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Ingredients (Makes One Coaster)
- One piece of yellowheart, ¼" thick by about 4" long by about 1½" wide after cutting both long edges to be straight and parallel.
- One piece of padauk ¼" thick by about 4" long by about 3" wide after cutting both long edges to be straight and parallel.
- 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 are numbered 1 to 5 from left to right. Odd numbers are padauk, even numbers are yellowheart (you can, of course, choose other species for this pattern).
- Position the yellowheart with the long side vertical. Draw an angled line starting at 5/16" to the right of the upper-left corner and ending at 5/16" to the left of the lower-right corner. Cut the piece in two so that the saw kerf is centered on this line. The aim is to get pieces 2 and 4 to be identical, but how accurately you do this is up to you. You'll also need to think about how you make this cut. My crosscut sled has T-bolt holes all over it, so I can clamp a workpiece down at an arbitrary position. You may have a different method, but obviously you can't make the cut freehand as it will be 1) inaccurate and 2) dangerous.
- Clean an edge of the padauk if necessary. Move the rip fence over by 1/8" plus your kerf width and cut off strip number 3. Rotate the piece and, if necessary, rip to 2¾", cleaning the other edge. Draw an angled line starting at 15/16" to the right of the upper-left corner and ending at 15/16" to the left of the lower-right corner. Cut the piece in two so that the saw kerf is more-or-less centered on this line but, more important, the angle of the cut is the same as for the yellowheart. You're making pieces 1 and 5 as identical as possible and so that they will combine correctly with the other pieces.
- Glue up the five strips. When you apply pressure, they may at first tend to slide along the angled joints. Just give the glue time to grab a little more and this will not happen.
- Rip the panel to 4" wide. Crosscut to clean the ends and make into a 4" square. This should work because 1) you started with 1½" of yellowheart and destroyed no more than 1/8" with the angled cut, leaving strips 2 and 4 totaling 1 3/8", 2) you cut strip 3 from the padauk to be 1/8", destroying no more than an additional 1/8" and leaving 2¾" from the original 3" and 3) you destroyed no more than 1/8" with the angled cut dividing the remaining padauk into strips 1 and 5, leaving 2 5/8". 1 3/8" plus 1/8" plus 2 5/8" equals 4 1/8". Unless you started with significantly undersized pieces, you should be OK. Even if you did, just make it square and nobody will know.
- Sand flat and smooth. With a chamfer/ follower bit, use a router to bevel the top edge according to your preference. Apply finish. Apply 1/16" cork sheet to the back, leaving a margin of about 1/8" all the way around.
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