The Tray

Unfortunately my first attempt at the tray went awry. I managed to get the wood template stuck inside the metal tray, making it impossible for me to retrieve it. I had to start from scratch, making a new template. This time I was careful not to shape the metal too tightly onto the wooden guide.

A key lesson Daniel showed me on the disc/belt sander when I was smoothing the hard corners of the rectangular plywood template was to move the wood in an arc, mimicking my finish line, in repeated motions, slowly making my way to my pencil line. And of course I must remember that the disc is rotating one way so don't sand on the side that is going to send your wood flying up up up and away.

I did try and flatten the edges of my tray further in a vice in the workshop, and this kind of worked, but resulted in some dints where the tray curves and the vice does not.

After filing the edges and giving it a polish it was done. But I regretted scratching 'top' on the inside of my tray, and using a scrap bit of aluminium I found lying around that had a big circle scribed on it, someone's abandoned bowl no doubt. Rookie mistake.

My tray (top) compared to my partners (bottom)

My finished tray

My tray (top) compared to my partners (bottom)