Simple Trivet

BelaLugosi9 May 30, 2016

A simple trivet for the "Make Something For Another Hobby" reddit contest.

My wife loves to cook (she's a fantastic baker) so I wanted to make her something. I needed most of all to make something that wasn't a "construction project" and didn't take a lot of time or material. As I was making it, I added a couple of "Arts and Crafts" touches to challenge myself a bit more, thus the 4 holes in the top and "cloud lift" choice for legs. Nothing advanced or super but it was nice to try for something a little challenging.

This project allowed me to practice my skills a bit. Here are some lessons learned:

- Remember how you aligned your saw and said "That's good enough."? It wasn't good enough. I did my initial cuts on the table saw and saw that I was about 1/32nd short on my cuts.

- 1/32nd off adds up quick when you have 7 slats. Spacing on the last one was a little wonky because of it but my wife doesn't notice.

- I love the look of mortise and tenon. My decorative mortises look horrible. Time to sharpen and practice.

- Card scraper beats sanding hands down. I don't even have a well turned edge on my scraper but it performed much better.

A piece of oak that I bought at Habitat Restore.

Cut with a hand saw because it was about 10 feet long and I thought it would be nice to practice a bit.

Squaring up the side that wasn't machined.

Squaring the ends on my table saw sled.

Did a little bit of planing to clean off the grime that was on the wood.

Cutting the strips for the top and the legs. Strips were 1", legs were 1 1/8"

The pile.

Cutting the "cloud lifts" into the legs. I drilled them out with my drill press then finished with a bandsaw.

Rough sanding on the belt sander.

Using my drum sanding bit in my Shopsmith to get the inside of the curves and also to curve the bottom of the feet to make it look a little more like a cloud lift.