And it begins......

NC State Fair 2018 is just around the corner. It is in October as always. Needless to say I am way behind. Best laid plans as they say right. Last year I was done by now. Today I am just starting.

I found a nice large thin piece of cherry this year. Klingspor's has thin wood and what is nice about it is that you can see it before buying. You may pay more locally. But when you buy wood on-line you have no clue what you have till it arrives.

Needless to say I usually cut these portraits from plywood. I wanted to use a solid piece of wood this year. Now I am worried about the pieces that will have only thin connections. With plywood the ply's are in different directions so you don't get weakness from the grain as much. Now I have to worry about the pieces breaking along the grain. It is a risk but each year I make it harder on myself then the year before.

Before cutting it was 15" x 24". It is not a glued up piece of wood either. It is a single piece of wood. So today I was able to accomplish cutting out the piece of cherry and the backer. I drilled 740 holes. Now all I have to do is cut out the 740 pieces with my scroll saw.

I was able to cut a few today before I had to stop. I was just not feeling it tonight. When ever I feel that way and I keep going I have learned that I eventually will goof something up.

I have purposely burred this image so that it will be very difficult for someone to take this and create a pattern from it.The pattern designer has stopped selling patterns so I don't want someone to just take it and make one from this image. I don;t know the actual reason he has stopped selling his patterns as he is one of the very best at this.

Anyway it is a lion roaring. It is 15 1/2" tall and 13 3/4" wide. This is the size of last years frame. So it is just a bit larger than last years entry.

Last year I cut The Bully A pattern of a Bull Elephant that was over 1,000 cuts.

Thanks for looking!

OM

I was asked to cut this symbol out. I puzzled over how to do this as the cutting itself is rather simple. But how? Should I angle cut and pop the symbol out so it would be 3-d? Should I paint the backer?

I ended up with this design when done. Rather then use a square piece of wood and cut the symbol out. I decided to just put it in outline shape and then have the actual symbol removed. I then cut the backer out of 1/4" oak ply slightly smaller then the outline. I made it 1/4" smaller. 

It is just finished with Natural Danish Oil.

The saw tooth hanger is just epoxied to the back since it is way too thin to put the relly tiny nails on. They would have stuck out. Due to the shape the hanger is off center since it is was centered it would hang at a slight angle since the is more wood to one side then the other.

Name Plate done

The name plate is done. All glued up and shellac is on it.

Name plates are fun to do. They are easy to design and most are simple to cut. The inside cuts are minimal. It is just the gluing and finishing that take time. I like the way the shellac came out. I am always hesitant when using shellac on name plates/ Since these are not flat it would be hard to remove the shellac if I mess up. So it is always just one shot to get it decent or you have to cut everything again.

Name Plate Part #1

Seems I am way behind my personal schedule! My own fault as I still need to work on my State Fair entry. But I let July get here. For those that don't know my world series takes place the month of July. Let Tour De France! Keeps me in the house watching that. I've watched it for quite some time. It never disappoints.

Anyway I've promised some people I'll make them stuff and the Tour keeps me from accomplishing that. So I am making a name plate for a guy at work. He is going to give it to his daughter. She saw the one I made for him a while back and she now wants one. One thing I have learned from this is to keep track of the wood I use on things I make. Not always the actual wood but the thickness of the wood. I did not keep track of that and I don't remember. This time I used 3/4" for the backer and 1/2 for the name. It is what I had on hand.

After cutting it I believe I used 1/4" for the name before.

Anyway it is not done. It is cut and I have soaked the pieces in my favorite finish Danish Oil. I will also spray it with shellac, But it needs to dry for a few days before glue up.

I use Inkscape when I design my name plates. It only takes a short bit of time to make the name and backer.

The actual wood used is Red Oak for the backer and Pine for the actual name plate

Here are some shots of the name being cut and the pieces so far.

Stay tuned for the final next post on this project once it dries and is glued up. Now onto the next thing I promised. At least they are all simple and not time consuming projects.

Thanks for looking!
Jim

Tables are done!

I have finished rebuilding these tables. These were a joy to work on. In a way I felt my Dad was helping as I worked on these two tables. Things just seemed to go along smoothly and ideas just seemed to come out of no where in particular. I used some of his tools and each time it was like yup dad is here helping. People always say that as you use things or wear things you feel their presence strongly. Some people would say you just overly sensitive. I say so be it. If it makes you feel they are standing there with you then that is what I feel and you are not going to change my mind in the least.

Here you can see I decided to make mini tops to screw the base into so that the tops won't flip up if you put too much weight on them. These are them looking at the tops upside down.

Here they are with the all the paint done and the tops screwed to the base.

These are very bright when in the bright North Carolina sunshine.

After I was finished working on these and took these pictures I went inside to get something to drink as I it was 98 outside and I was sitting in the sun drilling holes by hand since I could not get a drill in where I needed the holes for the screws as I only had 3/4"  ply wood and that means the holes had to be 3/8" from the top. No way you are fitting a drill in that space. So I used a small chuck I could put into my screwdriver that takes 1/4" bits. Problem solved. But when inside my pupils must have been small dots as I could hardly see anything after looking at this bright white!

My daughter was very pleased with how they came out.  I am very sure my dad is proud that I took his tables and redid them and now they are being used once again by my daughter.

Thanks for looking!
Jim