After building a coffee table, I had a block of leftover maple that I wanted to make a second project with.

It was quite thick (1.75”), but otherwise it had the right dimensions for a valet tray.

So I used a curved carving knife and scraped chunks of wood off the block for 6-8 hours.

Ultimately, I got the right dimensions but I realized my carving spoon isn’t hooked enough to carve a steep slope into the sidewalls of each basin.

Overall, I’m happy with how the tray turned out, but the amount of work was insane. I think the combination of using maple (relatively hard), not having the sharpest knife, and not having much experience made this project even more time consuming.

Next, I’ll be taking this concept to a CNC shop to produce a small batch of these trays with the exact shape I want and a lot less labor.