Serving Tray

[jteneyck]

I do some CNC work for a guy who makes all kinds of things to sell up in the Adirondack Mountains in NY during the tourist season. He's a really good artist and wood sculptor, and a fair woodworker. He brought me a serving tray he had made that someone else had carved the word Adirondacks into several years ago and asked if I could match the font. Sure, most likely, and I also can make the ends for those trays with an integral handle. I'll make some for you. Later, when I looked at the tray more closely, I saw that he had assembled it by gluing and screwing the ends to the end of the solid wood bottom. Rut ro, no good. I decided I'd make him a complete tray and use more appropriate joinery.

Here's my version. Sorry, no photo of the one he brought me, but it's mostly the same except for the two-piece ends.




I cut the end handles on my CNC, the rest in the conventional way. The four frame pieces are butt glued together, and then 1/4" dowels are added to each corner, with another at the middle to keep the panel from slipping around.



I found the font after some searching. The process is pretty simple. Carve the word, clear coat the word and area around it to seal it so the paint won't bleed, paint in the letters with a small brush (or spray), then sand the top surface back to bare wood when it has dried.



A simple project made so much easier with the CNC.

John 

[Mainelywoodworking]

Cool tray. Any plans for a small round over on the handle edges and the tops of the middle pieces?

[stav]

So the CNC cuts all of those pieces (assuming excluding the dowel)?  That is pretty cool.  How long does it take to turn out one of those?

[jteneyck]

Cool tray. Any plans for a small round over on the handle edges and the tops of the middle pieces?

Maybe.  I would need to make the end piece/handles a little taller than the sides to accommodate the round over.  If I do that, I'll make the end pieces a little longer, too, so the sides are inset a little.  I think that would look better.  And if I go that far, I may use some different joinery to make it faster/easier to assemble. 

John

[Randy C]

Cool tray. Any plans for a small round over on the handle edges and the tops of the middle pieces?

This. Edges look too sharp. Would look better if softened up a bit.

[jteneyck]

So the CNC cuts all of those pieces (assuming excluding the dowel)?  That is pretty cool.  How long does it take to turn out one of those?

Only the ends were cut on the CNC, as well as the engraved lettering.  I could have cut everything on the CNC, but that would have taken a lot longer than just doing it in the conventional way.  A CNC is not always the most efficient option unless you are doing a large run of parts.  Even then, it's not always the best way.  Those sides, for example.  It's hard to beat ripping them on the table saw and then plowing the dado.  That's a very fast process if you are making dozens and dozens.  For this one off, the CNC would be quicker, once I did the programming.  But I'm inherently lazy, so I did them manually to avoid having to do that.  

The end pieces take about 4 minutes each to cut out on the CNC.  In that case, it's a lot faster than it would be conventionally.  The engraved letters take about 3 minutes.  

It took me several hours to create this.  If I wanted to make dozens of them, then I'd take the time to create CNC files for most of the parts and nest them on the CNC so that I could cut multiples of each at the same time.  Take a 7" wide x 48" long walnut board, for example, and mill 8 end pieces from it at once.  If you wanted even more, then you could put several of those boards on the CNC table, say 4 boards, and cut out 32 pieces with one set up.  That's when the CNC becomes a very productive tool.  

If I optimized the process, I could probably cut out the parts and their associated joinery in about 15 minutes.  Ideally, the parts would all fit together w/o the need for much manual work other than rounding over the edges at the router table and sanding prior to assembly.  The guy who sells these was just looking for me to do the engraving.  I don't know what his price point is, but I doubt he can get more than maybe $40 or $50 for one of these.  If I were to do anything more than the engraving, he would need to be able to sell a lot of them in order for me to make any money at it and keep the cost low enough for him to afford.  

John

[Arlin Eastman]

Looks good and nice work