A Tray for Tea
It’s nice to be able to carry tea, coffee or cakes for your guests in a sweet little tray. This one even looks good sitting on a table waiting for those guests and is a great project to learn some new woodworking techniques.
We’re going to veneer the base highlighting the beauty of wood. It’s not that difficult and doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. The joinery is on the smaller scale and easily accomplished using dovetails, half laps and even a pair of bridle joints. We’ll also curve the handle using bent lamination with an easily built form and then add a contrasting band. Lastly we’ll use some leather cord to create a wrap around the handle.
Start pressing
Select the combination of woods you want and machine the four pieces for the tray frame as shown in the cutting list on p.55. Before we cut the joinery we’ll start to press our veneers so that it cures as we continue.
My favourite way of pressing veneers is to use an inexpensive vacuum press kit available from Roarockit. You’ll need to make a platen out of melamine, sized slightly smaller than the bag and 19mm thick. Make sure to round all sharp edges so as not to
