Wood Working – Sunrise Farm Project

Beer-flavored Sawdust

I finally finished making test beer flights last month so I can share the pictures of each stage of making them. I know this has been a long time coming and I hope there will be more soon.

This is a project that I get to make from tree to board to rough project and then finished flight with makes it very satisfying. The trees are grown and harvested nearby, sometimes from our own property and milled by a nearby friend. The rest of the work is done in my barn that doubles as a woodshop in the fall and winter months. In some cases, the lumber has never been out of a 1 mile radius, except when we deliver the finished product to the customer.

Here is the milled lumber in the shop:

Rough board, without being planed or cut

It’s worth noting that after the board arrived in my shop, it had to “rest” for a month before I could begin. This time allows the wood to acclimate to the temperature and humidity and reduces warping as I begin sawing and sanding. If there isn’t this time, projects will start splitting and not fitting as intended even before anything is completed. I ran into this problem with a few projects last fall, and I hope to not repeat the mistake.

Rough board with outlines of 3 different flights

The first part was to plane the board and then draw my design. After that I cut the board into “square” pieces. Once in a more ‘square’ shape, I cut out each outline and sanded the faces and edges to both remove any rough edges for the cutting and soften the surfaces. I started with 60 grain and moved step by step to 210 grain sandpaper.

Custom ordered flights in the cut stage before sanding

Once the sanding was done it is time to do any finishing work such as woodburning, painting, or staining. I decided to use a beeswax mix on these. I think it helps the wood retain some natural texture and it doesn’t have a chemical smell. The wax also brings out the rich coloration of the walnut that was used in this set of flights. There are some brilliant variations in color that are hard to capture in a photo.

While I do use powered tools, I don’t use any guides so each flight is a bit different from the previous one. Sometimes this adds character I never could have planned out if I tried and other times it means I have to start over. But in the end, I truly enjoy the process of starting with a tree and going through the steps to make a finished product for my own home or for someone else.

Some Great Lakes beer with a few of the Great Lakes states

Featured in this post are a pair of custom flights that were ordered as a wedding gift as well as our “Pure Michigan” flights, four of which are currently available for purchase.

Woodshop progress

The last month has been busy. I planned last year to do most of my projects in the slower winter months, but my shop isn’t insulated which causes more warpage in the wood than I had expected.

I have been spending most of my time on two projects. First was a custom cabinet I was asked to make. The customer had been unable to find anything to the size they wanted that wasn’t pressboard “junk”. They also asked that there be no vertical support between the doors to allow for easier access.

I decided to use small pieces of reclaimed lumber to make a patterned top which took a bit more work but was worth it. With the side, back, and lower shelves made with single sheets and cut to fit inside the frame. The colors were picked by the customer but I did recommend adding a clear epoxy for the top to show off the patterned wood.

The second project that has been getting loads of time and work is a dining room table. It was ordered to a specific size 8×4 ft. The wood and stain selection was custom (although there is a shortage of selection lately).

I started with unfinished lumber and have spent a lot of time planing (smoothing the surface) and jointing (fitting the edges that meet so there isn’t cracks). Then I was able to start to peg and glue the boards together into a table top and apply a stain. I am satisfied with the results so far.

These two projects, given their collective size, have occupied both workshop space and time. As I continue to progress, we will be making decisions about insulation and timing for woodcraft projects. But for now, I’ll continue to make do with what is available.

A Quick Update

This past year has been quite an adventure, to put it mildly. One of the side effects of this crazy busy-ness was that I have fallen FAR behind in writing updates on all the projects going on around SFP. I will try to correct this now.

The first is the garden. The rototiller arrived in late November 2020 just in time to be used briefly in the garden. Unfortunately for us, the temperatures dropped and the ground was frozen the very next day. We’ll definitely update more on that later once we have had a better chance to put it to work. Suffice to say, the rototiller is going to be helpful in adding compost to the gardens and adding a flower garden in the spring.

Next project is that the Mrs SFP has decided to start plants inside so we can get the garden going a bit earlier. So I was “asked” to build so shelves for grow trays that can have lights suspended above them. The build took about a week to plan, gather materials, and then build it. Again, there will be a detailed post to follow.

The woodshop is filled up with projects in various states of not-yet-finished. There has been some small project success with cutting boards and trivets. I really do like the small stuff that I can finish in a late evening or just few hours. The larger projects are taking up a lot of the space in the shop are the 8 x 5 ft table and the half log bench. The cold has made it terribly hard to avoid wood warping as the humidity changes and all the projects have really slowed down.

And finally I have two deer skins salted and hanging to tan as soon as the temp rises. Most of the tanning work has to be done above 40F and the actually tanning paste can only work above 50F.

As we adjust to a new rhythm going into the spring months, I’ll be sharing more about all that we’ve been working on.