From Scraps to Coasters

Here we are, a Facebook live on whatever day today it is, Thursday. Here in Western Wisconsin the weather is slowly starting to turn the corner here. I think two days ago maybe I worked with the doors in the shop open for the first time in a really long time. I love when we get to this time of year, I love when we get to spring and hit 55, 60 degrees and I can have the doors open and the wind is blowing through. Later in the year, when we get to August and the heat and the humidity are really high, working with the doors open is not quite so pleasant.

So this time of year, 60 degrees is kind of my normal temperature in the shop and I much prefer to not run air conditioning. I don't like being bottled up with the AC running. Anyway, we're gonna slowly get, the sun is really out today, I'm pointing to my window over here. The sun is really out today, but it's a little chilly. It's only maybe 45 or 50 today.

But it's gonna come, spring is right around the corner. April showers bring May flowers. We're actually not here to talk about weather or flowers. We're here to look at turning scrap into usable stuff. So here's, in my shop who wants to throw wood scrap away?

'Cause maybe someday, maybe you might need that piece, I don't know. And I'm guilty of that. I've got a bin over by my miter saw that I pile stuff in. And when you end up with pieces like this then over time you build up, build up, build up this big pile of pieces. And the next thing is what am I gonna do with all of those pieces?

So hang on, hold please. I'm looking, 'cause I see a couple of comments popped up and I always want to check and make sure the comment isn't, we can't hear you. Oops. So hang on, hold please. Stop, stop.

Check and make sure the comment isn't, we can't. All right, we're good. So you ended up with all of these scraps and what I'm gonna show you is turning those into these. It's a coaster and it's kind of, not kind of, it is. It's a tiny little end grain cutting board too.

I wouldn't use that as a cutting board, but that is all end grain that we're looking at there. So this is gonna be, we're gonna have to do some moving around the shop to a couple of different spots, but I'll walk you through the process and it's not hard to do. So it's a good way to burn up those scraps. So here's where we start. Go to your scrap bin.

And I'll talk about some variations here as we go, but in the simplest form of this, go to your scrap bin, find scraps of 3/4 inch pieces. And next thing we're gonna do is head for the table saw. Now, as you're working with parts I think it's gonna be best for this if parts have similar working characteristics. So we've got, these are all hardwoods. And if I had a different pile that was softwoods, I would do all those softwoods together, but I wouldn't glue, I wouldn't mix a piece of pine into the walnut, maple, and oak, and other stuff that we're gonna work with here.

And the reason is gonna be that when you get to the sanding step on this, if one of these pieces is really soft then as you start sanding this that's gonna sand easier than the others and it's gonna make it hard to keep this level. So your best bet is to use woods whose working characteristics are all similar. So go to your scrap bin, grab stuff. Take that stuff to your table saw. And at the table saw what you wanna do is rip it into strips.

At the end of the day, what I've got here now are 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch pieces. And to make what I have here takes 16 3/4 by 3/4 inch pieces. What we're after is a coaster that's about three inches by three inches. So in order to get that 3/4 plus 3/4 is three plus 3/4 plus 3/4, I'm sorry, 3/4 plus 3/4 is 1 1/2 plus 3/4 plus 3/4, another 1 1/2, so that's three inches by three inches. To make a cube that big takes 16 of these rips.

Then what'll happen is probably coming off the table saw you're gonna have saw marks, you're gonna have burn marks like that. And what we wanna do is glue those edges edge to edge to edge to edge to edge. So the next thing to do with these cut pieces is to go to your planer or your drum sander and send those pieces through like this, flip them, so that we clean that sawn edge up. Because if you leave it as a sawn edge you're not gonna get a good glue up out of this. So when we talk about these being 3/4 by 3/4, I would do that rip a little bit oversized, 13/16.

