Want Some Blocks

  I have mentioned before that I belong to a local woodworking club.   Well, one of the area church ladies quilting groups was thinking of those families where mothers and small children are uprooted from their home and end up at the local care center asking for assistance.    Some are abuse cases and some are just cases where the dad has left.    The care center here in our home town has tried to be very helpful in re-establishing those families.    This quilting group was thinking of the possibility of gifting those young ones with a little bag  of homemade toys.     Those ladies are in the process of making little dolls for the girls and asked the "Chips off  The Ole Block" if they could make up some wooden blocks for them to put in a cloth bag for the boys.  

  So that was the challenge for our wood club this month.   Everyone was to look in their wood pile and select some wood scraps and make up a few wooden blocks and then bring those blocks to our next meeting.   From there someone will take all the blocks to the quilters group.   In order to be somewhat uniform, it was decided that all blocks should be in 1 1/2 inch segments.   In other words, 1 1/2 inch block or a block of wood that was 3 inches long etc.

                                                                                        This works good for me as I was trying to shrink down my wood scrap pile anyway.    I selected a lot of scraps that I thought would work good and sawed and planed them down to exactly 1 1/2 inches.   For the record I ended up with some maple chunks, some cedar, a few pine, and some black walnut.
     I took all those long pieces and sawed off chunks that were 1 1/2 inches long.    A few were cut 3 inches long.

     This was not as easy as it seems because once you sawed off the piece you had to pick it away from the spinning blade to keep it from banging into the teeth.   I carefully used my fingers to do that little step (although when the wife was taking this picture and saw me doing that little process I was told to come up with another idea for rescuing those blocks or she would take my tool allowance away from me.)

   I ended up sanding each little block.    Have I emphasized enough before that I really don't love to sand?  (Have I ever expressed my thoughts about the Pam's cat?)   I just felt that each side could use a little touch up and by doing the edges it would eliminated the little splinters that showed up on some of the blocks.   It also gave me a chance to look over each block for imperfections.  (You know, kind of a quality control thing.)




    This next step was a new experience for me.   When finishing wood, one can use mineral oil.   It is non-toxic.    The club suggested that we should avoid using any kind of varnish or a normal wood finish on these blocks just in case some little child puts a block in his mouth and tries to chew on it.   I tried to find mineral oil at several stores and was just about to give up when I was finally directed to the laxative section of the aisle.   So I bought a little bottle just for this project.  (Just for this project - don't get any other thoughts going.) It works nice as it brings out the grain pattern.   Rub it on your cutting board and see for yourself.  

   To the left is my accumlation of blocks that I plan to bring to the next club meeting.   I made 175 of them, but a few did not meet the Dagwood standards and mostly like those will be used as fire starters in our camp fire ring.    Those in the picture total 152 and that is what I gave.    (Hmm.  I have to admit, the little boy came out in me and I had fun stacking them this way and that.)

Next week the total results of the Clubs gift.     Until then, take care.