Friday 16 July 2010

Winding Sticks

While making my table top, I needed some way to check if the boards were flat. Eyeballing the boards is not really accurate. I read up about it and found out about winding sticks.
I took a piece of scrap wood from my offcut bin and broke it in half to test the theory.
Wow! These little planks really work!
They are extremely easy to use and accurately tell you if the board is not flat.

The wikipedia entry on winding sticks mentions that contrasting wood is often used.
Yeah??
Guess what .. that's exactly what I have.
Contrasting Obeche and Sapele Mahogany strips which are waiting for my boat build to start.
I simply pasted them together to form a stick.
Once I saw them finished, I decided to get a little fancy and insert a strip of the opposite wood as a "centerline" on each stick.
I am hugely satisfied with my new toys.
One benefit to making the winding sticks, was getting to see the colour of my strips with some 'finish' on them.


I used Deep Penetrating Furniture Wax from Woodoc. This brought out the colours with amazing depth. I was actually quite stunned at how beautiful the Sapele Mahogany is. I have subsequently put on a few layers of Antique Wax, also from Woodoc.


1 comments:

CraigRK said...

Could you post how you use the sticks?

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