Then go to the planer, take a 1/32 inch off the top, flip, 1/32 inch off the other face, then they're done. That gets you to where we have a pile of pieces like this. These are not glued together. I wanna show you a layout step here, but I'll have to zoom you in. How goes it?

Questions, answers, smart comments, you know who you are. All right, in the world of layout. Let me just spread my parts out. I'm then, with these pieces, I'm at a point in the sequence where I ripped all of these. And then I sent them through, in my case, I sent them through a drum sander to clean up the saw marks.

Now we're pretty close to being ready to glue them up. But I'll show you what I'm after. That was a big move. We're gonna glue them in sets of four Something like that, like that, like that, and like that. But in my case, what I've got are oak, poplar, walnut, and this is actually eucalyptus, which is a crazy cool wood.

As you put these panels of four, as these sets of four together, one of the things I don't wanna do is get poplar next to poplar. I wanna get this color contrast. And when we're done, when we put all this together into a cube in the perfect cartoon bubble, we have alternating colors, kind of like a checkerboard throughout here. So think this through a little bit as you're at this step and you're figuring out what goes where in order to give yourself color contrast that work the best. So that's what I'm doing here is I'm just messing with parts.

Yeah, that was a bad move. All right, I think I'm pretty happy with that. Alternating colors. And it's in the perfect cartoon bubble light, dark, light, dark, so that looks okay. All right, now next step, gluing.

And we're gonna treat this very much like a cooking show, which is I'm not gonna glue all these together, but I've got other parts ready. What a surprise. So you're gonna have a chance to see then what the next steps were. As these parts are sitting here the edge I cleaned up is edge to edge. This is the edge I sent through my sander after the table saw.

So when I put them together like that I know I'm gonna have a good glue joint. I'm gonna use Titebond III, because we're making coasters and it's not that the coasters are gonna get dripping wet, but still you're gonna put whatever, a gin and tonic on here and condensation is dripping onto the coaster. So I think it's best to use a glue that can tolerate that. If you don't have Titebond III and you use regular glue, it's not gonna be a deal breaker. I don't think that'll de-laminate, but use III if you got it.

All right, so remember this was my sanded edge. So I'm flipping that up, flipping that up, flipping that up. You gotta make that noise when you're putting the glue on. And then rotate that back down, making that noise as you do it. And then clamp it, Jed.

Get it? The more level you can keep these the better off you're gonna be when we get to the next step. Now, it's pretty rare for me to wipe a glue surface with a rag, because that does a really good job of smearing the glue and getting it all over the place. However, in this case, in our next step we're actually gonna plane or joint these pieces. So having glue residue smeared around doesn't bother me.

And this isn't a show face when we're done. This face is gonna end up getting glued to another face. So in this case, wiping it is a good idea. So grab a paper towel with some water on it, wipe that excess off. That'll save you some messing around in the next step.

All right, now we're doing this times four. We glue that one up. We glue that one up. We glue that one up. We glue that one up.

It takes four sets to make one blank to cut your coasters out of. When the glue is dry, hang on, cooking show, I gotta find the part that's already ready. There it is. When the glue is dry, we wiped that off. Hang on, that's not the right one.

Hold please. There it is. All right, that one's already been worked with. When the glue is dry, subtle difference, they're gonna look like this. Look like this is they're just, there's a little unevenness here.

And what we're looking to do is to get this glued face to face to this. So we need to do a preemptive strike here. We've gotta get this flattened out. At this stage of the game you can do this work with your jointer or your planer. I'm gonna head for the jointer.

Follow me. And we're gonna face joint both faces. Hearing protection in. Then back to the gluing table. And , we have done that to all the pieces that we need in order to make a cube.

So remember, cooking show, some work's been done before you got here. Now, when we look at these and I put these together I'm gonna lay them out like this. And now what I'm looking for is I'd rather not have walnut over walnut, 'cause I wanna have color contrast, I wanna have a checkerboard. If I just move this piece down to here, now color contrast, color contrast, except here I'm kind of, I'm poplar over poplar. So if I flip, that's more better.

