The House of Betty's Dreams (Continued)
How John built a $5000 sink – for next to nothing
John could only find the beautiful light ash and dark walnut wood he needed in very narrow, 5-inch wide widths by 19-inches long. He puzzled out how to create much wider sheets from these ¾ inch thick strips. John patiently glued, hardened, and sanded four of the 5-inch wide wood sheets together, width to width, to get 20 inches across.
Then he repeated the whole process another 6 times with the ash and 7 times with the walnut. Each panel took 7 days to dry, so he had a long road of nights and weekends.
Weeks later, he finally had 14 separate sheets – 7 light ash and 7 dark walnut. Then he cut down each glued 20-inch sheet to 19 inches needed. |
After all that, John was only half-way through gluing, hardening, and sanding.
The next step was for John to carefully make a sandwich of the walnut and ash pieces. That meant more gluing, hardening, and sanding. Many nights and weekends later, he had a 7 inch deep by 19 inch by 19 inch square block of alternating ash and walnut layers. A large woodworking machine carved, sanded, and polished the bowl. Betty's sink was about to be born.
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