I'd get two LED construction lights from screwfix, to keep the cost down (studio lights expensive!), and position them on each side of the box, and light the box up. The box is basically a soft white fabric, which will let light through, it will result in indirect light, softer and difused. . Once you have the lights, you can experiment with them, position them in various places, make notes, but don't change the position of the camera or the pen. Eventually, you will find out where to keep the lights the best.
Post a photo of the last thing you made
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I'd get two LED construction lights from screwfix, to keep the cost down (studio lights expensive!), and position them on each side of the box, and light the box up. The box is basically a soft white fabric, which will let light through, it will result in indirect light, softer and difused. . Once you have the lights, you can experiment with them, position them in various places, make notes, but don't change the position of the camera or the pen. Eventually, you will find out where to keep the lights the best.
Sawdust=manglitter
Established Member
Just finished making my first chopping board. Mam requested the first chopping board i make to be hers, so i used up some scraps of american black walnut i had to make this end grain chopping board. These are a lot more labour intensive than i thought. The board has had an overnight bath in food grade mineral oil and then waxed with my home made finish.
I took a little bit of a deep dive and experimented with different ratio mixes of beeswax, mineral oil, and carnauba wax to make my own food safe chopping board conditioner wax. Also did some experimenting on the new vinyl cutter to mess about with the tin and the label/instructions. It’s a little bit over the top considering that i’ve never sold anything i’ve made to date!
I took a little bit of a deep dive and experimented with different ratio mixes of beeswax, mineral oil, and carnauba wax to make my own food safe chopping board conditioner wax. Also did some experimenting on the new vinyl cutter to mess about with the tin and the label/instructions. It’s a little bit over the top considering that i’ve never sold anything i’ve made to date!
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Beautiful chopping board - very much high end market (lucky Mam) you could definitely sell it but you need to high price it accordingly then work on streamlining your production process to reduce your labour and develop other variants from solid wood that are less expensive but still high end and possibly more profitable. I like the Board Butter idea.Just finished making my first chopping board. Mam requested the first chopping board i make to be hers, so i used up some scraps of american black walnut i had to make this end grain chopping board. These are a lot more labour intensive than i thought. The board has had an overnight bath in food grade mineral oil and then waxed.
I also took a deep dive and experimented with different ratio mixes of beeswax, mineral oil, and carnauba wax to make my own food safe chopping board conditioner. Also did some experimenting on the new vinyl cutter to mess about with the tin and the label/instructions. It’s a little bit over the top considering that i’ve never sold anything i’ve made to date!
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Sawdust=manglitter
Established Member
Thanks Mike, i appreciate the kind comments.
I wouldnt even know where to look to start selling something like this, and also wouldnt have a clue what kinda price i could realistically ask either?
I suggest you research. Try online first to gauge what high end kitchenware like this is sold online and at what price point then checkout local independent kitchenware retailers to test if they may be happy to sell your low volume, high quality chopping boards and pay you an amount that provides an acceptable profit. Here is our local retailer as an example Abraxas Cookshop | 01327 341080 | Cookware | Kitchenware | Baking Keep it small and controllable and also setup your own website with a catchy name and logo. Items like this are also bought as gifts so research the gift market. You could also research craft fairs you could attend next year but that would mean a sizeable overhead (stall rental, display etc.). You could also look into getting small business advice from such places as this Starting up and Business Planning | Business Wales (gov.wales)
What ever you do keep your overheads low and grow slowly - cash is king in a small business.
Hope that helps.
Just finished making my first chopping board. Mam requested the first chopping board i make to be hers, so i used up some scraps of american black walnut i had to make this end grain chopping board. These are a lot more labour intensive than i thought. The board has had an overnight bath in food grade mineral oil and then waxed with my home made finish.
I took a little bit of a deep dive and experimented with different ratio mixes of beeswax, mineral oil, and carnauba wax to make my own food safe chopping board conditioner wax. Also did some experimenting on the new vinyl cutter to mess about with the tin and the label/instructions. It’s a little bit over the top considering that i’ve never sold anything i’ve made to date!
Great effort on the first board - something I also have on my list of things to make, but my list is rather long, and things are crossed out of it at a slow pace. But I would be damn chuffed if this would be the end result of my try. Well done mate!
That chopping board looks superb, I have made a few edge grain boards & one end grain board & the end grain board was far more work than the others. Have seen quite a lot of people who make & sell Cutting boards also sell their own board butter which I guess is a good idea, keeps you in people's minds for any other sort of work they might need doing.
Mine are just sitting about the workshop along with quite a lot of other stuff as I am the same as you & don't have a clue how to price them plus I don't really think my work is good enough to sell but that's a different story.
