Day 6 - Catherine

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We are down to the last 3 days of A-term which means we will be finishing up all of our projects soon!

This morning I prepared my final cut list for the cutting board. This time I have to cut 11 pieces out of the 1st panel (the one with walnut on the ends) and 10 pieces out of the 2nd panel (the one with maple on the ends). I started with the 4mm cut, the thinnest one, and then continued the cuts in increasing thickness as listed on my cut list. Out of the 21 pieces, I only had four pieces that broke in two which was actually pretty good. I had some extra leftover from both panels so I was able to recut some three of them but the 10mm strips continued to break and I ran out of wood so I had to spot glue them together. This was just the beginning of my breakage issues. Some of the pieces were so delicate that they broke when I moved them to a different table, and then some more broke when I left them in the sun over lunch. Since everything decided to collapse I decided not to risk the planer. Another issue I faced was that either the humidity, the thin-ness of the wood, or poor table saw cutting or all of the above, cause the pieces to warp. Given how fragile the middle pieces were, Mr. Grisbee suggested that I glue all of the really thin pieces together so I could have a more stable piece to work with. I had to use four clamps just for the middle pieces in order to bind the wood completely together and get them at a somewhat level plane.

After lunch and while my project was drying, we needed all hands on deck to put together Sayer’s massive shelf for his sword that is apparently even larger than the massive shelf. After my endless glue-ups and re glue-ups for my cutting board, I was considered the glue pro and basically glued his whole shelf together (you’re welcome Sayer) while Sutton and Sayer held the sides together and Nathaniel got the damp paper towels. Of course only after we had finally clamped and tightened the sides of the board with the ribbon clamp did someone point out that we forgot to put the middle shelf in so we had to undo the clamps and start over. After some more struggles, we finally had a shelf!

I then arranged all of my strips into the final pattern. There were many issues with warping and even tapering towards the edges. I left the strips unglued in the air-conditioned Tinkeria so hopefully tomorrow the wood will be more normal?? fingers crossed for some wood movement magic.


center strips 

mini clamp set up 

unglued board layout 

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