Caddy

This was harvested from an evergreen tree over 10 years ago

   Wood taken from an evergreen tree is usually soft, full of Knots, and difficult to work with.   Nobody wants it.  (That should explain why I have some on hand.)   I came across a plan the other day which made me think that I could use some of that evergreen wood I had in my scrap pile.    Of course what I had on hand was rough cut and approximately an inch thick. What I needed were boards that were 1/2 inch thick.   Several passes through my planer and we got em down to the thickness we were looking for.

Enough pine boards for two projects. 

   The wood is soft.  The knots are very hard.  This caused my planer to chatter a little but we ended up with several boards 1/2 inch thick.   From there we just had to cut pieces out in order to avoid the open knot holes.   It's pretty tough to escape the knot completely because with evergreen trees there were branches just about everywhere.

     The sides called for a little curved work and the plan called for joinery to slip all the pieces together - like a puzzle.    Fortunately after carefully sawing away, all the pieces did fit.   The picture to the right shows the first one assembled and the parts for the other one are laying on the table top.

   This whole project comes together without the use of any screws or nails.   As you can see from the picture on the left, holes were drilled into the wood and little wood dowels that I had made were glued and driven into those holes.   This should make for some solid joinery.

   The picture to the right shows the end result of that joinery.     Once the dowels joints have dried up you just have to sand them off even with the sides.   As I have stated before I am not to nuts about sanding, but I like the way those dowel heads contrast with the sides.

  Of course we need a handle and I happened to have some old wooden dowels from an old piece of furniture that I dismantled laying around so I used those.   To keep the handle in place I drilled a hole on each end and glued a little dowel there.   This allows the handle to turn, but keeps it in place.

   I slapped a couple coats of oil based varnish on these things and that is it.   This was a fun little project with some different tactics for joinery.    I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these two, but I already have some ideas for the future.   A little longer and it could be a tool box.  Stick an Ivy plant in there and let it vine around. Install a few dividers and it could be used to carry beer around.   Who knows?   If I draw your name for Christmas 2015 it could be your Christmas present.

Well, I don't care how dead you look, I have to tell you .  That  hummingbird up there at its feeder is not coming down your way to check you out!!!