A Countertop Insulation Disc For A Pressure Cooker

My son has an Instant Pot pressure cooker that he uses a lot, but he's loathe to leave it operating on his granite countertop; it has to be placed on his wooden kitchen table when in use. It seems that pressure cookers are known to crack stone countertops -- an outcome certainly to be avoided.

So, he asked me to come up with a wooden insulating disc, about 12" in diameter and half an inch thick, so the pressure cooker can be in use on his countertop. I have some nominal 3/16" RevolutionPly material kicking around; Three thicknesses of that laminated together will give me the makings of a suitable disc, so here goes.

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And here's my 12" square, three-layer disc blank glued up and clamped up and awaiting the morrow, when it will be ready to go to work on.

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Blank Glue-Up Ready -- SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2019

Here's the 12" square blank out of its clamp-up.

Now to lay out a circle on that, and cut a slightly oversize disc out of it on the bandsaw.

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Rough Disc Sawn Out

Now I have to rig a circle-sanding fixture on my table saw.

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Here's my jury-rigged circle-sanding fixture. It's just a suitable board with a roofing nail through it to act as an axis.

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That worked reasonably well. I now have a true disc, 11 5/8" in diameter -- plenty close enough for the application.

Note the small hole at the centre of the disc. That's where the circle-sanding fixture's axis nail engaged with the disc. That hole will need to be filled with a bit of dowel.

And now for the tricky, fraught-with-peril part; I have to rout a 3/16" radius all around both sides of the disc. We'll see how this works out.

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Here's my router table set up with a 3/16" radius piloted round-over bit.

And here's the outcome.

Not bad. I did that in one pass per side with no splintering -- I wasn't expecting it to work so well or be so easy.

Here's the pivot hole left over from the circle-sanding fixture plugged and sanded.

And here's the disk after a final sanding and an application of tung oil.

Done. The tung oil just needs to harden overnight, and the disc will be ready for service.

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