A Pear Tree Tale

When I find a really nice piece wood it can take a few days or a few weeks to decide exactly what I want to do with it.  But as soon as I'd settled on making a few variations of my raised chopping board Brezza Di Legno, perhaps with a slab of walnut I have, I wondered if I could find some pear wood to go with it. I'd never used pear wood and never seen any at the timber yards, so I was curious about how it would look and how it behaved under a chisel. 

I was chatting to my good friend and very talented carpenter Ichwan (who's workshop I am very privileged to be working in)  about this idea and how I'd like to give the walnut board a pair of legs made out of pear wood. He told me about a local pear tree that was chopped down a couple of years ago in Hartfield (Winnie the Pooh's village) , and that some of it was sitting outside stacked up against the workshop underneath a wooden awning - probably a bit damp too. We went out to take a look and moved a few logs to reveal planks of pear. 

We dug out one of the dust covered planks and carried it into the workshop so I could set about finding out whether or not it was dry enough to make anything with. A couple of hours later I had 2 very pink looking, fairly flat planks on my sawhorse.

It didn't seem too damp to me, but a quick check with the moisture meter reassured me that it was in fact dry enough to be used. Great! 

The next step was to square up the edges and measure out a pair of legs for Brezza V2. There wasn't enough width to the pear planks to be able to cut rebates for a second board shelf, so I only needed to consider enough depth under the walnut top so fit a plate or small bowl so that it could be infinitely more useful than a board flat on the worktop.  I also wanted to use a different joint for attaching the pair of pear legs to the walnut top - maybe a long narrow through tenon with walnut wedges. I think that would look great. 

Now I could visualise the end product, the contrast between the light pear wood and the darker walnut heart wood would be quite a unique aesthetic. Since this is a new product I am very excited because the final finished product is always going to give me something new to look at and photograph and hopefully be proud of. 

Tomorrow I'll cut the tenons and get to work on the walnut mortises. Will post photos here next week , hopefully all done by then.