New blender base

calblacksmith · June 27, 2013

For those who suffered through my whole or at least the wood section of my shop video will have seen that the thing that started my whole journey into wood was the need for a base for my blender. You will also know that though that is what started this whole thing, I still did not have a base for the blender! I modified a plastic electrical box as a temp base until I made a good one. Well here it is, the new wood base, at long last!

I actually made two. As this is the first thing I have made from wood since 7th grade wood shop, over 40 years ago, I used Poplar as a test project and as I learned on the poplar, I then made the "real" one in red oak. Both are serviceable but the poplar/oak one is "rougher" than the all oak one.

I improved my process as I moved through and made mistakes on the poplar one. Things like drilling holes in the corners of the cutout VS just square ends to the cuts. This is also the first use of my DRO, machined alum finger joint jig. I think it worked out well. I have another one of these bases to make so I will document the use of the jig when making the third box base.

The stock used is 4/4 S4S or 3/4 finished stock thickness. Poplar was used because it was inexpensive and on that one, I used red oak as an inset top because I had more oak and I was out of poplar. On the test box, there are several mistakes made just due to being long out of practice. The joint between the two pieces of oak for the top is off center on the test box, I had forgotten to center it when cutting to size. The finger joints on one joint on the test box are open at the bottom about 1/32 as I tried to pull together with clamps. On the good box, I used a wood mallet to tap the joints tight before clamping and that worked much better.

I made some purchases that could have been avoided too. The outside edges of the test box did not glue tight, I guess I did not have enough glue so I bought a 3/4 rounding router bit to smooth the outside corners. I had a 1/4 round over bit in the router box (a PC 690HD kit with fixed and plunge base was purchased from a pawn shop for $100) so I used the smaller bit first and it turned out that it was enough to clean up the error on the corners. OH Well, I guess I may find a use for the bit someplace. I also purchased two more boards of red oak as I did not have enough on hand for the whole box. On the way out of my lumber store, I saw boxes of "fire wood" for $10. Inside were some real nice but smaller pieces of 3/4 thick red oak that could be joined to be more than enough stock for finishing the project! Well I now have two extra boards of oak in "my pile" LOL!

This is the first time I have ever used a plate jointer or router. I had picked up a very inexpensive craftsman alum router table and craftsman router for $75 used. I pulled the router and installed a second PC router into the table as I have collets for the PC routers in 1/2 and 1/4 while the craftsman was only 1/4.

I learned a lot through this build though the project is a simple one. One of the things I learned was to think the problem through then proceed as planned, heck it is only wood and as the WW says, it grows on trees so there is no reason to fear using it.

I used a spray lacquer as finish, 3 coats and a final cleanup with 1500 grit wet/dry to smooth the final finish.

I think they came out OK and as you can see in the pic in the kitchen, very little of my mistakes with the top can be seen due to the close fit size of the blender to the base.