Woven Oak

  I make many projects from oak and so often have bits pieces and off cuts laying around.  Also I get an oak board with a serious twist or knot in it and instead of putting it in the fire, I save it for a future project.
  Recently I culled through my rejects pile and decided to make another trivet.  I made one like this last summer but it was a prototype so I didn't sand or finish it properly.  Eva decided that this was a good design and so early in the week I set the table saw up to rip some thin slices off my boards and arrived at this:

9 x 16 in woven oak trivet.

    The whole thing was glued and clamped in stages and then finished with amber shellac.  It certainly in not a difficult job, just on that requires patience since it takes about four sessions of glue and clamping to get it done.

  To do a job like this, I used my table saw with a Freud thin rip blade.  I have been very happy with these blades, I have two because I have to send them away for a week to get them sharpened.  I get the blades sharpened once a year and so far each blade has been sharpened twice, they had stood the test of time and cut miles of oak and elm.