Serving Tray

A simple, versatile serving tray for use around the home or kitchen, but also great as a gift. Ideal as a beginner-intermediate project to develop skills in creating mitre joints. Best suited for construction out of hardwood (10-20mm thickness) e.g. oak, maple, walnut etc. but can be produced from any wood.

Estimated build time: 2hrs + drying time.

Required Tools

What will I need?

• Tape-Measure / Ruler
• Wood Glue
• Table Saw or Mitre Saw
• Sandpaper
• Drill
• Forstner Bits
• Router

Customize Plan

Customize this plan to suit your needs

Long Side Length (mm)

Short Side Length (mm)

Tray Height (mm)

Timber thickness (mm)

Generate Custom Plan
* This can take up to 60s

3D View

Three dimensional visualization with selected parameters.

Cutlist

View the complete custlist for this project.

Piece A - Long Side
Width: 500mm	Height: 40mm	Qty. 2
Piece B - Short Side
Width: 300mm	Height: 40mm	Qty. 2
Piece C - Base
Width: 300mm	Height: 500mm	Qty. 1

Input stock dimensions

Use our Cutlist Optimizer tool to generate cutting patterns based on your base stock dimensions.

Piece 1 +

Update Cut Diagram Download Cut Diagram

Step 1 – Base Glue Up (Optional)

The first stage is getting the wood together to form the base of the tray with the dimensions shown below:

If you already have a peice of wood available with these directions, it can easily be cut to size and this step can be skipped. If you are using thinner boards, however, you may need to glue up several boards to achieve this width.

To do this, make sure each of the boards are plane and square, and then apply wood glue to the edges of each board. Clamp them using parallel clamps and leave to try overnight. You may wish to wipe away the excess glue after about 20mins of drying to make the cleanup easier.

Once dry, the resulting board can be planed and cut to size.

Step 2 – Cut Sides

The next step is to cut the sides of the tray. We will need:

• Two pieces at 500mm x 40mm
• Two pieces at 300mm x 40mm

The edges of each side should be cut to a 45 degree mitre as shown. This can be best acheived using a table saw, but if you dont have a table saw available, a mitre saw will work fine too.

TOP TIP: To acheive an easier glue

Step 3 – Create Handles

Step 4 – Route Base Insert

The next step is to route the slots for the base to sit in. For this, select a router bit that is equal to (or preferably very slightly wider than) the thickness of the base you are using from Step 1. Set the router cut depth to 5mm and

Step 5 – Assembly

The final stage is to glue up the