Mine are just sitting about the workshop along with quite a lot of other stuff as I am the same as you & don't have a clue how to price them plus I don't really think my work is good enough to sell but that's a different story.
A plane iron (will post updated pictures after tempering it and surface finishing). I've made a bunch of these, but sometimes it's nice to make one that fits a lateral adjuster dead on (there's no extra cost to it). Minimal tooling, just a drill press, a hacksaw, flat stock ordered from a metal supplier and a upgraded version of the common 4x36 bench top sander (one called "bucktool" here that actually tensions a belt and has power, and a flat platen).
Total time from flat stock to iron ready for heat treatment is 40 minutes (if using something more resistant to filing like the steel that I suspect is V11, you can double that, but the process is the same except that I dribble water into the holes drilled down the slot length while drilling to make sure the metal never gets hot. Some of the highly alloyed steels will air harden to full hardness and annealing them takes vermiculite insulation overnight - no thanks).
Why bother? The cost to make an iron other than the hour total that it will be after heat treatment, grinding the bevel and flattening is about $10, and the iron will be high hardness and with a fine grained steel almost identical to japanese white steel. Anything that tempers 450F or lower and that doesn't need to be heated above 1900F quickly can be done without much equipment. An iron that at least matches Hock's high carbon steel irons can be made for about $10-12 with very high quality US O1 stock, and you can play with top style, slot width and hardness if you want something different (you can also do whatever you want for thickness).
Most steels that don't heat treat well in open atmosphere are steels we wouldn't use for woodworking, anyway (like CPM M4, which works fine - it's actually great, but it's eye-bleedingly expensive to buy it, have a machine shop cut and grind irons and then have proper heat treatment done - if a woodworking firm offered irons in CPM M4, they'd probably have to be $150-$200.)
(the blue on this is just layout fluid - it'll disappear as soon as it sees heat in the quench, and any scuzz left will be removed when glazing the finished iron.)
This one is 26c3 - like white steel, it sharpens crisply at high hardness, but without anything other than iron and carbon, it'll last slightly less long than a high quality O1 iron - but it doesn't chip easily, and the sharpening interval can easily be a minute - the bargain for liking any sharpening medium and sharpening and grinding fast vs. ideal edge life is a fair one. For some steels, like A2, it's not as good - A2 is pickier about abrasives and will lose its edge to some natural types, and it seems to grind and hone more slowly than 20% slower (which is its edge life edge over O1 at same hardness), and it nicks more easily.
Edited to add the final iron - pushed the limits on the quench in speed and lower temp, and got a crack from the keyhole part of the way through the edge. If it only ever goes halfway, I'll never get to it, but no reason to finish glazing the iron behind this. I'll use this iron, but make another one (worst case, ten dollars lost - best case, the crack doesn't propagate. The iron is very hard and takes a super finish off of a simple washita (next to finish) arkansas stone.
The first test shaving off of the iron, washita, then stropped on the corner of a soft buffing wheel. Certainly thin enough to see through.
Resulting reflectivity on an unfinished cherry edge, plenty bright enough to reflect the file handle and the can of spray paint.
All without ever using any true finishing stones. This is the draw for making some of your own tools - manipulating the variables to get something really unusual and convenient to use.
Total time from flat stock to iron ready for heat treatment is 40 minutes (if using something more resistant to filing like the steel that I suspect is V11, you can double that, but the process is the same except that I dribble water into the holes drilled down the slot length while drilling to make sure the metal never gets hot. Some of the highly alloyed steels will air harden to full hardness and annealing them takes vermiculite insulation overnight - no thanks).
Why bother? The cost to make an iron other than the hour total that it will be after heat treatment, grinding the bevel and flattening is about $10, and the iron will be high hardness and with a fine grained steel almost identical to japanese white steel. Anything that tempers 450F or lower and that doesn't need to be heated above 1900F quickly can be done without much equipment. An iron that at least matches Hock's high carbon steel irons can be made for about $10-12 with very high quality US O1 stock, and you can play with top style, slot width and hardness if you want something different (you can also do whatever you want for thickness).
Most steels that don't heat treat well in open atmosphere are steels we wouldn't use for woodworking, anyway (like CPM M4, which works fine - it's actually great, but it's eye-bleedingly expensive to buy it, have a machine shop cut and grind irons and then have proper heat treatment done - if a woodworking firm offered irons in CPM M4, they'd probably have to be $150-$200.)
(the blue on this is just layout fluid - it'll disappear as soon as it sees heat in the quench, and any scuzz left will be removed when glazing the finished iron.)
