I built this serving tray for ramekins with a locking
flip-up handle. And, I first built that
two years ago, but when I uploaded it, I accidentally
uploaded the test render instead of the full res render
Back then, I only had a third of the subscribers I have now,
so chances are you haven't seen it so, just pretend it was
a new video. Now, it looks like I'm in
my shop right now, but if things work out the way they should,
right now I am in a little town in southern Germany called
Vaihingen an der Enz, on vacation.
So, if you happen to be there,
send me an email, maybe we can hook up.
And, I'm only mentioning this sort of thing in a video,
like who cares about this after the fact, but I've only
recently found out you can actually edit bits out
of the video after it's been published, so once the initial
surge of views is gone for this video,
this part, the talking right now, is gonna be gone.
For the material, I'm using some nice figured Maple, that was
given to me as firewood.
Got my wood cut. Now I need to decide how big
to make this thing, and sometimes I only bring four,
so I don't want to make the tray too big.
Maybe this size.
And, if I bring more, then these will just stack on top.
I think this would be a good width.
I just cut the test joint with my screw advance box joint jig.
So, I got a piece of scrap to prevent chip-out,
the two long pieces, and two short pieces,
and I'm gonna offset those by a quarter inch,
so that the fingers will match up, and clamp all of them
in place.
I just cut these pieces to their final width.
Now I just still need to cut a ledge for the bottom.
There's various ways to attach the bottom, the traditional is
to cut a rabbet and have the bottom go into here,
but that's quite a pain in the ass to assemble,
and usually end up with a little bit of gap here,
so it's actually not that strong, cause you got this
narrow piece that has to hold it all.
A stronger option is actually just to glue the bottom flat on
but you can bevel it here to hide it a little bit,
but it's still not the prettiest.
So, another option is to cut a rabbet in the bottom,
and put the bottom in, like that.
But, that ends up with this part being quite thin.
So, what I'm gonna try to do is to cut a rabbet, but to cut it
really, really shallow, here.
And, the bottom is mostly gonna get glued
on this surface, right here. So, I have to fit that
very precisely. But, I can take my time
with that, because I can assemble the box, and then
slide the bottom in.
Just gluing some thin pieces of wood into the gaps left
by the rabbets, and I'll trim those flush once the glue dries.
Now, I have to get the size of that bottom just right.
And, before I glue that bottom on, I'm gonna make sure
everything is smooth and sanded.
I just cut the joints for the carrying handle for my tray,
once again, with the box joint jig, but this time using
smaller gears to get finer fingers.
I'm just gonna hinge this handle on some finishing nails for now,
cause I'm trying to figure out how to make this work,
so I can flip it up, and somehow lock it up.
So, I ended up thinking about this for a good long time,
and now it's a day later.
So, what I've come up with is this thing here
and this leaf here is a wooden spring
so as the handle goes like this and flips this way,
that gets pushed down and latches, and then to
lower the handle, I just have to push that down with my fingers,
and then I can flip the handle back down.
I want to make a spacer to hold these ramekins
from sliding around, to go on the bottom of this tray.
This trays all varnished, and now I just need to
hinge that handle on here, somehow.
For the pivot, I decided to just use some nails,
and I drilled a hole that's slightly larger in the case
and slightly smaller in the handle, so that the nail will
get stuck in there.