbly with the 3/8” blade. I ordered a 3/4” blade but it won’t be here for a couple days. With the time constraint I don’t have that kind of time. I cut one of the 2X8s into 3/4” strips using the table saw.

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Cutting the 3/4” planks into 1/4” X 3/4” planks on the band saw worked OK. I wanted to use the band saw as much as possible because it has less than 1/16” waste as opposed to 1/8” waste with the table saw. When you’re restricted to a certain amount of wood you can use, every bit counts.

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All the 1/4” X 3/4” planks cut:

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The next step is to route the bead & cove. The glare on the left is from the open door. It’s the only way I can route long material:

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A close up of the routing operation:

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Routing complete:

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A close up:

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Of course, the best part of any major project is new toys :). When doing the cedar strip canoe, the planks were held to the frame with staples until the glue dried. Being a piece of furniture, I didn’t want staple holes left in the wood, so they all have to be clamped, 1 at a time ($190 later :().

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The wood around the nose of the canoe has to be bent. I don’t have a steamer and don’t want to take the time to make one right now. Cutting the wood into strips and an hour long soak in the hot tub works almost as well.

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Here’s the first reason for the new clamps. It took 21 to hold the strips in place.

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Finally, the fist planks are in place.

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Wednesday evening finds the planking almost 1/2 done. Both sides are done at the same time to be sure the planks match.

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I found the best way to clamp the planks together was to drill holes in the frame for nails and cut wedges from maple scraps:

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That’s it for now. Look for another issue in a couple days…

I picked up the maple today. I was charged for 16BF, but I think it’s really a little more. Of course, it’s clean, so it’s actually less.

While I was there, I picked up my usual supply of “random blocks”. This stack cost me only $20!

So, what am I making? Well, I wouldn’t be attempting this with only a 2 week deadline unless I already had the mold made from the canoe I previously made.

This is the front section of the canoe mold which I will be using to make an “Elegant/Rustic” wine rack. It will hold 9 regular wine bottles and 8 glasses.

Here’s a rough sketch of the plan (which is about as far as I get for any project – I usually work out of my head):

I’ll keep y’all posted on the progress.