Pallet Wood Ring From a Single Wood Shaving

I made a pallet wood ring from a shaving last year whilst noticing that a curled up shaving looks like a ring (as others have before me it seems, a quick YouTube result found several videos!). In the video I document the problems I came across and the eventual success when trying to replicate the making of the ring. As always I will provide more detailed instructions below.

I hope you enjoy it!

Tools:

Pencil

Plane (or access to plane shavings)

Sandpaper

Chisel or knife

Fine toothed saw

Pipe (or other circular object)

Masking tape (optional)

Materials:

Wood glue

Wax wood finish, Danish oil or other wood finish of your choice

Pallet wood plank

Plastic (and tape to secure it)

The first step is pretty simple, make or find a consistent wood shaving. By consistent I mean one that is of uniform width and at least 40cm (15 3/4") long. I used my hand plane to make this but if you don't have a hand plane you could always ask a carpenter or woodworker for some of their leftover shavings.

I think further experiments could be done on the thickness of the shaving, a thicker shaving would possibly call for a shorter length. Luckily this is something you can toy around with until you get the desired effect.

After you've got your shaving you can start to prepare the area that you're going to wrap it around. Take a pipe or something else round and cover the area that you'll be wrapping the shaving around in plastic. This ensures that the glue from the ring won't stick to what you're wrapping it around.

I had some metal conduit hanging around and so used some plastic from an old bag and secured it around the pipe with electrical tape. After you've got this the way you want it you can then start to wrap your shaving around it.

There's a couple of ways to do this step, you can just start by gluing the whole length of the shaving and keeping it as tight as you can whilst you wind it around upon itself. In the end I found that sticking a piece of masking tape to the plastic and sticking the end of the shaving to it before wrapping it around was the best way. This is because I was able to pull harder on the shaving as I wrapped it because it was already stuck to the masking tape. When you've got the ring completely wrapped around, wait for a day and then pull them off the end of the pipe.

A day after I glued the ring I pulled it off the pipe and drew some rough lines where I wanted to cut it down a little. It's important to draw these lines a little thicker than you want the final product to be as there's still some sanding to be done.

Cutting the ring can be a bit fiddly but I managed to clamp it into my vice and saw both sides off with a fine toothed tenon/back saw. After I cut the ring I found that there were a lot of little gaps where the shaving hadn't quite stuck, so I got some glue and a little saw dust, mixed it together and pushed down into the sides of the ring. After this dried I then sanded it on all sides to get the desired smoothness and thickness.

Of course if you're better at gluing and wrapping the ring around the pipe in the first place than I am, then you probably wont need to add glue to the sides! I just thought it was important to show the steps I took and how I solved that particular problem.

I sanded the rings first using 240 grit sandpaper and finishing with 800 grit. After that I just rubbed a little wax and mineral oil mixture on them and buffed them to a light shine. Of course you could add whatever kind of wood finish you like, I know everyone has a preference.

Thanks a lot for checking out this instructable, please feel free to check out my Facebook page where I'm in the process of posting new projects, blog posts and other woodwork related things! Thank you very much.