DIY Bagel Slicer

Have you struggled with slicing bagels in your kitchen? But wait, there's more. So, I eat bagels on a pretty regular basis and generally the deal with this is you get that on a cutting board and you're trying to do this and kind of this is what happens. You don't have much control over that and you're trying to slice through, not clip a finger. It's O dark 30 in the morning, you haven't had your coffee yet. So, today and today only, we have available for you the bagel slicer. So, I like this and it's pretty cool because small pieces of wood, if you have something that's really cool looking that's gonna make a great side. The way it works is you throw your bagel into the official bagel slicer, and then give that a squeeze, that holds it in place, and then get your knife on there. Even better when you don't have a stale bagel. Look at that. But wait, there's more. Not really. So here's what we're gonna do. That's gonna be a base when it grows up and dimensions for that right there. So cut that to length, then we're gonna meet at the table saw to put in those curves. Couple set up things here at the table saw. I've got a rip blade in here that's a full plate, a full curve rip blade. I'm making a point out of that because we want the slot you cut to be an eighth inch or slightly larger in width. A full curve blade is gonna do that. With this particular rip blade, to be more specific it's what's called a triple chip grind. That's not imperative but a triple chip grind does leave you with a flat bottom curve when you're done. So that's nice but like I said that's not imperative. The big deal is it's a rip blade that's full curve. The blade is set three eighths of an inch above the table and it's tilted three degrees. On my saw, that three degree tilt is bringing it away from the fence. So as a result, it's seven sixteenths of an inch between the blade and the fence right now. So what's gonna happen is burr, burr and that's gonna create our two bagel grippers that tilt out. If your saw tilts the other way, your blade tilts the other way, you're gonna have to do the math to figure this out. What we're shooting for is inch and five eighths spacing in between the curves when we're done 'cause that's about the size of a bagel. So that's what gives you room then to squeeze in and pinch that in. Now this is not our final piece. This is a test piece. It's a really good idea to have a scrap piece that's exactly the same width as your project piece so that we can do what I'm about to do. So make this cut measure in between, like I said we're shooting for an inch and five eighths 'cause that's pretty good bagel thickness. If you check your bagels and you find that they're thin bagels, you can reduce this, still make this project, but you can reduce this dimension however you need to so it works better for the bagels you get. But I did actually check a number of bakery baked bagels and found inch of five eighths to be pretty consistent. So check this. That looks pretty good. I'm actually gonna scoot just a tiny bit. I'm just a little bit off my inch and five eighths. Okay. Then, you ready to cut the reel base. So we have that. Back to the bench to work on the walls or bagel grippers as they're technically called. Curly sycamore. I re-saw that on the bandsaw and cut it oversize. Oversized being, we want to start with the thickness of that material greater than the curves that we cut. So again, this is the importance of that being a full size curve, is if that's a thin curve blade when we do this, then this panel is gonna be too thin and maybe not tolerate the flex we need to grip the bagel. So we want that to be about an eighth of an inch. Where I'm at now is run the belt sander or your hand plane, or whatever method you have for cleaning up skinny stock like this. If you've got a drum sander, that would be perfect to run this through the drum sander until it fits in there. So we've got a couple dimensions going. This one you've already been given. So, for in the world of bagels we want this to be six and a half. We want our walls, our squeezers to be six and a half above the base and we're three eighths in here. So what I did here is cut one panel that's big enough to make two squeezers and then I can work on that whole thing at one time. So at one time, yep. So, so I'm gonna keep sanding on this, frequently checking that fit until that'll just slip in there. Then we can look at cutting those to size. That's all we need. Now, dimensions for the squeezy things, right there. Cut those to size and then we'll revisit, or we'll visit what's gonna happen next. There are my bagel squeezers. Now, where'd that curve come from? After they were cut to size, what I did is I measured from the coroner down an inch, corner down an inch. And this little trick is a pretty cooler way for making curves like that. So what I did is grabbed a steel ruler, put it in between the clampy clamp, and then, 'cause I had pencil marks on here, I could squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until that ruler was going from the end of the board to my two pencil marks, and then trace the curve. So what's cool about that is you're bending us something and you can do this by yourself. You don't need somebody else to draw a line while you do that. But that's the other alternative. Everything is sanded. Now for this, I'm going with extended glue and the reason is, I wanna make sure that when these get in here I have ample opportunity to check the ends and make sure that they're flush so that everything is lined up and the extended glue is gonna give me a little bit more working time. I'm not gonna make an effort to squeeze the glue right into the grooves 'cause that would get very messy. Then, I'm gonna use a little stick to carefully get that in the groove. Little bit on top. Don't sweat that. I'm gonna show you how to deal with that. Because of the time it takes to carefully work that glue in, part of the reason that extend is a good choice for this project. Now before this slide the squeezy things go in, grab your utility knife blade and just use it as a scraper. That's gonna get any little bit of glue residue off the top surface and still leave you with a good surface here. Wash with the ends. No need to clamp. That's gonna be enough. Let the glue dry. Little bit more finish sanding, that's ready for finish. And the next time you go to have a bagel for breakfast, squeeze if you please and it's gonna be much easier to cut your bagel.