Trivial but Pretty

As part of ongoing attempts to remain sane, was doing a little woodworking, using the walnut from the old tree in front yard that we’d had cut down years age. As some long term readers may recall, a local urban lumber guy made it into planks, 11 of which I got. These have been drying in the garage for something like 7 or 8 years.

Maybe a year ago, I brought out several of these boards to see what I could do with them. They had not dried well. Heavily figured and beautiful, but all kinds of warped and twisted, despite being stickered and weighted. I had to chop them up to get straight and flat enough pieces to plane them. So, no large dressers or anything like that is coming from this wood, unless the 6 or 7 pieces on the bottom of the stack I haven’t looked at yet are much better.

Silver lining? I ended up with a collection of little pieces I’d trimmed off in order to get to the flatter, straighter parts. These small pieces tended to be highly figured and knotty. So – I said to myself, I did – what if I were to glue them up into a little board? Call it a cheese board?

Behold:

Five scraps glued together, planed, cut to size, sanded, edged, and oiled. Full of cracks and knots, and places where the glue spread in ways I couldn’t sand out.

But kind of pretty.