Woodshop Projects - Tea Rack

My wife is a big tea drinker, not of that bagged stuff either, its pretty much loose leaf or nothing for her. As the tea "boxes" continued to take up more counter space I offered to make a tea rack for her, just to keep things a bit more organized. Quite frankly its odd that its me that wants to get it organized and not her, if you seen my work space you know that neatness is not one of my strong suits!

The wood she picked out is called Tzalam also know as Caribbean Walnut and the rough hewn nature meant I needed to get a straight edge on one side before I could really start cutting out the pieces. Since I don't have a jointer I needed to make a jig that would let me cut a straight edge on it allowing me to square everything up.

I bought the plans from Fisher's Shop through his online store: fishersshoponline.com

Once I had a good edge on the two boards I cut the pieces that I needed to length and ran them through the planer to get a smooth surface on the top and bottom. Then I ran the piece for the two shelves through the new band saw to get the right height. That band saw worked a charm on this wood as well, it just took me 15 minutes to figure out how to get the blade on. And then another 10 minutes to figure out why I kept losing power. There are only a few outlets in the garage so I use an extension cord that rolls up and has a place to plug in four power cords. In addition it has its own breaker. The band saw was pulling enough amps starting up to pop this little breaker. I ended up maneuvering the band saw closer to the back workbench so I could plug straight into the wall, that solved the problem!

It doesn't look like much yet. The long pieces are for the shelves and the two shorter pieces are the sides.

Now that I finally have everything cut I can pull out the router and chamfer the edges and then do all the sanding work before I do the final assembly.