In days of yore quilters invented a style called "log cabin" that is really visually striking and looks good as both a whole quilt and as an individual block.
Ok, so if you're asking yourself, "Self, what does all this have to do with woodworking?" Well we wondered if there was a way to make this in wood and if so what it would look like. After all, one of us might have an affinity for quilting.
Our first step was to find a simple template. We decided to make a 7" x 7" square, making the width of each part 1".
Given our abundance of shades in the old wood pile we had a lot of choices. We set the table saw blade high enough to make each of these pieces 1/4" thick to keep the whole thing from being too bulky and heavy because we planned to glue it to a piece of 1/4" plywood.
With the pieces set we started cutting them into the right lengths and arranging them on the base. We discovered the hard way that there are tricks to cutting a small 1" x 1" piece like the ones at the center of the design. A power miter saw will send such a light piece flying, so we put the wood we wanted to cut on top of a big piece of scrap wood (pine, poplar). That way the saw had something more substantial to sink its quickly rotating teeth into.
With all the pieces glued in place and stained, we checked to see how it compared to our template.
We glued on a 1/2" frame of morado wood to set the whole thing off.
And here it is with the rest of its newly created family. Not half bad.
