Sunday, May 22, 2016

Guitar shaped cutting board

Asger likes to play the guitar, and we talked about making a gift for his guitar teacher, since he is a really nice guy and incredibly gifted when it comes to teaching children.

Given that the teacher is a professional musician, we agreed that making a guitar shaped cutting board would be a fitting gift.

I found an old piece of an elm slab, that wasn't quite big enough for a chair, and we sketched a guitar body on it. We talked about making a small neck for it as well, but we agreed that it would just get in the way when he had to use the cutting board.

After sketching,which was done by tracing the outline of an acoustic guitar, I sawed out the shape with the band saw.

The guitar shaped slab was then placed between the dogs on his bench. We used a scrub plane for traversing to reduce the thickness. I helped a bit since the elm is fairly tough. When the back side was reasonably flat, we moved on to a No 4 smoothing plane. We flattened the piece further by going diagonally and finished off going with the grain.

After that the upper side was treated in the same way.
We didn't use the thickness planer because the board was too wide, and I wanted Asger to really feel that he did the job himself.

The curved sides were sanded using the hand held belt sander, and then followed up by hand.
The edges were also broken by means of sandpaper.

Asger used a brander to write: TO SIMON FROM ASGER (In Danish) at the end of the cutting board.

As a finish we used the wood wax from Dictum and applied it using a small piece of rag and followed by a pollisoir from Don Williams  The elm looked spectacular after that treatment.

The finished thickness was around 1 5/8".


The proud craftsman with the guitar shaped cutting board.

Sanding the sides/edges.

Breaking the edge

Using an electric brander.

Using a pollisoir is hard work.




8 comments:

  1. Great Project. I always enjoy seeing kids involved in projects, getting valuable skills both in terms of tools, but also in terms of self sufficiency.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Jeremy.

      Thanks for the nice comment.
      Asger is incredibly proud that people from around the world has seen him "in action".

      Brgds
      Jonas

      Delete
  2. Very cool.
    Congrats on Asger for a job well done!

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Bob.

      Asger says thank you. (he is just about to be tucked in for the night).
      He really liked using a smoothing plane, and I liked to help him with that :-)

      Brgds
      Jonas + Asger

      Delete
  3. Great idea, and one that I'm sure a guitar teacher will appreciate. And I'm sure it was very fun making it with one of your children Well done!!
    Bill

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Bill

      Thanks for the nice comment.
      It was quite fun to make a cutting board that wasn't rectangular. At first I was a bit worried about how it would turn out, and if it would look more like a pear than a guitar, but I am pleased with the result.
      The great thing about cutting boards is that the children really feel that they make the grunt of the work. It is not just "assembling" something that I have prepared, but actual work accomplished by themselves.
      That feeling is hard to beat.

      Brgds
      Jonas

      Delete
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