Cholo and Tequila’s food and water dishes are usually placed in front of this Witco-esque bar. Cholo was getting pretty weak in his old age and I decided to build him a raised feeding station to match the bar so he didn’t have to bend down as much.
I went online to figure out the dimensions based on Cholo’s size and built this prototype. The pencil lines are the planned carvings with patterns that are directly copied from the bar.
I wasn’t sure what to do with the sides and this was the first draft. I decided the pattern was too busy and changed it several times. Erasing the old lines helped me learn how to use my new jointer plane.
Don’t believe the internet! It was waaaaaay too tall and I had to cut it down several times to get it to the right size. I recommend building something simple that is taller than you expect and keep cutting and feeding until you get a good height.
The prototype worked too well and Cholo was able to eat more comfortably. So we just covered the stand with plastic rather than not have something for him during the build process.
We have another Mexican Hairless named Tequila and she inherited the food stand. She was much smaller than Cholo, so I had to cut the height again for her size.
The stand was put together with pocket screws, so I removed them all and used a palm router with a Lee Valley signmaking router bit (60 degree head on each side) to cut the patterns on each side. I cut it much deeper than I wanted it to look (about 1/2 the wood thickness) because I expected that the burn would dull the edges.
I used epoxy and pocket screws to put it back together hoping that the epoxy would keep all the edges together during the burn.
I used our BBQ propane tank with a Hot Max 500G Big Max 500,000 BTU Propane Torch to burn all sides to a black char.
I used some Harbor Freight wire brushes (I broke about four brushes during the process, so I need to find some quality ones somewhere. ) to brush off the char to the finish I was looking for.
The exterior came out exactly how I envisioned it, but the inner edges of the routing WOULD NOT BURN!!!!! It was very frustrating. I pulled out all of the different stains we had from previous projects and Lina chose a blue stain. The inner edges wouldn’t take the stain very well either and I decided only to fill two sides with blue. I filled the other two sides with a red stain so we could choose the best looking one when it was all finished.
I wanted the stand to be completely waterproof and chose to finish it with Waterlox, which is a product I’ve never used before. I’m not sure how it could be waterproof because it seems to be an oil-based finish.
I was under a time crunch because we were one of the hosts for an upcoming Home Tiki Bar Crawl, so I applied the finish as fast as I could. That was a mistake. ALWAYS TEST THE FINISH ON SOME SCRAP MATERIAL! It almost turned the project black, which was not what I was going for at all. I should have used Epifanes varnish.
It doesn’t look terrible in front of the bar, but I’m still disappointed.
At least Tequila uses it!
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