Black Walnut Earrings and The Roll Cabinet Begins: Friday Update
This week in Oregon it’s feeling like spring. The temperature is rising, the days are lengthening, the tulips are popping up and trees are growing buds, but most of all, the weather is changing. By changing I mean going from snow, to rain, to hail, to sun, back to snow, and back to sun, typically all in one day. Thursday even brought 10.8 inches to downtown and 3 to me. Springtime is weird here, but I enjoy the changing of seasons, especially the move out of dark, cold winter. Seeing the sun more often gives me energy and drive.
So I took a break, from the live edge floating shelves that is. They are done and sitting in my house, waiting for install on Sunday. I’ll take pictures and share that experience next week.
So what did I work on in the meantime? Earring orders (thank you for those who placed those), earring photos (up now on the KB Wooden Earrings showing off my black walnut offering), planning for my next project, and designing two future projects. Time to get into the details.
Earrings
Along with the floating shelves, my client order three sets of earrings made from the same wood. The optimist in me said I should make extra pairs in case I receive more orders. The pessimist in me said to make extra in case I break some. So I made 8 pairs, broke one at the drill press and sanded one too far making them look off resulting in 6 completed pairs this week.
Black walnut with, you guessed it, Chatoyancy.
As I was working on the final finishing process I received a message from my sister-in-law Christine. She asked me about the weight and material of the hooks and then placed an order too.
If you are counting, that means I’ve sold 4 pairs in a week. Successful product launch for me.
Along with the new photos, I answered Christine’s questions in my shop, but I won’t make you go all the way over there, here are the answers.
The earrings weigh less than 1 gram each, making them very light for earrings. They are large, but thin, cutting down on weight and making them comfortable to wear all day long.
The hooks are stainless steel containing no nickel. Your ears will not turn green after wearing them.
I am really excited about this latest batch. Unfortunately, I only have two pairs left, but I have wood to cut more blanks and may be out making some next week. I want to make a few in apple, white oak, maple, and cherry to round out my listing with photos of each type of wood. I’ll share the pictures along the way when they are ready.
Next Project - Roll Cabinet
I’ve written about this before, here’s the story, so I won’t get into the history of this cabinet. The short version is I am overdue by at least a year now.
I bought wood for this project back in December and sat it in my in-laws condo garage. The planks are large. 1 and a half inches thick, 15 inches wide, 10 feet long. Each weigh a hefty amount. I’m not good at judging weight, so I broke out the scale and measured, twice (I am a woodworker after all).
Guess how much they weigh.
Okay I’ll tell. But I’m going to make it harder to see the number and cheat, so I’ll put it further down in this sentence and write out the words. Okay, here you go, sixty three point six pounds. Can you believe that? No wonder my back was hurting.
Now the problem is these two planks are too nice. Well one is not that nice, tons of sapwood. But the other is too nice to cut up and turn into rails and stiles for cabinet doors. Plus the color difference between the wood I bought for the legs and stretchers and the doors was giving me heartburn. Two reasons why, it’s the details like color matching that make a piece go from good to great. Secondly, black walnut is often dark brown with reddish tones and black streaking in the grain. But no two trees is the same and the wood can vary greatly. Some are light, some are very dark with extra black. This piece is especially black and in my heart I couldn’t cut this board up and use it for what I needed. I wanted to take this board and turn it into a centerpiece.
So I now need to go back to the lumber yard to buy more wood. No big deal, I needed plywood for this project anyway, so what’s spending a couple hundred more dollars on wood?
But, this decision did result in a fun little externality. I get to make another project.
Entry Table Design
For months I have had this design floating around in my head. I was thinking I would make a coffee table in the design for my family room, once the kids were done with our current coffee table.
I know, not the prettiest thing, but hey, Beckett likes trains.
I took the opportunity to design an entryway table. We currently have an old desk which came from my parents house. I used that desk in college and kept it, they no longer had a use for it anyway. It moved with me into this house and ended up in the entry because it’s a nice, tall table with some storage for odds and ends. We really like the size, so that was my constraint, to build a piece roughly the same dimensions as the existing table.
I wanted it modern and visually striking. This is the first thing you see when entering our home and I want the table to make a statement, to say, “here lives a kick-ass woodworker.”
This is what I came up with.
I haven’t named this piece yet. I have one in mind. Also, don’t mind those extra diagonals lines. That’s how Sketchup models non-square angles sometimes, treating them as separate pieces, stitched together.
It’s still a design, I can change it. But I like it. The piece is angular, with the sharp, long under bevel on the top giving it a sleek, modern look. The sides are matching those angles, nosing in, but also leaning away from each other. The three inset drawers will be grain matched and flow the top over and onto the front of the piece, all with no hardware to break up the beautiful black walnut. Then the bottom is anchored with a solid, straight line, single stretcher to ground the piece while also providing stability.
Mostly, I think it looks cool. The one change I may make is to extend the top out even further. I may, I may not. It’ll be tight on material and I can’t add to it without messing up the coloring of the wood I have. Let me know what you think of the design, I’d love to hear your take. I still have a while before I even start this project, plenty of time to make changes.