2023 BeerBQ Swap

I got JD77 for my recipient for this swap and already had an idea of a personalized clock in mind. I found a company that makes the clock faces and had one beer related that would include a person's name, Joe in this instance. Since the clock face was round, I had to enlist the help of Lazyman (Nathan) for help since he has a CNC machine to cut the round parts from some glued up ash (I think).

Here he is cutting a recess to receive a 1/4" glass front (I didn't want to chance any breakage in shipping).

It was my wife's idea to mount it on something in the shape of his state so I glued up some mahogany boards. He downloaded an image of the shape of Arkansas, JD's state, and had his CNC draw it on the board. 

I took it home and used my router to put a larger round-over on the top circle.

Next I routed out the circle in the mahogany backing and by hand routed the squiggly shape of the Mississippi River.

Refined it with a bunch of files and rasps.

The glued the whole mess up and finished with spray lacquer.

Next, I wanted to make a steak flipper as a bonus. My mistake, I used 1/2" square bar, should have used 3/8".
I started by making a leaf (my first) on one end.

Then bent it over for a twist.

My nephew is a really good blacksmith/farrier and helped me twist the doubled portion. I'm very glad he did because it took us 6 tries to get it right, the curse of using 1/2" stock. I had fount out JD was a leftie so it was twisted so the leaf would be a thumb rest.

I put another twist in and started cleaning it up.

I cut off the excess bar and left 4" to draw out into the taper and a leftie pig tail.

Heated it some and put canola oil on as a protection which turned it almost black.

Apologies for this being so long and picture heavy.
I learned a lot on this swap and it was fun. Thanks to Nathan and my nephew Burr for all their help and especially to Kenny for running the swap again.