Table Saw Chip 'n Dip Board

Ted Calver

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This one was a little out of my table saw comfort zone, but it turned out to be quite tame and kinda cool. I saw someone selling snack boards out of slab lumber with a built in dish to hold dip, or chips or whatever. I couldn't see trying to balance a long board to spin outboard on the lathe to make the dish and don't have a CNC, so an internet search turned up a variety of methods to use a table saw to make coves, chair seats and even bowls. This method is a combination of some of those. I started with a 2' x 4' piece of cheapo 1/2" Borg plywood, marked the center of an arbitrary (just had to be wider than my slab)16" circle and cut it out using a jig on the band saw. Taped a piece of thin cardboard around the cut out to make up for the width of the kerf and then put the circle back in the piece. Then I centered it over the top dead center of the table saw blade and clamped the outer portion to the table with the blade lowered. Using double sticky tape and a cross piece hold down screwed into the circle, I attached the roughly 1 1/2" thick natural edge cherry slab to the circle upside down and centered where I wanted the dish.
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Then, just like making cove molding (so I'm told) turned the saw on and raised the blade until it touched the bottom of the plywood circle and rotated the captive piece a full turn. Cranked the blade (a flat top grind) up a little bit after each rotation until the cut went through the plywood into the cherry and the dish was about 1 1/4" deep. I shut off the saw and pulled out the piece to check the depth every few turns. The cut was very smooth and didn't take much sanding with a 3" sanding disc to get it smooth. You can tell by the little nub that I was a bit off estimating top dead center, but it wasn't much of a problem to chisel off and sand smooth....just like a bowl bottom.
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Ran both sides through the drum sander, softened all the edges, sanded to 220, slapped on a coat of Doctor's Woodshop Walnut Finishing Oil and voilà! A cool natural edge, avant-garde, neo rustic snack platter for whatever you want to serve up. Both sides of the board are usable and when the walnut oil dries I'll put on a coat of the same walnut oil beeswax paste I use on my salad bowls and buff it to a nice soft luster.
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That is very cool, I would use this to make Christmas presents to take home for Christmas this year, but I fear they would fill my luggage rather quickly.

Cheers!
 
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