TGIF New projects and project updates

Hi Everyone,
Well, its hot here today and everything is in bloom and we can smell lilac all over the place. It must be the year for them.
Ive been generating a lot of small pieces of lumber and Ive been searching for projects to use them up and one of the projects Im going to start are cutting boards out of assorted hardwoods.  Here are some photos and discussion:
I work mostly with domestic hardwoods such as maple, hickory, and black walnut as they are readily available and not terribly costly. I also work with red colored woods such as kempas, Brazilian cherry, and cumaru woods. These woods are also readily available and not endangered. I dont like to waste wood and so here we go- here are some thin pieces that Ive cut off of wider boards:

I decided to trim all of these pieces into uniform a thickness of 1 1/8" on the table saw so the first thing I did was rip them to that thickness and then separate them into colors:

Then I trimmed these strips into 12 1/2" lengths. Here are some for comparison:

Now I can play with all of these various colors and arrange and re-arrange them:

This will become a cutting board after Ive laminated these into a turning blank:

And here are some more cutting boards waiting to be laminated together. The larger ones at the top will be cutting boards and the small ones on the bottom will become either trivets or tea box lids:

Im going to glue up all of these blanks and probably make more next week so Ill have a large supply of turning material.
Next-remember the camphor wood trays and bowl I made about a month ago? Well, I took the trays out to see how they were doing and they had dried quite a bit and there was very little distortion in the trays. So Im putting them back on the lathe for their final cutting. Here is a photo of one thats been cut and one that is waiting its turn:

The shop smells like Vicks Vaporub again! Im curious as to what these trays will look like when they are all finished.
Im going to go and make dinner and cool off with some pineapple juice--see you later this weekend.
VW