And then how about this? Same poplar over poplar, but if I flip, there. Now I'm gonna get a checkerboard when I'm done with this. So this is gonna get glue together just like this. Titebond III.

Glue brush. Like watching glue dry. These silicone brushes are cool. This one's from Rockler. A couple of companies make them.

When you're done using it, I don't wash this. You just let the glue dry on there. And then I'll show you one, it'll peel right off of the silicon. Like this. And then to make clamping easier, I'm gonna do this.

And then we're gonna . So somebody's asked, so hello from rainy Boston. Hello, Boston from sunny western Wisconsin. Somebody asked, is it a left-handed joiner? Nope, it's always what we run into with these things is I'm shooting this on my iPad and because it's forward-facing it, reverses everything.

So things look funky, but they're not. All right, damp rag. Could be damper. Get the excess off. Now, with the wonder of technology 'cause some preparation was done beforehand, when that comes out in the clamps it's gonna look like this.

Before we do any choppa, choppa, cutting this needs to get cleaned up. So these faces, that's our original glue up going this way. These spaces, that's the glue up I just did making a sandwich going this way. So these surfaces are a little bit irregular. There's my glue residue.

So back to the jointer in order to clean those up. After I drink coffee. And same deal, we're just gonna face joint this like that until it's clean. I'm not, I'm calling these things three by three. I'm honestly not worried about dimension.

All I wanna, all I'm worried about is getting the face cleaned up. I'm gonna back you up just a little bit. Tripod was in my way last time. Dust collection. All right, then, yeah, they are.

Deborah, they are like little end grain cutting boards. Now, before I do any cutting here, look at this. Paul and I had this conversation yesterday. In this form, what else do I have? For those of us that are lathe turners, that's a pretty frigging cool turning blank, I think.

That would be, I don't know, turn a candle holder out of that. Turn a lamp base out of that. That's pretty neat. For our coaster concept we're gonna come to the miter saw. And it's gonna be hard for you to see, but there's a piece of masking tape on here.

The mark that's on that masking tape is 1/2 inch from this side, from the right side of the saw blade. That's gonna be where I go in order to make my cuts. So first thing I need here is a squaring cut to get rid of this kerflooyness. And then from there hit the line, make a cut, hit the line, make a cut. Even that is kind of cool looking.

All right, there's my line. Hit the line, make a cut. And then guess what? Rinse and repeat. So let me do this.

So you can see based on the scale of this and the size of these, this whole thing, that block was maybe 16, 18 inches long. You are gonna get a metric blank ton of coasters out of a piece this long. It's gonna make a lot, a lot of coasters. Now, one thing I did a little bit differently when I was messing with this in the project development stages is I angled the saw 10 degrees. So on this one, let me see where I'm at.

When you look at it in this section view these edges are square, but when you look at it this way these edges have a little bevel on them, they're at 10 degrees. So that was from doing a squaring cut at the table saw at 10 degrees, then 1/2 inch from the blade, 10 degree, 10 degree, 10 degree. Visually it adds a little bit, it's not, it doesn't change anything here. We're still just looking at cubes, but visually I think it adds a little bit there. Whoops.

Brian asked, how thick are you cutting them? I'm making them 1/2 inch. And that's where, same size as the ones I did yesterday. So then Alan says, it'd be interesting to do the math and see how much you lose to kerf. Yeah, so it's probably an 1/8 inch blade on that saw, so I'm losing what, that's 25% of my product.

If I have an 1/8 inch thick coaster, 25% of each cut I'm losing to sawdust. So with that in mind, alternative solution. See how I made a work triangle here? You see how that works out? Mostly so that I wouldn't have to move the stupid camera too many times.

But work bench, miter saw, jointer, bandsaw. I guess that's a work square, but work triangles are important things. So what you could do alternatively if you wanna improve your yield is come to the band saw with a fence. I hope no one takes offense. A you still have to square one end.

