Category: Test Builds

Most people don’t think much about boxes.We think about shapes and sizes based on what we plan to store in them. That’s about it. But, if you look around most of what we see are based on cube-ish shapes. Houses. Cabinets. Storage boxes. Cars. The list goes on.

Yesterday, we took a brief detour from shop related stuff we were doing to build a couple of boxes. They were mostly for fun, but we were also testing out how we were going to prepare them for finishing. Many  items we will be producing in the future revolve around box shapes, so building a box  is a fundamental woodworking skill. read more

Here’s the follow-up to yesterday’s post on a couple of the cutting boards we were making.  They turned out pretty well.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to see the beautiful patterns that the end grain makes on the beech cutting board. read more

Today was a long and tiring day. Both of us spent the morning completing some necessary tool maintenance. And then we got to have fun! We spent this afternoon building a couple of prototypes we plan to place in our Etsy Store — very soon! The first – an end grain “butcher block” cutting board and second, a serving board/platter.

Butcher Block cutting boards are “de rigeur” (i.e. necessary) if you are serious about cooking. They expose the end grain rather than long grain unlike most of the non-plastic cutting boards one finds. It’s sort of like a dart board. The fibers part to absorb the cutting edge allowing it to stay sharp longer. If you ever go by a traditional butcher shop, you’ll will probably see them cutting on either an end grain cutting board or the cross section of a tree stump — depending on how traditional they are and how long they have been in business. End grain butcher block cutting boards are the modern equivalent of the original tree stump. They can be quite beautiful. And now, we are making some. read more