How to Make a Pizza Peel

13 Materials
$30
4 Hours
Medium

Hey Everyone, Jeremy Hoffpauir here. I decided to make a DIY Pizza Peel for a local charity. I decided to make this wood pizza peel with Mahogany and Walnut. The pizza peel long handle makes it easy to use and practical.

Choose Wood and Dimensions

It is important to choose a suitable hardwood for a DIY pizza peel. A wood pizza peel will come into contact with food and it will be exposed to excessive heat. Mahogany and Walnut seemed like a great choice for this DIY pizza peel because they are both hardwood and I had excess in my workshop.

I wanted the pizza peel to have a long handle and be about 14″ wide. The dimensions I used originated from the look and feel, not from exact dimensions.

Prepare Wood

I resawed the 8×4 (2″ thick) piece of mahogany on my table saw. It was 24″ long.

Next, I cut 2 pieces of 4×4 (1″) walnut to 14″ on my Miter saw. These pieces were the sides of the DIY Pizza Peel.

Jointing and Planing

A nice jointer is on my tool wish list. For the interim, I use my homemade jointer sled with 2 grooves I cut with a dovetail router bit. My dovetail clamps secure the board to the sled to get one straight side. I then used my table saw to straighten the other side. I repeated this procedure for all 3 boards.

Once each board was straight on both sides, I ran them through my Dewalt planer. The boards were already fairly flat, so a few passes achieved the desired result.

Glue Up

The glue up is rather simple. First, I placed the boards in their appropriate position to make sure they were flush. I placed the boards on 2 bar clamps and flipped the pieces of walnut upwards.

I used a glue dispenser to spread an even bead of glue on each piece of walnut.

Next, I used a glue applicator set to cover the entire area. I slowly applied pressure with my bar clamps until glue seeped out evenly. The picture shows 2 bar clamps, but I used 4 bar clamps in total.

Template

As I mentioned previously, I didn’t use a template for the wood pizza peel. I had a pizza stone from my smoker that was the size of a pizza peel and decided to use it as a template. Next, I traced it with a double sided pencil

Quick Tip: If you are always looking for pencils in your shop, I recommend buying these pencils. Sharpen them on an old school pencil sharpener and leave them all over the workshop. May sound like a simple tip, but it saves time and keeps my frustration level down.

I free-handed the neck of the wood pizza peel while ensuring it was even on both sides. It was important to me to have a long handle.

Spray paint cans are very handy for drawing perfect circles. I decided to use one to form the knob.

I cut out the lines using my bandsaw. A jig saw would work just as well.

Sanding

Sanding is an essential part of how to make a pizza peel.

First, I used my spindle sander with the wide spindle to knock down the rough spots on the wood pizza peel.

Then, I used my disc sander to remove the marks caused by the spindle sander.

Finally, I finished off with my orbital sander.

Pizza Peel Thick Handle Width

In order for this to be an authentic wood pizza peel, I needed to thicken the handle.

First, I resawed another piece of mahogany on my bandsaw to roughly 5/8″.

Next, I ran it through the planer to reduce the thickness to 1/2″ and get 2 flat sides. In order to get 1 straight side, I used a piece of mdf as a reference to get and double-sided tape to to secure the mahogany.

Then, I put the piece of mahogany under my pizza peel and traced the shape of the long handle and knob. I used my bandsaw to cut slightly outside the line.

Once the mahogany was cut out, I placed it on top of the pizza peel and sketched the half moon the same circumference as the circle. I cut this out on the bandsaw.

I used wood glue and clamped it down to let it dry.

Pizza Peel Lip

Another essential wood pizza peel quality is a indented lip. This helps the pizza peel slide under the pizza when removing it from the pizza oven or grill.

First, I used my trim router with a 1/2" roundover bit and Table saw router table to roundover the top of the pizza peel and both sides of the pizza peel long handle. I didn’t round over the bottom of the round part of the pizza peel because I want this to sit flat.

I used my pencil to draw a horizontal line across the middle of the pizza peel.

Next, I used one finger as a guide and traced a line about 1″ from the edge of the pizza peel. This line will start the downward slant to the end of the pizza peel. I used my belt sander to sand from the line to the edge of the pizza peel.

Pizza Peel Knob

In order for the pizza peel to hang from the wall, I drilled a hole in the knob. I used my drill press with a 1/2" forstner bit to accomplish this. Be sure to put a scrap piece of wood below to prevent tear out.

Apply Finish

Before I applied the finish, I used a tack cloth to remove the loose dust.

Next, I used mineral oil as my finish. I applied the 3 coats and lightly sanded with 220 grit sandpaper in between coats.

Finally, used a combination of beeswax and boiled linseed oil on the final coat. I wiped it down with a lint free cloth and I was done.

I hope this project provided you with some value because this is, and always will be, my ultimate goal.

Please consider sharing this post via social media,  subscribing to my youtube channel.

For more projects, visit my website.

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Jeremy Hoffpauir
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