I would still start at the miter saw and square one end, but now we can do this. And the kerf of a bandsaw blade is, that particular blade is about 30/2,000, 0.032. And the kerf of that miter saw blade, if that's an 1/8 inch miter saw blade, that's 125/1,000, 0.125. So a factor of four difference. So you'll get way more coasters out of the block by doing this on your band saw, but you're gonna do more sanding.

The surface finish here isn't quite what we're getting off the miter saw. So on the cleanup side you're gonna spend more time. Hello, Johnny in Belgium. That's cool. It's always interesting when we have people from overseas watching.

Now let me talk, let's back up the truck to the glue up step. So I kept talking about making 3/4 by 3/4 inch pieces and then we made these subsections 3/4 by three and glued four of those together. However, the observant among you may have noticed on this one, see how there's, you can see it in the walnut right there. 3/4, 1/4, 3/4, 1/4, 3/4, 1/4. So the math is that we're still getting three inches in this direction, because 1/4, 1/4, 1/4, that makes up for a 3/4 inch section.

The way I did that was I still glued one of these together. Let me grab one. And then I took this piece to the band saw and I resawed it to 1/4 inch. So I could get two 1/4 out of this 3/4 inch piece. And then the other one I have, the finished ones.

Similarly, that's a 3/8 cross section, a little better. That's 3/8. So same deal. I've got a 3/8 and a 3/8, those two together make up one of the 3/4 inch sections. So it gives you more, I don't know, visual options.

Instead of just having all 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch squares in there, it gives you just something a little bit different. I think this is a thing, this is a thang, this is a thing where you glue up one block and then maybe as you're cutting it, you're gonna look at it and say, oh gee, wouldn't it have been cool if I had tried this other thing? And just keep playing with different sizes. So we could go the other way. Anything in increments of 3/4.

So there could be an inch and 1/2 wide piece in there and that makes up, that gives you two 3/4. So same deal, just visual interest. Then sanding. And in all honesty, that's the biggest pain in the butt out of these things. I do have a, I've got a SuperMax drum sander, so I sent all of these through that drum sander.

If you don't have a drum sander, then what you can do is lay a piece of sandpaper on your work bench and over the top of that paper. You can also sand them with a random orbit sander. It's just, that's the slow, labor-intensive side of this whole thing. Once done with that, the finish on these babies is just a rattle can of Spar varnish. So I went with Spar varnish, because that's the stuff that gets used on boats and everything.

So, again, back to the concept of you put something on here that's got moisture beads on it, if it's, the reason you're using a coaster is you don't want water on your table. So if water is gonna drip on this you want a finish on there that's gonna withstand that. Spar varnish certainly is a great choice for that. Then one more thing I did, because I could. I've got a laser engraver.

So now, again, we're on the iPad, so everything is backwards. I put my friend's initials on this one and his wife's initials on. And so four of these and four of these. Just to add another little thing to them. You do that before the finish goes on, then put the finish over the top.

Alan says, sanding is a zen experience. If you can talk yourself into that, good for you. Sanding is a crappy experience for me. I have yet to make it zen-like. What else can I learn ya?

You like that? Coasters made from scrap wood. It's kinda neat. In all honesty, brutal reality, it's labor intensive. If you're thinking you're gonna go into business of making coasters for a living, I'd have to think about what I'd have to get for a finished coaster.

It wouldn't be cheap. 'Cause just there's a lot of cutting and then there's a lot of prep on those parts. And then you're doing, Paul and I figured this out yesterday, five glue ups, because you're doing, you're getting these slabs glued up in this direction. And then once you've got these, you're doing another glue up face to face to face in the other direction. However, once you've got this and you get whatever the math is, you get 20, 25 coasters out of that, that's pretty cool.

