Post by @sigsegv@hachyderm.io
I bought this slab of walnut two years. This has been many things in my head over that time. It's too short and narrow for a lot of those applications, but the two year timer is up and it has to become something.
So it'll be a monitor riser shelf for my desk. With the live edge on the front and the back squared off to avoid the sap wood. Looks like it'll be 44½" (113 cm) on the 55" (140 cm) table top, 12" (30.5 cm) at the narrowest and 15" (38 cm) at the widest.
Did some rough block planing and put some mineral oil to get a feel for what the showcase feature is going to be... just look at that crotch figure 😍
Today was leg (design) day on the PineNote!
I don't know if I have the skills to actually build this with the angles as drawn. I want something that's not just rectangles sticking out of a slab, want to try stuff, but without doing too many design elements and detracting from the wood figure.
I don't have enough walnut for legs but I have some cherry that I can mill up to be 1" (2.5 cm) thick or the most sensible way to say it: ⁴/₄ four quarter 🤦🏽♂️
Tomorrow we cut into the slab... hyperventilation!
Making the first cuts on the project are always stressful. Come to think of it, so are the last cuts.
I don't often wish for a track saw with a dust collection port but definitely wished I had one today. My circular saw had less than ⅛" (33 mm) capacity left for this cut so that was lucky. I did stop the cut halfway through the long edge and cut off the off-cut because I felt it pinching in at the start off the cut, that was a good idea. Things I would do differently in the future, cut it supported on top of some foam on the floor and taken multiple passes.
Tomorrow I will mill up some cherry for the "legs" and thickness the slab which should fit in my planer by the skin of my teeth. And start figuring out how I want to address that giant crack on the underside (I have never done bow ties 🤔), ideas welcome.
Edit: why is media showing up as sensitive? Weird, let me toggle.
@shom I’m working on a 4.5” thick bench top. Cutting the ends to length, I made one pass with the circular saw, flipped it over and carefully aligned to finish the cut. Used my track saw and it let me do some final aligning to get the two passes to meet nicely in the middle. Definitely one of the cuts I was anxious about.
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@sigsegv woah that is THICK! I bet flipping it is a workout. Glad the flipping and aligning worked out, sounds like the track saw was helping for the finessing. Looking forward to seeing your build!
@shom I have a couple pics from last weekend I need to post. I’ve been idle on the bench for months but got restarted recently.