This one is 26c3 - like white steel, it sharpens crisply at high hardness, but without anything other than iron and carbon, it'll last slightly less long than a high quality O1 iron - but it doesn't chip easily, and the sharpening interval can easily be a minute - the bargain for liking any sharpening medium and sharpening and grinding fast vs. ideal edge life is a fair one. For some steels, like A2, it's not as good - A2 is pickier about abrasives and will lose its edge to some natural types, and it seems to grind and hone more slowly than 20% slower (which is its edge life edge over O1 at same hardness), and it nicks more easily.
Edited to add the final iron - pushed the limits on the quench in speed and lower temp, and got a crack from the keyhole part of the way through the edge. If it only ever goes halfway, I'll never get to it, but no reason to finish glazing the iron behind this. I'll use this iron, but make another one (worst case, ten dollars lost - best case, the crack doesn't propagate. The iron is very hard and takes a super finish off of a simple washita (next to finish) arkansas stone.
The first test shaving off of the iron, washita, then stropped on the corner of a soft buffing wheel. Certainly thin enough to see through.
Resulting reflectivity on an unfinished cherry edge, plenty bright enough to reflect the file handle and the can of spray paint.
All without ever using any true finishing stones. This is the draw for making some of your own tools - manipulating the variables to get something really unusual and convenient to use.
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Stevekane
Established Member
I really like the design of your board, esp the angled edges and finger grips, it seems terrible to be cutting on somthing so nice!Just finished making my first chopping board. Mam requested the first chopping board i make to be hers, so i used up some scraps of american black walnut i had to make this end grain chopping board. These are a lot more labour intensive than i thought. The board has had an overnight bath in food grade mineral oil and then waxed with my home made finish.
I took a little bit of a deep dive and experimented with different ratio mixes of beeswax, mineral oil, and carnauba wax to make my own food safe chopping board conditioner wax. Also did some experimenting on the new vinyl cutter to mess about with the tin and the label/instructions. It’s a little bit over the top considering that i’ve never sold anything i’ve made to date!
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Steve.
donpereira
Member
First ever woodwork, I dont think they even let us hold a file at my school!
Pretty happy with the result, definitely a learning process and how not to panic after a c*ck-up. There were many of them!
Now I need to learn how to paint...
Pretty happy with the result, definitely a learning process and how not to panic after a c*ck-up. There were many of them!
Now I need to learn how to paint...
Stigmorgan
Established Member
Thats really nice, would never know its your first attempt.
Henniep
Established Member
Very impressive. Own design, or from plans? Does it fold down? Well done.
First ever woodwork, I dont think they even let us hold a file at my school!
Pretty happy with the result, definitely a learning process and how not to panic after a c*ck-up. There were many of them!
Think my first project at School was a broom holder, my Mum still has it & uses it lol That was to many years ago to think about. After School I had a 40 (odd) year gap before starting again.
Looks like you have done a great job & if there are a load of mistakes then they don't show. I would be well pleased if my projects looked like that.
Pretty happy with the result, definitely a learning process and how not to panic after a c*ck-up. There were many of them!
Think my first project at School was a broom holder, my Mum still has it & uses it lol That was to many years ago to think about. After School I had a 40 (odd) year gap before starting again.
Looks like you have done a great job & if there are a load of mistakes then they don't show. I would be well pleased if my projects looked like that.
donpereira
Member
The "designs" attached, only really used to work out how much wood I needed to buy and to work out the width of bits. Kind of a hybrid from what I saw someone do on youtube and an easel you can buy. It folds down to a table for varnishing and if you knock out the tusks, it'll collapse flat (ish) to hide under a bed or to move to a new home.
Wanted to do some woodwork for ages so I've been happy seeing something come together in front of me. Beats the spreadsheets I look at all day! Thanks all for the kind words.
Building the first of 3 built in wardrobes for the bedrooms in our house and first job was to make a freestanding drawer unit that goes in side the first one.
Nothing fancy just Birch Ply that will have Ash veneered ply faces on the drawers and sliding doors and if I can manage it ash edge trims to hide the exposed ply edges.
first ever time using Blum undermount slides and took me way longer than it should have done to work the sizing out but got there eventually.
Nothing fancy just Birch Ply that will have Ash veneered ply faces on the drawers and sliding doors and if I can manage it ash edge trims to hide the exposed ply edges.
first ever time using Blum undermount slides and took me way longer than it should have done to work the sizing out but got there eventually.
I love the easel, that's very impressive.
I made a chopping board hoping to pull off the Café Wall Illusion in wood.
It sort of works if you look at it sideways from a long way away.
But not that well.
I made a chopping board hoping to pull off the Café Wall Illusion in wood.
It sort of works if you look at it sideways from a long way away.
But not that well.
