Plan “D” Pizza Cutter

Often times, when working on a project for a video on YouTube, there is a tendency to keep pushing the envelope, try something totally new, or set out to be the next viral sensation with a squirrel obstacle course in your backyard. It is almost a silent upvote arms race to the top of the trending page. There is also something to be said for the more simple projects. The projects that still inspire, that still delight and that still fulfill that desire to create when other builds fall by the wayside. This is one of those projects.

It is a Plan “D”. And that’s ok.

Starting with a chunk of walnut, Peter squares it up with the table saw and fills various voids with black CA glue before boring out a hole on one end.

In this cavity, he installs a threaded insert to be used at the very end of the project, both literally and chronologically!

After rounding down the rectangular prism into a chonky cylinder on the lathe, Peter broke out some seldom used shop accessories, custom jigs he built for the bandsaw that allow for some more… unorthodox cuts. Anytime you need to mount a lathe accessory to a bandsaw, you know it’s going to be a fun time!

Armed with his redneck engineered deli slicer, Peter slices the walnut cylinder in half at an acute angle.

He then sliced a chunk of black locust that was to be glued in where the walnut was cut. Great care had to be taken to align the original walnut pieces parallel with one another. When spinning up the lathe at high speed, any excessive misalignment could spell disaster. After trimming the corners off of the new black locust piece, Peter spun up the lathe and began to shape with a variety of tools, including his skew to show off his woodturning prowess! Almost on cue, the skew catches the wood and causes the entire cylinder to blow apart at the glue joints and subsequently send the skew into the Dunce Corner of the shop.

If Peter had an appropriately sized cone of shame, it would have likely gotten that too!

After some more glue and blue painters tape, Peter had it mounted back between the two centers, really to roll again!

Once he reached a shape he was happy with, Peter moved onto the sanding stage of the build.

That process quickly moved along to the finish which was a bit of wipe-on poly, applied while the lathe was turning at an extremely slow speed.

Finally, Peter reached the result of the boring part of the project, threading on the beefy pizza cutter. The contrasting woods and the chrome accoutrement really classed up this plan “D” project into something to be proud of!