Found "Mahogany" Serving Tray

In March of 2012, We bought a house and moved to Mission.  

While cleaning up all that the previous owners had left behind, I found a large piece of some kind of wood.    It looked like nice wood.  so I decided that I needed to make a serving tray out of it.

  I've always liked a particular silver serving tray that a friend of mine has on his coffee table.  So from my memory of his tray, and a little embellishment I came up with this design.

I have made a few bowls before this one, and I must say it's quite the process to get such an item off the machine.  I start by modeling the object in a 3D package, and export that object into the CAM software that generates the cutting code.

This is similar process to the Ruen graffiti piece, but because there are 2 sides that need to line up perfectly, there's a lot more care and planning that needs to happen throughout the process.

Part of the found piece of "mahogany" laying on the table. 

 I use quotes because I don't know what kind of wood it is. Laying it side by side to a piece of known mahogany,  it's a pretty close match, so let's go with that.

The block that the tray will be cut from, in position, screwed down, and ready to go.

First I drill 4 reference holes into the stock block, these will be used to ensure an exact position match when I flip the block to cut the outside half of the dish.

Using a 1/2" ball endmill, I do a roughing pass, removing as much material as I can in the first pass. It leaves a minimum of 30 thou of material to the surface of the actual tray inside.

In progress of the inside finishing cut pass.   I use a 35 thou stepover per pass, that seems to be the best balance between machine time and finishing sanding time.

And the finished inside half of the tray.

after the inside is done cutting. I remove the block from the table and drill the 4 reference holes again,  this time into the spoiler board of the table.  I put 1/4" wood dowels into the holes, flip the stock material, line up the original reference holes that were drilled, and place it onto the wood dowels.

Cutting the outside roughing pass.

Outside of the tray is complete.

With all the machining complete, I cut the  4 "tabs" to hold the tray into the stock block. now the tray is free from the stock material block.

All sanded, sealed with 7 coats of danish oil, and ready for whatever it may be used for..

this one turned out really good I think.   The tray itself is so impossibly thin,  it feels like it was pressed from a flat sheet of metal, but its wood.  Something you definitely have to hold to really appreciate.