After my recent bookstand project, I was looking for a simple project to put left-over lumber to good use. These coasters are what I came up with.

A tree is the epitome of a selfless life - it provides shelter and sustenance for decades and it is sad to see any part of such a worthy being go to waste.

In this post I describe a quick project combining cedar, purpleheart and maple. The combination is aesthetically pleasing and can be put together in a few hours with simple hand tools.

I was building this project on a tight schedule and thus things don’t line up 100% - someone with better skills or more time should produce better output.

Rounded corners are obtained by a simple principle we learn in math. Lots of straight cuts along the tangents of the desired circle, form the cicle.

I marked out the desired corner trajectory using a pair of divider calipers and filed away enough material until I obtained this result:

Then I glued my maple and purpleheart blocks like so:

Using a drill press I put in a few holes for birch dowels. The result was:

Finally I inserted the dowels with glue around them to fix them in place.

Someone mentioned compressed birch dowels to me that expand when glue is added. These I trust are going to produce much stronger structures than what I have.

Finally, I applied wipe-on poly - I have developed a strong affection for this product - incredible ease of use and very good results with minimal effort - a winner.

Here are a couple of additional pictures of the coasters in their new home.