Orange Thistle Woodworks

03/22/2026

I had a lot of fun building this table for a friend. A beautiful live edge walnut table. The slab, fasteners and c channel supports were sourced from with some black epoxy from used to fix a knot hole and a couple of cracks. The legs were sourced from and they complement the table perfectly. The chairs were purchased by the owner and look great with the table.

03/11/2026

A whole bunch of boxes showed up today from . I have two projects on the go right now otherwise I’d be tearing into these boxes and getting set up. More to come.

03/03/2026

Sanding, sanding and more sanding. Two more grits and it’s time for finish on Slabzilla.

02/11/2026

Dams all set up and the bottom of the slab is sealed up so I don’t end up with 2 litres of black epoxy on the floor. Now we wait for the black goo to cure.

01/25/2026

Step 1. Removal of bark and cambian complete. Pretty tedious work but nothing compared to the 147 days of sanding I had ahead of me.

01/23/2026

After a busy summer downsizing and moving to another area of Ottawa I’m finally getting back into it again. Today I bought Slabzilla at for an upcoming dining table project. Once again the service at KJP was excellent especially with Mike who was very patient with me and had a lot of sound advice for the build. I can’t wait to get working on this project.

08/21/2025

We are finally moved into our new house and it will be a little while before the shop is up and running but there has been a new (to me) addition to the tool inventory. Can anyone guess what it is?

04/23/2025

An old friend and former co-worker of mine contacted me on making a cutting / serving board for his boat. He didn’t really have a lot of requests other than he’d like the boat cleat handles that I did on another board and a compass rose on it. This is what I came up with. The border and compass rose are made of walnut and maple and the main part of the board is cherry. All the lumber was sourced from a local mill. The compass rose was done with 16 individual pieces cut by hand, glued together and then inlay into the cherry. Needless to say there is a lot of time put into this project but the finished results are worth it.

04/22/2025

04/19/2025

And now for something completely different… My wife has been talking about little libraries for years so I thought it would be nice to build her one for Christmas. I was a little worried about the finishing part of this project because painting is definitely not my forte. I took my time and tried to keep the 76214 paint runs under control. I was successful for the most part. All in all I think the finished product turned out great and we will see how well it holds up to our Canadian weather. Oh ya….. my wife loved it. 😜.

04/18/2025

Yes…. I know. Not another cutting board…. Well I make more cutting boards than anything else so …….
This board started with those maple and walnut triangles you see in the center of the board. Those were cutoffs from a previous project and I didn’t want to just chuck them in a fire. I started messing around trying to come up with some sort of design and this kind of just happened. Considering it started with some scrap pieces I am pleased on how it turned out. This ended up being a Christmas gift to a family member who is a sous-chef.

04/17/2025

Next up is yet another cutting board. I decided to start using up a bunch of odd size cut offs that I had been saving for……. Something? Well it turns that a chaos board was the perfect thing for those leftovers. Lots of sawing, drum sanding, glueing and clamping involved with this. Pretty cool end result. The center section is all end grain hardwood (don’t ask which species of wood please) and then surrounded with a walnut border. Like I said, it was a lot of work but the end result was worth it. I almost kept this one.