Butter Mold for Deck Family Farm

I spent this week making this butter mold for our friends at Deck Family Farm.

Check out their site here

These people raise the best meat you can get..

Free Range organic, healthy.

I think one reason Bracken has never been sick is that he eats so much of this good meat. 

 This is a butter mold

The back is Oregon Myrtlewood

The sides are Ironwood

Some very hard Ironwood I could barely drill.

 I sanded it down to 1200 grit, then polished it with an eyeglasses polishing compound.

The idea being to make it really smooth 

so the butter would release easily.

The most time consuming part was polishing down inside of the carvings.

And making sure there were no undercuts

where the butter might hang up.

 If I were smarter I would have put the sides on first

before I carved it

Because I don't really have any good equipment

and setting the bolts in the sides

and having them not split the bottom, and line up right..

Was very stressful.

I saved that part for early this morning

when Taryn and Bracken were still asleep..

so I could totally focus.

After all the hours put in the carving,

having the drill bit pop through...

would have been a real bummer.

 But it worked out perfect,

The wood shines.

 I'll bet it'll glow once it has been permeated with butter oil.

I was going to put little channels in between the designs for the

butter milk to run off in.

But decided that if I did that there would be raised edges 

on the edges of each cube.

(They will cut cubes out of the mold)

Did I mention the sides come off.

I can't wait to see butter that comes out of the mold.

Boy do I miss butter.

(we aren't doing dairy)