First Commission

I landed my first non-familial commission! It’ll be a serving tray for one of my wife’s colleagues. Amen to the disposable income of medical professionals. She seemed eager to get her hands on almost anything hand crafted, and with a 30 second scan of my Instagram she was able to find something that she can use.

I made my first serving tray over 5 years ago. It was designed as more of a catch all to sit on top of my tool chest, which doubled as a coffee table. I used the widest board I had. I remember resawing the 11” wide Spanish cedar for ever. I used a factory sharpened and set panel saw that my wife got me from Amazon. It’s got something like 11 teeth per inch. It covered everything in a fine orange dust and made the apartment smell like a hamster cage.

I digress.

For this commission I came up with a quote. To do that, I made a list of all the actions I expected to take in the making of the piece and assigned a time estimate. I totaled the time, decided my rate, and presented a number. I didn’t charge for materials.

My list of operations, somewhat serves as a general set of plans, and a schedule. By my 4th operation, I’d discovered a flaw in my plan and completely blew up my time estimate. Here are the first 6 items on my checklist:

-crosscut a fresh end 5 min

-crosscut to 20” 5 min

-four square 30 min

-resaw in half, 11” x 18.5” 60 min

-scrub plane to clean up resaw 15 min

-rip two 6 1/2” pieces to book-match for the base

The first two items gave me confidence. My time estimates were generous. No problems. On item number three I called an audible. I stopped at 30 minutes. I was using a scrub plane and I was able to get some very rough, albeit acceptable results. It didn’t need to be perfect. This is just the beginning of the dimensioning process. Then I started resawing. I almost immediately knew I was in trouble. It took a long time to get a nice straight kerf across the 11” end grain. At about 30 minutes, I was only about 3” down both edges. I kept at it, and at two hours, I was about 80% done. Behold.

Two hours of resawing. 11” x 20”

That’s where I had to stop yesterday. I had hoped to be further along. Today, I put another hour into resawing. That’s three hours total! That’s too much. I’ve already screwed my schedule by two hours. What makes it worse is that about half way through, I realized that I was resawing what will become waste. For the base of the tray, I only need 6 1/2”, to glue up into a book-matched 13”. I’m planning on making the long sides 1” tall, and the short sides with the handle holes, about 2”. Everything is going to be 1/4” thick. Ignoring that the short sides don’t need to be the full length, I’ve resawn an extra 1 1/2” x 20” of material.

I can rationalize this away. Before I do that, I’ll let you know that I decided to not scrub plane my resawn material. This bought me back 15 minutes. I did a decent job resawing. Also, ripping two peices to 6 1/2” went as planned. No big deal. Check out my resaw, then I’ll rationalize.

Okay, let’s rationalize.

What I have now is 1/2” thick material. The base needs to be jointed and glued. Then I’ll be ready to scrub and try it to final thickness. I expect that the be the most expedient way to get to 1/4” for a 13” x 20” panel. I don’t want to try a 1/4” by 20” glue up.

For the long sides, I can rip a 1” strip out of this 1/2” material, four square with planes, and then resaw to create two 1/4” sides. I can do the same thing with the short sides, but before I do, I can cut and shape the handles. This will make sure that they are identical. Then it’s just a matter of fitting some clean dovetails. I’ve given myself an hour per corner. for the dovetails. Perhaps I can make up some time there. Beyond that, I can now be choosy about the grain. The resawn faces are cleaner and easier to read than the rough sawn and scrubbed faces.

That’s where I decided to stop for now. I want to give the newly dimensioned wood a chance to move if it wants to.