Bonjour! Mes amis m’appelent Swirlend Tray.
I’m getting ahead of the gift season, making some trays to give out to friends. They’re perfect for it – a relatively simple project that makes quite an impression.
Notes:
- Lots of what I did to make this has been covered in my previous posts, so I won’t get into too many technical aspects. Here are some relevant links: Simple tray and butt jointing
- The supplier I got these woods from (discussed here) sands them to thickness, but they’re still fairly rough. I should have sanded my materials down a bit to remove the worst marks before I lasered, it would have made things a lot simpler later.
- All visible wood is 1/8" (~3mm) thick solid hardwood. The bottom (not pictured) is 2 layers of 1/8" baltic birch plywood.
- All surfaces sanded to 600 grit and then polished with 1500 grit, not a true sanding.
- All surfaces treated with Feed n Wax.
- Inner dimensions of the tray are 8.5" X 6.5" X 1.25" (215 X 165 X 31mm)
This tray is somewhat in progress. I’m not sure about the liner color, so for now I cut a piece of white pigskin liner to lay in there as a placeholder. You’ll probably notice the waviness of the leather surface, I haven’t tried to secure it in any way. I’ll probably end up choosing something with a richer color to play off the warm tones in the woods.
Maple, Wenge, Pigskin
I wanted to make a tray where the corners felt like they were framing a positive space in the faces, hence the choice of dark Wenge for the corners and bright maple for the sides. The finger joints in a dark wood like Wenge are naturally more subtle, and so the corners almost appear monolithic, which was intentional. The corners are sanded to roughly a 1/16" radius, subtle rounding of fingers is my current go-to.
Maple, Wenge, Pigskin
The sides are through-cut inlay/butt jointing. Kerf adjustment is necessary to get results like this – there’s no room to hide mistakes. As such, designs that have few or no sharp corners are preferable to avoid “pitting” where corners overburn. Designing so there are no sharp corners is a bit of a learning curve, but necessary and worth it. If you’re an inkscape user, I would recommend watching the video I posted here.
Maple, Wenge, Pigskin
I know, I know, all that pristine maple is asking for inlays or engraves. I wanted the corners to stand out and so decided to go simpler, choosing clear, bright maple boards and uniformly dark wenge. It might seem strange to design a tray to showcase the corners, but I’m pretty happy with the outcome.
Maple, Wenge, Pigskin
I don’t have a lot more to say here. Trays are simple, but if you take the time to get them right, they can be elegant and impactful. I’m already working on a variant for the next gift – it would be easy to crank out a few of these in various wood combinations, but where’s the fun in that? I’d be cheating myself out of designing new cool curved corners!
PS… I barely speak any french, so don’t reply en Francais or I’ll have to use google translate to keep up! OK, a plus tard!
