Ingredients (Makes Two Coasters)
- Two pieces of curly maple, each ¼" thick by about 8" long by 1 7/16" (or more) wide after cutting both long edges to be straight and parallel.
- One piece of walnut ¼" thick by about 8" long by 1 13/32" (or more) wide after cutting both long edges to be straight and parallel.
- Four strips of cherry ¼" thick by 5/16" wide each a little over 4" long. You can exploit the 45° angled cuts to make do with about 16 inches total length.
- General Finishes Enduro-Var urethane (or similar) to finish.
- 1/16" thick pressure sensitive cork sheet (or dots, or similar) for underside.
Instructions
Referring to the photograph, the strips of wood in the core are numbered 1 to 7 from left to right. Odd numbers are maple, even numbers are walnut (or whatever species you choose).
- Cut the walnut into three pieces. Strip 2 is 7/16" wide. Strip 4 is 7/32" wide. Strip 6 is 9/16" wide. That's a total of 1 7/32" of useful wood. If your saw kerf is 3/32" wide, the two cuts will destroy 3/16" of wood and you'll need to start with at least 1 13/32" as stated in Ingredients.
- Cut one piece of maple into three pieces. Strip 1 is 9/32" wide. Strip 5 (not 3) is 1/8" wide. Strip 3 is whatever is left of this piece or ??? if you started with more than 1 7/16".
- Don't cut the second piece of maple. This will be strip 7. It will be trimmed after the glue-up so that the core is 3½" wide.
- Glue up the seven strips.
- Rip the panel to 3½" wide. Crosscut to clean the ends and divide into two 3½" by 3½" squares. (If you are using a jig to make the edge band, you may need to leave additional wood on the core to be removed by the jig so that it has exactly the right dimension.)
- Prepare the edge band strips in the obvious way. If you don't have a jig, you'll probably need to sneak up on the length as this is critical and any error can spoil the appearance of the coaster.
- Glue the edge band strips around the core.
- Sand flat and smooth. Apply finish. Apply 1/16" cork sheet to the back leaving a margin of about 1/8" all the way around.
