A Week in the Shop

It's been a disorienting several weeks, spending the last three weeks in LA, a few days in Chicago, now off to Detroit for Christmas. The best thing about Detroit though is my Dad and his wood shop. I've taken a dramatic interest in creating things more permanent than TV spots. I've got large ambitions for the week ahead and have swiftly dug into my first project, cutting boards.

After designing the piece the first thing you do is select the wood you'd like to work with. Given that we mill our own wood, our boards also needed planing to a uniform height, which in this case was 0.5".

I was using multiple techniques to bond Oak, Cherry and Black Walnut. To get a perfect seam, the edges need to be run through a Joiner before anything else was done. Once the wood was Joined, several pieces were ran through a finger-joiner jog on the router. Everything got a generous coating of Gorilla glue prior to clamping.

Once everything was properly glued, all the little knots and holes and dents were fileld with wood putty and sanded like hell. Knowing the boards were going to be used with food, I opted for organic first-press coconut oil as a final sealer.

The final product turned out well and since we used hand-milled wood we had the opportunity to put a lot of character into the boards that would have otherwise not been possible.

PlayBrandon Knowlden