Serving trays for family and friends

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Villa Park, CA
I made a bunch of serving trays (nine!) as gifts for family and friends. The first picture shows one representative tray and the other picture shows all nine.

The trays are six sided, with a sunburst of waterfall bubinga in the center. The accent strip is bloodwood (on most of them) with holly stringing. The edging and sides are walnut.

Although not shown, the backs are 12 sided sunburst of claro walnut.

These take quite a bit of time to make. There's just a lot of steps in the process.

Mike
 

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Oh man, those are some kind of awesome, Mike. Definitely top-shelf work. :clap: Your veneer work never fails to amaze me.
 
Yeah Mike how does one describe your work or even comment on it. Best i can manage is :eek::eek: amazement.

Beside the veneer work, they all interlock. I would not like to see my version of the basic tray as far as interlock is concern. I wont even go near the veneer.:D

You sure a cut above in the skills department. Way to go Mike i am happy we have you posting here so we can benefit from your experience.:thumb::)

Mike can you share with us a little of how you went about making one. I would like to simply get a handle on the process and the sequence of stages. Right now i am trying to think where one would start.:dunno:
 
Beautiful work Mike. I just caught up to this thread (I need to check my search filters). I really enjoy the look of the center veneer work. The figure almost seems liquid.
 
Well Mike, I can't say anything but WOW! making one of those is great, going into mass production is incredible.

I have to learn how to apply veneer and your tutorials will help me a lot.

Thanks for posting
 
Yeah Mike how does one describe your work or even comment on it. Best i can manage is :eek::eek: amazement.

Beside the veneer work, they all interlock. I would not like to see my version of the basic tray as far as interlock is concern. I wont even go near the veneer.:D

You sure a cut above in the skills department. Way to go Mike i am happy we have you posting here so we can benefit from your experience.:thumb::)

Mike can you share with us a little of how you went about making one. I would like to simply get a handle on the process and the sequence of stages. Right now i am trying to think where one would start.:dunno:
Thanks, Rob, for your kind words. This is one of those projects that involve a number of woodworking skills and a bunch of individual steps.

To begin, I use a compass to draw a circle of the size of the tray on 1/4" MDF. These trays are about 18" or 19" at their largest point. Then if I'm making an 8 sided tray, I use dividers and make adjustments until I can step 8 times around the circumference (to lay out the 8 sides). For a six sided tray it's much easier because each side is exactly the radius. So just use your compass with the same setting you used to draw the circle, start anywhere and mark off six sides. You'll come back exactly to where you started.

Then I prepare the veneer - I won't go into all that because it's too much to discuss here. Glue the veneer to the substrate, top and bottom. I then finish the panel, top and bottom, using a prep coat of dewaxed shellac with water based lacquer over it (Target brand coatings). Veneer often has some defects, and the joints may not be perfect, so after I shoot the first couple of coats of lacquer, I sand the finish with a fine sandpaper, maybe 220 or 320 almost back to the wood (leaving the lacquer in the voids) and shoot the final coats. This gives a very smooth, flawless finish (essentially using the lacquer as a clear wood filler). I use shellac under water based lacquer because water based lacquer is too "white". We're accustom to our wood having somewhat of an orange tint (from the finish) so water based lacquer, by itself, doesn't look right.

To do the sides, I use 1/2" thick walnut and cut strips 2" wide and long enough to go around the tray. This way, the grain will flow around the tray. I cut a groove about 1/4" (usually a bit less than 1/4") from the bottom of that strip, and big enough to just fit the panel into. I err on the side of the groove being too tight because I use a Stanley 79 plane to adjust it to fit exactly (that's a great plane for that application). Then I use a 1/4" roundover bit and round both sides of the top edge of the sides.

Then I cut the pieces for the sides. The angle is 30* for a six sided tray and 22 1/2* for an 8 sided tray (half the included angle of each vertex). The length of each piece has to be exact so that the sides come together properly and the bottom fits into the groove. It's easy to wind up with sides that won't close up, or with the bottom not fitting tightly into the grooves, even to the point of having a gap between the bottom and the sides. If the sides are too small, you can fix it by using a plane to take a bit off each edge of the panel, basically making it a bit smaller. If it's too big, you have to go back and trim the sides again.

To get better joints, I use those Porter Cable face frame (FF) biscuits in each miter joint. I cut the slots with a slot cutter on my router table, using a jig to hold the wood at the appropriate angle. I'll take a picture of this if anyone is interested.

Next, I cut the holes for the handles, using a 3/4" Forstner bit. The holes are about 3 3/4" apart on the outside of the holes. Use a jigsaw to cut between the holes to make the handles. A Nicholson #49 or 50 rasp is a good thing to use to smooth out the space between the two holes. Then round the inside of the handles using the 1/4" roundover bit.

Then, I put masking tape on the miter joints and finish the inside of the sides of the tray. It's easier to finish this before assembly but you could do it after assembly.

Then, to glue up, using regular PVA glue and a strap clamp.

When the glue is dry, I sand the outside of the sides and make sure each joint is okay at the top (the sides meet properly at the top of the miter joint). Then I mask the veneer panel so I can shoot the sides without getting overspray on the panel and shoot lacquer on the outside of the sides.

When dry, I put four felt feet on the bottom and rub out the veneer panel (to clean up any overspray).

And that's it. At least the short version.

Mike

[Some years ago, my wife used one of my trays to take some food to a woman's organization pot luck dinner. One of the other members saw the tray and asked my wife if I'd make some for her. My wife said she'd have to ask me and get a price. So after discussing it with my wife, and since she was a friend of my wife, I said I'd make them for $100 each. When my wife told her that the woman was appalled - she said she thought they'd be $30 apiece. Non-woodworkers have no conception of how much work goes into something as simple as a serving tray.]
 
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very nicely done mike,, and i agree the other people dont have a full deck when asking for something like those and thinking the price should be 30 dollars..that wouldnt cover the materials let alone the skill and time to make them.. just for grins how long would you say you had in one.. ???
 
very nicely done mike,, and i agree the other people dont have a full deck when asking for something like those and thinking the price should be 30 dollars..that wouldnt cover the materials let alone the skill and time to make them.. just for grins how long would you say you had in one.. ???
It's very hard to say, Larry - especially since I was doing the bunch. And I don't work constantly, all day, on them. For example, when I put a couple of panels in press (vacuum press), I have to wait for the glue to set. I couldn't do all eight at one time because the glue on the first one would start drying (skinning over) before I finished spreading glue on the last one and then got them all into the bag. So I go inside and read the postings here while the press works. Same thing with finishing. I have to wait for the finish to dry before I can do the next step.

But I suppose it took me maybe five days to get them all finished, working a few hours per day. Could have been longer - I just don't remember how much time I spent on them.

But I really don't care - I enjoy the work. Whenever I finish a project, I wish I had another one ready to start on.

Mike
 
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