Raised dog dishes Pt. 2

Two days into the project, and I have already made significant progress. This project started the way most woodworking projects do; rough milling the lumber to size. Thursday night, after a nice dinner, I spend about an hour in the shop, cutting all the apron and leg pieces to size. This walnut was purchased from The Hardwood Connection. Since this is the first time I’ve used them I thought it would be prudent to let the wood rest, just in case it was dried to fast and had lots of internal tension. I let the boards rest for a little more than 48 hours.

This morning I spent about three hours in the shop dimensioning the lumber from Thursday. I know three hours is a long time to dimension two dozen little boards, but in my defense, I was only working half the time. The other half of the time, I was sitting on the couch watching the woodworking shows I DVR’ed from earlier in the week. It never ceases to amaze me how much smaller the lumber pile looks after the boards have all been dimensioned.

Since I had nothing else to do today I spent a little time working on my neanderthal skills. I flattened the board below using only my Jack plane. As you can see, the Walnut looks really amazing. I can’t wait to see what it looks like with a coat or two of finish. I’m probably going to use  Waterlox’s Marine finish, but I’m not 100% sure, I might just use polyurethane. Maybe I will flip a coin when it comes time to apply the finish. I might apply some amber shellac to this board just to see how it looks, as I’m considering walnut for some future projects that won’t require as much protection as these dishes will.