Olive wood counter tops

Comment

Comment by Etay Schnapp on June 3, 2013 at 11:52pm

Thanks for the comments, this my first serious wood project so i'm happy it turned out half decent :)

The wood itself is from olive trees which grow too old to yield any harvest... mostly from the Mediterranean... this specific wood was brought in from an Italian wood flooring manufacturer, it came in as planks about 2.5x7x0.5 inches.

As for the construction,  I had 3 separate pieces to make with one of them being a very large L share piece which was a bit more complicated...

Each piece started with a 3/4" plywood base (grade A) which was cut to size approx 0.5" larger than the diameter... I then proceeded to cut and miter the olive wood planks to the pattern i wanted.

Then I join them all with my Kjig, first lengthwise plank to plank to make long boards then side-wise board to board to make the surface...

I then glued the hardwood surface to the plywood with Titebond 3 wood glue, run a few kreg screws from the plywood into the hardwood on the bottom, and let that dry overnight super-clamped...

Once the surface is bonded with the plywood I trim the excess plywood with a router and a 3 flute edge bit running on the hardwood layer as a guide...

After a rough sanding of the visible edges, I cut a trim from 1/2" olive wood planks and join that to the side with the Kjig, then route the trim with the bevel bit for a nice edge...

Before sanding down i fill in the gaps (try to keep to minimum when cutting since anything bigger than 1/8" will be visible in the patterns even with filling) with either paper-thin slants of the material for large gaps or a mixture of hardwood sawdust and wood glue for the small ones...

Then proceed to sand it all down. When sanding I used a belt and palm sander for the lower grits (60,80,120,220) then hand sanding for the higher ones (320,400,600)

once that is all done, just run 4-5 layers of butcher block beeswax and mineral oil (must be food grade) and install instead of the older counter...

One more thing worth mentioning, there is a flush sink installed on the wood which would usually be frowned upon... in this case this is olive wood which is naturally saturated with olive oil and is very highly water resistant, but in addition to be safe I built into the sink hole a 1/2" thick ring made of hardwood and finish nailed it in... this way if the wood does damage over time the border ring needs only to be removed and replaced...

As you mentioned above, the counter is about 1/8" gaped from the walls for expansion and so I also installed trim board from the same wood which was ordered with the planks... the splash was made from stainless steel tiles, they come on a mesh and u need to have a wet-saw to cut them if needed... if anyone planning to try i recommend working with butcher's gloves i cut every single finer 3-4 times with gloves and all... these tiles become razor sharp when cut and need deburring...

hope this gives more insight... 

cheers,

etay

Comment by Robert Brennan on June 3, 2013 at 12:58pm

Olive wood ? never heard of it! unless its the Olive tree the dove picked a leave from before returning to Noahs Ark.

Very nice work and I see you have considered the location and the possible exposure to irregular expansion by banding your work with the edging.

The project is worthy of some informative text describing its construction and methods you have used

Keep up the good work!

Regards

 

Robert Brennan