Sushi Serving Table

My daughter Andi, asked me if I could make a custom sushi serving table as a birthday gift for her husband Terry, in the style of one which he had seen and admired during a night out at a sushi restaurant. She supplied a very rough drawing of how it looked. The offset design of this piece required it's two halves to be glued together in an offset fashion to attempt to replicate the design that Terry had seen.

For the uninitiated among us (count me in that group - lol) this is the piece on which the sushi is presented to the people dining at your table.

I had extra stock so I decided to make 3 different designs.

The tops were to be in a butcherblock style. I decided to make it out of maple and to give the piece a bit more visual interest I included in the glue up, a few strips of 2 different thicknesses of a South American exotic wood variety called purpleheart.

I ripped all stock into strips about 1 3/16 wide.

Purpleheart is sold by Lee Valley in pieces which are 24" long by 3" wide and is available in varying thicknesses. I used 2 different thicknesses: 1/8" and 1/4".

To be sure of safely cutting all pieces for the top to the same length, I clamped a scrap wood spacer to my fence, before the blade engages the wood. To make successive cuts to the same length, the wood is slid up against the spacer and then passed by the blade.

Using a glue like Titebond II in this case, the pieces are clamped together and left to dry.

NOTE: Line up the ends as close as possible but close is good enough because the ends will all be trimmed to a nice uniform edge once this glue up is dry.

Also, glue is better applied and spread with a cheap/disposable 1" paint brush which can be washed out and used many times. And that's an old cut off juice container being used to rinse and hold the brush.

Keep a rubber mallet handy to help "persuade" any piece which doesn't want to cooperate. Also once the clamping procedure is complete, keep a damp rag handy to remove most of the glue "squeeze out."

After the glue up is dry, but before the piece gets planed down to the thickness I wanted, I used small scrapers to scrape and chip off those lumps of dried glue squeeze-out. This step can save you some money on blades which can be ruined by those hard dried glue lumps.

So any excess remaining on your project can either be sanded or scraped off with this small cabinet scraper which I prefer for smaller projects.

Planing will still be necessary however, but at least your blades will still be in good condition.

A belt/disc sander comes in very handy for getting rid of all the now dried glue squeeze out and a general clean up of the workpiece at this stage, before planing.

Sanding Station
This is a Delta sanding station similar to the one I used on this project. It's both a belt sander and disc sander & saved a ton of time on this project and will on all future projects too. Please click this small picture to find out more about it.

PLANER SLED

Once the glue was dry it was then run through the planer on the "snipe-avoiding" self-built planer sled. It was made to be sufficiently longer than the workpiece to avoid snipe, which if it occurs, will only be apparent safely at the ends of the sacrificial & replaceable sides - for the next job - of the planer sled and not on the workpiece.

The workpiece remains snipe free well inside the beginning or ending edges of the sled where the snipe occurs.

12" Planer
Using this sled, the work pieces were run through my Delta 12" planer which Rockler carries. After a few passes the three platters looked like this and after a bit of finish sanding, the finishing process was next. Please click on this small photo for details on the planer.

The design for the legs was borrowed from some authentic sushi material sites. One set consists of "arched" legs - drilled and countersunk and thereby attached with screws to it's underside.

On another, the platform rests in 1/2" deep recesses in the oak
1 x 2s which were cut to be 3/4" longer than needed, because I wanted to be left with 3/8" on either side. The tablesaw's blade depth was set to 1/2", and then by repetitive passes over the blade the desired area to be removed, was nibbled out.

These legs were attached to the underside of this platform by screws after having drilled and counter sunk appropriately. On the table to the right, I used small vinyl covered leg glides as legs. They were hammered into pre-drilled 1/16" pilot holes.

For the butcherblock tops, I decided to use a stain by Flecto - brand name X-3D, #814 Vermont Maple, and on the oak legs, I used a dark stain by Minwax called Jacobean. As a topcaot, I used 6 or 7 sprayed on coats of Deft glossy lacquer using their spray can product. Although not apparent in the photo, it's gives a beautiful mirror-like glossy finish.

Small felt disks were affixed to the bottom edge of the now finished legs, and the unit was then complete. Seeing the cost of these things on the web and in stores, and realizing the margin of profit, I may just come out of retirement to be a custom sushitable manufacturer. ;-))

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