Last Sunday of the year...

Sunday mornings are for sipping coffee, and lounging around in my pajamas! It's so easy to get sucked into watching vintage videos on woodworking - here are two of my favorites. 

Thanks for this one, Jim C!

Hope your holiday is warm and merry...

Here's the latest scoop...

We've been making some ridiculously cool cutting boards in our Advanced Cutting Board class. Just in time for Christmas, BTW... but the funny thing is - when they make their boards, most of the students say they want to keep them, instead of give them away. I don't blame them, we've done some amazing pieces this session.

 Our end grain board on steroids is always a big hit, but we upped our game and made something really unique last week. 

To be frank, I'm a little tired of end grain cutting boards. In fact - I was just discussing that with someone this past weekend. She's made a gazillion boards for people, and told me that people always request end grain boards from her. Those take more work than a standard flat grained board, and most end grain board you see are... well... just boring. 

I wish I had a dollar for every one of these I've seen.... yawn....  

So when I was looking to add a new board as a class project, I remembered this scooping technique that a student and I tried a few years ago.  It involved making a jig for spinning a wood blank over the blade, to create a very nice bowl in wood. 

The jig is pretty simple - make a "bridge" that spans the blade, from the end of the left table, to the fence. It has to be tall enough for the wood blank to fit under it.

  After the bridge is made, we drilled a hole directly over the center of the blade. This is where the wood will spin. 

Here's the piece of wood I wanted to scoop, so I did some calculating to find the center of the scooped area, and then transferred the mark to the back side of the wood.

 I drilled a hole on that back side, and then determined how deep I could scoop into the wood.

 I figured about halfway was good, I raised the blade to that height. Then I lowered it back down, counting the number of revolutions on the elevation wheel of the saw. In this case, it was five revolutions. 

With the blade below the table, I used a drill bit and secured the wood blank into the jig. That will allow the wood to safely spin over the blade, without kickback. 

This works best with two people, one spinning the wood, and another raising the blade. But in a pinch, I've done it myself, so it's totally possible.  

After spinning to bowl and raising the blade five revolutions, here's the result - a very nice scooped bowl into your wood. 

I purchased some thick walnut live edge lumber from Andrew at Reclaimed Secrets, and our charcuterie boards are sweet! 

Can't wait to see these sanded and oiled!

Want to feel uplifted?

I'm so proud to call Rich Matta a friend... enjoy this video of one of his (famous) students sharing how Rich changed his life. 

It's officially the Christmas season....

While the snow is already flying back east, it's been pretty nice here up until this week. Then all of a sudden - the  cold weather hit us, the leaves changed colors and fell off trees, and BAM! - 

Winter is here. 

In addition to teaching every night of the week, I've been cranking out a  huge amount of work for customers - and it's been hectic, but very rewarding.

I had a chance to fire up the lathe and make these juggling spools - the second time I've had the chance to make these for a local performer. 

And I couldn't be more proud of this live edge table that one of my students made - she and her husband are so excited! The photo below shows the unfinished table, 

but check out the colors that developed once it was oiled. 

Wow.