Some interesting trivets - video added

When we opened our Etsy shop a year ago I offered a Superman style trivet and the option to have it customized with the letter of your choice. I had made one with the S for my son because he likes to cook and I thought it would be cool. Turned out the very first order we got was for a customized trivet with a 'C' instead of the S. The finish is straight mineral oil and the notches are to allow air in/out since these are trivets for hot pans.

This is the 'C' we did -

This is the original -

Nobody has asked for one since that first order but all of a sudden this week we've gotten two custom orders. The first one was for a set of 7 trivets with B1-B7. Doing one letter is easy because I can fully support it around the perimeter but doing two meant thinking through the support to keep the numbers from breaking off or chipping while cutting so I added a cross-grain triangular piece on the back side.

These are the B1-B7 trivets -

And the back side with the cross-grain piece -

The next order came in the day I finished the Walnut set and this one is Maple with cherries. I had to make sure the stem of the cherries was thick enough not to break off during cutting but not be so thick that it looked odd.

I'm working on a video of the cutting and should complete that soon. What's neat about that is I used the CNC to cut all the way through the 3/4" material in one pass. In addition to the table saw, planer, drum sander, bandsaw for resawing and other tools in the shop there are 11 different steps in cutting these on the CNC with a lot of bit changes so it wasn't really a simple 'push the button and wait' sort of project.

I used a 1/4" downcut spiral on the back side and then glued the insert into place on all 7 Walnut pieces. When that dried I ran them all through the drum sander to get to 0.740" thickness and then used the same downcut bit to cut the initial 0.100" into the top. I don't have a compression bit and didn't want the top edge frayed like an upcut bit does. And since I planned to use Fusion 360's 3D Adaptive Clearing profile the way it is designed to be used with the bit cutting the full depth of the material thickness I really only needed to go just deep enough to make a clean cut edge. The next bit was the 1/4" upcut spiral and it's fascinating to watch it cut the entire 3/4" in one pass. Scary at first but definitely fascinating! I followed that with a 1/8" downcut spiral to finish the inside and then a 90° bit for chamfering the edges. It's possible the chamfer would have taken care of any frayed edges but I didn't want to risk anything splintering or tearing.

Enjoy!
David