Making wooden beads

When I have time in the shop, I often like to choose a piece of material and then try to find something to do with it. It's an application of the idea that we are more creative when we are forced to find solutions to constraints, problems, or limitations than when we face a blank canvas.

When we bought our house years ago, there was a rotting old cedar trellis nailed to the wall of the garage. It finally fell over, and I threw it on the burn pile. One day, I chose it and made some beads from the weathered battens. Eve will not let me sell the choker that resulted.

So I made some more.

The old trellis batten is laying across the table of the benchtop 8" bandsaw. (I really like this little bandsaw and use it for everything it can handle.) The slotted angle isn't a fence, but a stop and corral of sorts. At the blade, it sets a 1/2" cut, but angles away behind the blade so that the work doesn't bind. It also helps to catch the beads as they are cut free.

I bored out each bead on the drill press, and then threw them all in the rock tumbler along with the cut metal hardware, abrasive grit, kosher salt, and black aniline dye. I'll post photos of the beads when they're ready.

I also got to try an idea that I had been toying with. Years ago, my father and I worked with a portable bandsaw mill operator to saw boards from some diseased maple and cherry trees that he had to fell on his property in Niagara. After years of air-drying, the boards yielded a series of very successful shallow bowls. I grabbed an offcut of maple and cut a 1/2" square batten from it, clamped it to the bench, and used a 1/2" chisel to mark off beads. Then I cut facets with the chisel.

I had tried coffee as a dye before, and thought that the very blonde maple might take the colour well. There's always a little left in the pot.

I tried them as a bracelet. Eve likes them.

But even in this photo you can see how fuzzy they are. The coffee bath raised the grain, and the bandsaw cuts aren't right in the grooves in some cases, which left ridges. Any technique that requires individually hand-sanding beads is not one that I'll be trying again, so I think I'll clean up the ridges, cut a few more, and use the rock tumbler (with coffee and grit, not black dye) to smooth them a bit.