So give it a try. I'm gonna, I'm scrolling for comments. All right, Ed says, I can set my iPad not to reverse. So that's, I need to be able to look at the screen. So are you saying I can do that from this screen without it reversing the image?

I know I can do it if I flip the iPad, but then I can't see what you see. And because I'm shooting by myself I need to be able to see the image. What else? So tonight Jimmy's in Pittsburgh. There, Roy did the math.

Roy says, if that blank is 25 inches long, we're losing 3 1/8 inches worth of wood in cuts. That's a lot. Manuel says, can you explain again the type of finish and how to prevent the water to fall off the coaster? Well, it's not, we're not gonna prevent, it's not gonna prevent water from rolling off the coaster. It'll be, what the finish will do, what that Spar varnish will do is it'll prevent any liquid from staining the wood, from staining the coaster.

Oh, Larry says, cork on the bottom. I like that, that'd be cool. And you can just, you can buy cork self-adhesive, so that'd be a really easy add-on. That's a great idea. Michael says, think you have enough bar clamps?

Eh, not when there are 10 people in here for a cabinet making class, incredibly we run out. So no. Edith asked a good question. Is the glue brush dry yet? No, but I bet there's one here from yesterday that I didn't mess with yet.

Yeah, these two. If you missed that, a little bit earlier I was spreading glue, and saying with the silicone brushes. This is a Rockler product, other people make them. I don't wash these when I'm done. So let's see if I can get this in just the right spot.

So there's glue all over those bristles. Now, don't blink or you'll miss it. If I start to peel that, if I hold it in the right spot for you, see how the glue just is coming off of there? So then when I just wiggly piggly it, there. And then that's ready to go again.

See if the other one. Full of glue, flex it around. Oh, this one might come off as one big, oh nope. Sometimes it's kind of cool, the glue comes off in one big unit, like that. Whoops.

There's all the glue residue, there's a clean brush. Make them too nice and people won't wanna use them as coasters. Yeah, that's the, when I make people end grain cutting boards they look at them and they say, I can't cut out on this. And then I would say, I'm gonna be very disappointed. And if you do cut on it and you get a lot of knife cuts in it, then bring it back and I'll sand it and I'll give it back to you.

What kind of glue brush? So a silicone glue brush. Yeah, and David's given us an answer there. It's Rockler sells 'em, Titebond makes 'em. Just look up, if you're googling, silicone glue brush would be the search item.

All right, anything else? Or where I was going earlier and then I got distracted, what a surprise, is tonight we're live again from this very building. Seven o'clock Central time tonight. For that go to wwgoa.com and then look in the upper left-hand corner, it says Menu. When you click on that, one of the menu items is WWGOA Live and that's where we'll be.

And this is April, so it'll be the April live. And that'll be seven to eight o'clock tonight. I'm trying to think. Yeah, I think that's all I got. So, oh, the other thing I was gonna say is the other thing that would be visually interesting I think, once this is squared up you could also bevel the corners before you start cross-cutting.

So then that would give you 45 degrees across here. The other thing I think might be interesting and I didn't have time to try it is if you put a V bit in a router table and you ran a V into each of the faces before you started cutting you'd get a snowflake look to it. So, like I said, this is one of these things that I think when you're gluing this up, make a couple of them, and then you'll have some to just do what I did here, that's the simple form, and then some to experiment with and see what else you can do. Alan says, thanks for this week's best lunch break. Well, good.

I'm glad you think that. I gotta go eat lunch, I'm starving today. All right, is everybody set? Are we good with the content here? Everybody knows what they're doing and how to do it?

We will, we're gonna do this again. We've been doing these every two weeks, but we're gonna jump in and do a couple of extras. So a week from today, same bat time, same bat station. 11 o'clock, April 16th, I'll be here again doing something. It'll be cool.

So, all right? Peace out, baby. Looks like the questions have stopped. All right, thanks everybody for watching. Have a lovely Thursday.

Talk to you later.